Understanding the work beliefs of nonprofit executives through organizational stories

✍ Scribed by Ava S. Wilensky; Carol D. Hansen

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 102 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1044-8004
• DOI: 10.1002/hrdq.11

✦ Synopsis

Through qualitative interviews that featured a story component, the researchers learned that nonprofit executives share beliefs, values, and assumptions that are different from their for-profit counterparts. The study participants saw themselves operating in a complicated and ambiguous world, balancing business and personnel requirements with a spiritual mission. Implications of these findings for HRD professionals are highlighted.

Today more than ever HRD is needed in nonprofit organizations. With a dwindling volunteer population, greater reliance on permanent staff, and demand for improved organizational structure and greater accountability (McFarland, 1999;Young, Bania, and Bailey, 1996), our expertise is called upon to help these agencies more carefully align personnel requirements and organizational structures with missions and business objectives (Sheehan, 1996). To nurture cultures in which new systems of performance management can thrive, HRD professionals must understand the assumptions and goals of nonprofits in general and of their executives in particular.

All organizations possess cultural norms that frame expectations and influence strategic support and perceptions of effectiveness. Studies suggest that an organization' s executives help shape these formal and informal codes and assumptions (Hansen and Kahnweiler, 1997;Schein, 1985Schein, , 1991;;Trice and Beyer, 1993). Similarly, executives as a subculture possess a unique set of values and beliefs that may clash with other groups-including our own-and thus have an effect on our strategic significance (Hansen and Kahnweiler, 1995). What we know about executives' beliefs comes mostly from research conducted in the for-profit sector (for example,