Stepping Stone or Quicksand? Ethical Understandings of Non-Profit Support Organizations and Capability Consequences

Abstract

This study examines how non-profit support organizations (NPSOs) construct collective ethical understandings of “support” under structural power imbalances and how these shape beneficiaries’ experiences. Focusing on refugee entrepreneurship services in Western contexts, it draws on interviews with managers from 33 NPSOs and 15 refugee entrepreneurs. Integrating the Sensemaking-Intuition Model and Capability Approach, the study identifies three ethical understandings—Instrumental, Compensatory, and Transformative—that reflect how NPSOs interpret power asymmetries, justify interventions, and define ethical support. Each arises from distinct configurations of organizational expertise, internal culture, and perceived institutional pressures. A capability-based evaluation of ethical completeness assesses how these understandings uphold recognition, equity, substantive freedom, and institutional integrity. The assessment reveals that while Instrumental NPSOs emphasize directive support to avoid failure, and Compensatory NPSOs affirm beneficiaries’ autonomy to counter power imbalances, only Transformative NPSOs approach ethical completeness—though their models remain precarious, strained by dominant neoliberal logics.