- 2015-03-09 (x)
- Leadership (x)
- Nonprofit organizations--Management (x)
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Show moreDuring recent history, too many nonprofit organizations of higher education have become well known due to highly publicized cases of wrongdoing, which has contributed to the decline in confidence from the public. Contemporaneously, the for-profit corporate sector grappled with the ramifications of catastrophic failures. In response to these combined crises there has been a movement for greater accountability and responsibility from the public upon the governing boards of the organizations because the primary responsibility for these organizations vests with the board. This renewed interest has inspired this study to further understand how board members describe how they enact their responsibilities effectively. In this study data were obtained from twelve trustees from five organizations of higher education through phenomenological interviews. The data indicate that board members who consider themselves effective are actively participating through the board committee sub-structure, and they are motivated by a strong emotion and sustained by a commitment to the organization. Further, the members recognize the importance of understanding the organization along with their roles and responsibilities while balancing their power with the power of the internal officers, particularly the chief executive officer.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreThe primary purpose of this research is to clarify the operational characteristics in nonprofit organizations and to propose a framework for organizational success. This study aims to conceptualize and disentangle gender, board power and executive style effects and examine the relationship between board power and executive style under the possible scenarios of executive transition. We explore and refine the dimensions of board power and executive style and discuss the usefulness of viewing an organization’s orientation as a multidimensional construct. We suggest an alternative model to outcomes of financial performance which includes the interaction of internal and external executive style, and public and customer orientation influenced by the antecedent characteristics of board influence, board composition and legitimacy in the nonprofit sector.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreA higher standard of ethical accountability has emerged as a social movement in the nonprofit sector in response to the legislation mandated in the for-profit corporate sector requiring greater accountability. In response to this social movement and driven by a personal commitment to improve nonprofit board outcomes, this study explores a new model of governance which seeks to explain what drives a board member's performance in terms of oversight of management and the provision of resources, the desired outcomes of board membership. The model takes into consideration the complex and ambiguous nature of volunteer board work within the dynamics of social capital. Social capital brings new light to the debate between agency theory and resource dependence theory. Strong ties and weak ties theories are used to inform the interpersonal relationships that positively affect the oversight of management and the providing of resources. Additionally, the model explores the impact of motivation, knowledge, and committee participation of board members upon the outcomes of oversight of management and the provision of resources. The underlying goal of this research is to advance theory by offering a comprehensive and practical model that can help in maximizing the potential of nonprofit boards of trustees.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreResearchers are challenging extant models of nonprofit governance practices. Given an apparent shortfall in effective practice, a deductive study is conducted to determine the impact of a refined management model, relational governance, on outcomes cited in the literature as examples of effective practice. Relational governance emphasizes partnering, advising relationships between board and management and builds on recent nonprofit governance literature while contrasting on several dimensions with the well-known extant model policy governance. A research design is presented for empirically testing the relational governance model by means of a survey instrument made available to the unit of research, current and former nonprofit board members. An early result of the research provides empirical support which demonstrates the value of putting a board’s varying skills to good use, maintaining a board/CEO relationship as one of advising and partnering, and maintaining an open flexible, innovative work environment to better manage a nonprofit organization. Research results may have implications for practitioners and researchers interested in understanding how to optimize the utilization and potential contribution of senior nonprofit volunteers and directors.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreThis ethnography is about how nonprofit governance was achieved at one particular nonprofit agency, but it is not a how-to report or a report that explains specific factors that influence the effectiveness of nonprofit boards. Much of the conventional literature on the subject of nonprofit governance presents expert-based prescriptions of best practices. In contrast, this report is a rich description drawn from the social contruction of reality paradigm and derived from direct, intimate interaction over an extended period in a single organization. A basic narrative of the protagonists' experiences presented from their perspective provides a framework for multi-layered analysis. On the surface, the data tells how a chair/chief executive pair helps a governing board of a nonprofit organization to fulfill one of its primary and instrumental responsibilities--making well-considered strategy. One step deeper the analysis focuses on the struggle to achieve organizational accountability and legitimacy. On the deepest level, the core narrative is about how the protagonists strive, mostly in a tacit fashion, to be competent human agents in a nonprofit governance setting. Together, the three levels of analysis show how the protagonists order their basic social practices across time and space, and how the ways that they order social practices is constitutive of being a competent agent in the nonprofit governance setting, thus enabling the pursuit of accountability and strategy making in a rather matter-of-fact fashion. This report suggests that it is effective for leaders of boards to work towards a balanced tension between deliberate and emergent modes of strategy formation. A parallel process is the need to work towards a balanced tension between accountability for finance and accountability for mission. Finally, leaders may benefit by paying attention to their routine social interactions in order to organize for a coherent and stable community of nonprofit governance practice within which it is possible to succeed at making strategy an achieving broad accountability. Leaders need to pay attention to how all three of these dimensions of nonprofit leadership relate to each other.