Abstract
Although the act of leadership has been practiced for thousands of years, it has only been relatively recently that the study of leadership has been considered as an area worthy of significant scholarly inquiry. Indeed, management scholars have recently argued that “despite leadership being central to the mission and purpose of most institutions of higher education, there is little serious scholarship and research on leadership in these same schools” (Nohria & Khurana, 2010, pp. 3-4). Therefore, with the release of a new scholarly text on leadership in nonprofit organizations, I was eager to see the degree of scholarship and research taking place on the topic of leadership within the nonprofit sector.
Leadership in Nonprofit Organizations: A Reference Handbook is a 96-chapter, two-volume text organized into eight parts. Part 1 provides an overview of the characteristics that define a nonprofit organization. Part 2 outlines the historical development of the nonprofit sector from its origins to the present day. Part 3 of the handbook details common interest areas of nonprofit activity. Part 4 provides an overview of nonprofit organizations and their relationship with historically disenfranchised groups, such as women and racial/ethnic minorities. Part 5, which is by far the largest section in the handbook, focuses on various aspects of leading nonprofit organizations and consists of a broad mix of topics ranging from theories of nonprofit and organizational leadership to use of social media and technology. Part 6 centers on foundations and emphasizes leadership within these philanthropic institutions. Part 7 moves away from the macroenvironment and examines leadership of nonprofit organizations from an individual perspective. The final section, Part 8, provides an overview of ethics, accountability, and social responsibility within the nonprofit sector.
Given the wide range of topics covered in the handbook, undoubtedly the text is designed to serve as an encyclopedic overview of leadership within nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. As stated in the handbook’s foreword, Leadership in Nonprofit Organizations (which is part of the SAGE Reference Series on Leadership) is intended to “provide an excellent starting place for the student who wants a thorough understanding of primary leadership topics within a particular discipline” (p. xiii). In at least one way, the handbook achieves this goal. Indeed, there is no shortage of topic areas covered in the text, and readers are certainly provided with extensive information from which to begin building a better understanding of the nonprofit sector. In other ways, however, the text falls short of delivering on its primary purpose—that is, to serve as a reference handbook on leadership within nonprofit organizations.
In fact, despite the comprehensive nature of the text, many of the chapters in the handbook contribute little or nothing to our understanding of leadership within the nonprofit sector. Several of the chapters in Part 1 (The Nonprofit and Philanthropic Sector) and Part 2 (History of the Nonprofit and Philanthropic Sector), in particular, although relevant to better understanding the roles and functions of nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, rarely address the topic of leadership at all. The chapters in these sections that do address the topic of leadership often do so only in passing. For example, in chapter 2 (Types of Foundations and Their Leadership Characteristics), the author provides a detailed description of various types of foundations; however, the topic of leadership is only cursorily addressed in the summary section of the chapter. In addition, in chapter 8 (Leadership in Service Clubs and Benevolent Societies), the author outlines several characteristics of service clubs and benevolent societies, yet only briefly acknowledges the topic of leadership in a section titled “Tips for Students and Young Nonprofit Leaders” (p. 71). Thus, if a reader were to turn to the handbook as a source of information on leadership within foundations and/or benevolent societies, he or she would most certainly need to turn elsewhere to find relevant information. This is also true for a number of the other topic areas covered in the text.
Despite the lack of focus on leadership in many of the chapters, there are some chapters that do indeed add to our understanding of leadership within nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. These chapters are mostly situated in parts 5, 6, and 7, and not surprisingly these three parts of the handbook explicitly address various leadership-related topics. For example, part 5 addresses Leading the Nonprofit Organization, part 6 addresses Leading a Grantmaking Foundation, and part 7 addresses Leadership of Nonprofits and the Individual. In a sense, then, the handbook could have easily consisted of just the chapters included in these three parts. Certainly, this would have better positioned the text as a reference handbook on leadership. As it now stands, however, the two-volume text suffers from a failure to adequately incorporate the main topic of the handbook (leadership) into all chapters.
Undoubtedly, part of this failure occurs as a result of the handbook’s wide diversity in authorship. Indeed, the handbook is authored by a smorgasbord of individuals, ranging from established academic researchers, to current leaders in the nonprofit and philanthropic sector, to emerging nonprofit scholars and doctoral students. As such, “authors have been encouraged to speak from their own experiences, research, knowledge, and perspective” (p. xv). It is no surprise, then, that “some chapters are formal and academic in tone. Other chapters are informal and conversational” (p. xv). Ultimately, such a high degree of “creative freedom,” though, has led to a disjointed array of chapters that suffer from a lack of systematic structure and often exhibit severe redundancy. For example, chapter 1 (Legal Definitions, Legal Accountability, and the Roles and Responsibilities of Board Leadership), chapter 3 (Definition of Scope, Scale, and Role of the Nonprofit Sector), and chapter 4 (A Nonprofit Organization) all provide an overview of what a nonprofit organization is and what a nonprofit organizations does—clearly these chapters could have been reorganized or even condensed.
Despite these scattered deficiencies, which admittedly are almost inevitable in a multiauthored two-volume tome, there are chapters in the handbook that stand out. For example, Thomas G. Fuechtmann’s chapter, “Board and Staff Leadership Roles” (chapter 57) provides several insightful theoretical perspectives on the relationship between governance and leadership within nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. In addition, Joseph Palus’ chapter, “The Role of the Foundation Leader in Defining Areas of Interest and Strategy” (chapter 80) provides a well-organized summary of the theoretical and strategic role of foundation leaders. In the end, however, a reference handbook should serve as a compendium of information devoted to a specific topic that a reader should be able to refer to for a summary treatment of the literature and research in a particular area. For some topics, Leadership in Nonprofit Organizations: A Reference Handbook will fulfill this role, whereas for many others, unfortunately, it will not; it fails to capture the developing level of serious scholarship on leadership within nonprofit and philanthropic organizations.