Business‐Like Narrative and Public Engagement: Evidence From TED Talks on Nonprofit Issues

ABSTRACT

While the trend of nonprofits adopting business‐like practices has been widely discussed, limited attention has been paid to how the broader public responds to this shift. One way to capture public reactions is by examining engagement with business‐like narratives in media. However, public engagement with business‐like narratives in media contexts beyond organization‐controlled social media remains underexplored. This study addresses these gaps by analyzing TED Talks to examine public engagement with nonprofit issues on a curated, global media platform. The regression results show that nonprofit‐related talks featuring business‐like narratives receive lower like rates and comment rates, but do not differ significantly in views compared with those without such narratives. These findings suggest that public audiences show lower levels of active engagement with content featuring business‐like narratives, which contrasts with stakeholders' relatively positive responses to nonprofits' business‐like practices noted in previous studies. This study advances the literature by measuring business‐like practices from a narrative perspective and examining public engagement with nonprofit issues on a broad media platform that reaches audiences beyond direct stakeholders. These findings also offer practical implications: nonprofit practitioners should be cautious about employing business‐like narratives in their communication, especially when addressing broad and diverse audiences.