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreDo a leader’s social capital building activities influence outcomes in their organization? A web-based survey of leaders of nonprofit aging services organizations was conducted to determine the relationship between social capital investing activities, transformational leadership style, organizational legitimacy and organizational performance indicators. The study looked specifically at leaders’ internal and external social capital building activities and their impact on two different organizational outcomes--donations and the leader’s relationship with the board. In addition, the roles of organizational legitimacy and transformational leadership in moderating these relationships were studied. The research found that external social capital investing activities predicted an effective relationship with the nonprofit board. The data also show that a leader’s external social capital has a main effect on predicting an organization’s donations. The effect of leaders’ external and internal social capital investing on the organization’s donations was strengthened significantly by the presence of organization legitimacy. Without high levels of organizational legitimacy, transformational leadership style actually weakened the impact of external social capital investing on donations. If ever there were a service sector at the crossroads, it would be that of long term care. Long term care, otherwise known as aging services encompasses a continuum of care and services such as home health care, community –based services, assisted living facilities, nursing homes, and retirement communities. Sadly, the news is filled with examples of poor quality care, fraud, and neglect and exploitation of the older people served by these organizations (New York Times, 2003; CBS News, 2000; CBS News, 2001). Although it is clearly a relatively small number of organizations involved with these violations, their reports paint a frightening picture that serves to fuel the public’s distrust of aging services providers. Other problems currently face aging services providers as well. For one, nursing homes, assisted living facilities and home care agencies face critical shortages of nurses and entry-level staff (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2003). This shortage is compounded by high rates of employee turnover. According to JCAHO, 90% of long term care organizations lack sufficient nurses to provide basic care, and home care agencies are having to stop taking new patients (JCAHO, 2002). Further, frequent changes in health care reimbursement and regulations at the federal and state levels continue to pose additional and equally complex challenges. To make matters worse, most nonprofit long-term care organizations do not have sophisticated or even basic fundraising programs, and are often not recognized as a funding priority by the major funders in their communities. These problems are occurring at a time when the demand for long term care services—in home care, adult day care, assisted living, senior housing, and nursing home care—will sharply increase in the next ten years and beyond. According to Administration on Aging (2002), the older population, currently at 35 million will double to 70 million between the years 2000 and 2030. “There is unprecedented interest in aging services and in creating long term care systems that provide high quality services…” (Scripps Gerontology Center, 2002). In a recent article, Margaret Mullan, chair of AAHSA’s Leadership Development Taskforce quoted Charles Dickens when describing the state of aging services in America: “ It was the best of times and the worst of times.” She describes the ‘best of times’ as “...the great promise for creating systems that are person-centered, and support autonomy and independence,”(2002, p 5). As for the “worst of times” she writes, “Our worst realities are fractured delivery systems, mired in red tape and littered with the stories of people who fell through the cracks,” (2002, p5). Declaring that the future of aging services is in the hands of its leaders, the organization has initiated a Leadership Development Initiative to strengthen leadership of boards and senior managers of nonprofit aging services organizations. If the future of aging services is indeed “in the hands of its leaders,” then improving the effectiveness of these leaders is indeed critical, not only for the leaders and their organizations, but for our aging society as a whole. The concept of social capital may be an important one for aging services leaders to understand and apply as a means of addressing “the worst of times” and for working with others to create the “best of times.” Social capital encompasses building networks of relationships which enhance cooperation, trust, shared vision and resource exchange in creating organizational value, (Tsai and Ghoshal, 1998). Equipped with an understanding of how to create and mobilize social capital, aging services leaders may be better prepared to fulfill their organizations’ missions and “the great promise for creating systems that are person-centered, and support autonomy and independence.” Importantly, investment in social capital requires time and energy, and arguably support from the leader’s organization. Because leaders have a limited amount of time and energy, they face decisions about the degree and quality of attention to allocate to social capital investment behaviors. Leaders must decide how much of their time and attention to give each of their contacts and networks carefully considering how best to match their organizations’ needs with social capital building strategies (Anand, Glick and Manz, 2002). Based on their organizations’ goals, nonprofit leaders must be able to evaluate where their time is best spent, realizing that in all decisions, trade-offs are inevitable. Nonprofit leaders must find the optimal balance of these activities for their organization.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreDuring recent years, nonprofit organizations in the United States have evolved into a major force within the economy. They provide extensive services and “social goods” to individuals in need and they depend on stakeholders for their ability to function effectively. The interconnectedness of nonprofits and stakeholders emanates, at least in part, from their social mission, but is also a function of organizational management in general. This research examines the perceptions of stakeholders of nonprofit organizations in order to begin the process of identifying the considerations that influence the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations. Conclusions are presented concerning the multidimensionality of these considerations, and a possible framework is proposed with regard to how the considerations are interrelated.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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