Nonprofit organizations were included in the target of organizational theory, but their definition was provided by nonprofit research, not organizational theory. This study tried to examine the most representative definition of nonprofit organizations which was used by the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project and present one of integrated construe of the definitions of nonprofit organizations in previous studies. Therefore, it was found that the nondistribution constraint is the only unique definition of nonprofit different from for-profit. Thus it is important that the future research will require the examination and investigation of how the nature of the nondistribution constraint affect the defining characteristic of organizational structure and motivation.
