The Leadership of Nonprofits

Some time ago James McGregor Burns made a distinction between transactional and transformational forms of leadership. His claim suggested that, on the one hand, transformational leaders were visionary and created authentic and positive transformative change within followers. Transactional leadership, on the other hand, he believed was more akin to the principles of scientific management and Taylorism.

Since this time, research assessing commonalities and differences between the two forms of leadership has taken off. But, it's interesting to note (and this could be a potential dissertation topic for someone!) that very little research on leader behavior, or leadership distinctions, has occurred in the nonprofit sector setting.

In particular, it has long been argued that nonprofit managers may be more ideological than managers in other sectors (see, for instance, Rose-Ackerman's (1997) article); but to the best of my knowledge, I have yet to see a study where someone has actually assessed the extent to which nonprofit managers have more transformational values than managers in either for-profit or government settings. And, whether or not these values are more productive in the workplace than are other, less transformational, values.

This is unfortunate.

There are several leadership scales that have been extensively developed and refined (with sound psychometric properties), but for some reason the nonprofit sector has yet to wholly embrace the notion of "leadership."

True. There is a journal in the field dedicated to both management and leadership: Nonprofit Management and Leadership. But, very few articles are actually devoted to "leadership" distinctions between nonprofit managers and managers in other sectors. Even fewer of these articles incorporate leadership theories into understanding the nonprofit sector. Perhaps this is merely a result of lack of scholarly interest.

Prima facie, however, you would think that there would be a lot of interest in the topic! Especially since there has been much 'ado about the purported "leadership deficit" facing the nonprofit sector. But alas... little empirical research has actually gone into examining this deficit. (One of the most recent studies, and indeed, one of the few studies that has actually examined the issue suggests that the "deficit" may, in fact, not be as severe as the leadership deficit facing other sectors.)

Considering, then, the dearth of scholarly attention that has been devoted to leadership in the nonprofit setting, it appears that leadership is not a very well regarded concept in this sector (at least, that is, from a scholarly point of view... it's long been obvious that many practitioners, and especially "younger" nonprofit employees have a strong interest in leadership issues in the nonprofit sector).

All-in-all, leadership is a field that is emerging. There are plethora of theories, instruments, scales, etc. that could extend much insight into understanding more about why we have a nonprofit sector, how the sector operates, and who is operating the sector.

------------
For anyone interested in the intersection of leadership and nonprofits, two books that can provide a great starting place are:

• Leadership in Noprofit Organizations: Lessons from the Third Sector by Barry Michael Dym and Mr. Harry Hutson
• Improving Leadership in Nonprofit Organizations by Kravis Leadership Institute, edited by Ron E. Riggio, Sarah Smith Orr, and Jack Shakely

Related Blog Post:

• Nonprofit + Leadership = Nonprofit Leadership? August 05, 2009
  

The Leadership of Nonprofits