Do Organizational Types Behave Differently? Theories and Evidence from the Italian Health Sector

Scholars characterize the nonprofit sector according to several, often overlapping the- ories. Unfortunately, these theories, do not offer testable hypotheses and it is hard to tell whether nonprofits exist because of historical accident, path dependence, different organizational goals, consumer demand, or government regulation. Therefore, rather than trying to answer such broad questions about the role of the entire sector, in this paper I take a step toward filling a research gap by asking this simple question: Do ownership types behave differently? To answer this question, I test the provision of the Italian health care services. If ownership seems to matter, I then assess alternative explanations for those differences. I mainly consider whether ownership types have different objectives and I then investigate whether hospital types behave differently.