This article explores the process through which civil society organizations (CSOs) adopt and develop reliance on corporate management knowledge and practices. It draws on theories related to organizational change and critical approaches to managerialism in an analysis of how and with what consequences a large and democratically governed Swedish CSO adopted the balanced scorecard. The analysis suggests that the adoption of corporate management knowledge and practices (1) involves a dialectic relationship with other change processes, in this case centralization and professionalization, (2) institutionalizes the idea that the corporate world provides valid solutions for how to assess and develop CSOs, and (3) creates or widens the divide between internal democratic governance and executive structures. The concluding section discusses these results and suggests further research.
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