Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-1-2008
Abstract
How board and chief executive officers (CEOs) engage to govern nonprofit organizations is not universally understood nor has such engagement been closely examined. The dialectic suggests that boards are either apathetic in governance (nannies of the CEO), or so operationally focused that they have lost sight of their mission. Likewise, CEOs have been accused of either running the board or as being enslaved to them. Much of the literature tries to separate the roles and responsibilities that the board and CEO have in governance. Other literature attempts to define what the board should do (versus what the CEO should do) to govern effectively. In contrast, this present quantitative study focuses more on engaging roles and responsibilities, rather than uncoupling what boards and CEOs do. The study provides a new understanding of board commitment. For example, this study adapts individual level variables to explore how engaged roles mediate differences and relationships. It can be shown, through multi-source data from 319 board-member/chief-executive pairs, that boards ground their interactions and relationships in practices that conjoin their roles; and that by doing so, board members are highly committed to the organization. Moreover, these findings indicate that relational practices facilitate role engagement in co-operative organizations, providing perspicacity into the complex governance situations faced by boards and CEOs.
Keywords
organizational behavior, nonprofit organizations -- management, governance, commitment, role engagement, relational practices, nonprofit organizations, co-operative, cooperative
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
Newton, Brian L., "Role Engagement in Co-operative Organizations: A Relational Framework for Understanding Board Commitment" (2008). Student Scholarship. 365.
https://commons.case.edu/studentworks/365