Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-1-2002
Abstract
This 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.
Keywords
nonprofit organizations--management
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
Morrison, J. Bart, "See Jane and Samantha Lead: An Ethnography of a Chair/Chief Executive Pair in a Nonprofit Organization" (2002). Student Scholarship. 371.
https://commons.case.edu/studentworks/371