Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-1-2009
Abstract
During times of severe economic adversity, nonprofit managers must lead their organizations and carry out their charitable missions to ever-growing and needier constituencies despite unpredictable endowment erosion, fewer contributions, less staff, and the most severe funding cuts most of them have ever experienced, or are prepared for. We propose research to explore which leadership skills and styles are most helpful and if reliance upon traditionality is a good indicator of endurance. By capturing the experiences of nonprofit leaders as they manage under conditions of duress, we will relate these factors to research about high reliability organizations, which have been found to perform ably in crises because they are both resilient and “mindful.” The research question is: When nonprofit leaders manage in conditions of adversity, what organizational characteristics and leadership styles and practices facilitate and/or impede performance? Specifically, to what extent can organizational characteristics known to impact the performance of high reliability organizations (HROs), assist nonprofit management under duress?
Keywords
nonprofit organizations -- management -- evaluation, adversity, reliability, resilience, traditionality, governance, leadership, structure
Rights
© The Author(s). Kelvin Smith Library provides access for non-commercial, personal, or research use only. All other use, including but not limited to commercial or scholarly reproductions, redistribution, publication or transmission, whether by electronic means or otherwise, without prior written permission is strictly prohibited.
Department/Center
Design & Innovation
Recommended Citation
Roche, Kathleen, "Managing the Mission Through Times of Adversity: What Leads To Highly Reliable Performance?" (2009). Student Scholarship. 300.
https://commons.case.edu/studentworks/300