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Weatherhead Doctor of Management Programs
Show moreAcademicians and practitioners continually reexamine the performance and interaction between nonprofit cooperative boards and managements as they relate to organizational effectiveness. Despite the volumes of academic research and the scores of practitioner-based "how-to" journals, neither present theory nor practice seems to have it rights. Perhaps the paradox is due to the difficulties of governance and the role that boards perform- or fail to perform- or maybe it fall squarely on the shoulders of management and the complexity of leadership. Regardless of the reasons, a performance gap exists (Nicholson & Kiel, 2004). If left unheeded, this gap will cause ineffectiveness and produce such things as misaligned missions, unattained goals, inefficient operations, unending conflict, unresponsive leadership, and most importantly, lack of stakeholder support. This paper proposes to bridge the performance gap through collaborative practices: practices that inspire dialogue between boards and chief executive officer (CEOs) in order to do what is in the best interest of the members [stakeholders] (Balser & McClusky, 2005), practices of 'lay' board members as they control and support management (Conforth, 2004), and most importantly, practices that are consistent with the cooperative's values and mission, rather than adopt 'best practices' of others (Herman & Renz, 2004). Because as past research has shown, leaders that intentionally strive to improve their performance also bolster the organization in its effectiveness (Brudney & Murray, 1998; Gill, Flynn, & Reissing, 2005; Herman & Renz, 1999; Holland & Jackson, 1998; Kiel & Nicholson, 2005).
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