Abstract
Analyzing mission statements from 1,420 community foundations, this research aims to determine whether community foundations portray themselves as primarily transactional or transformational in their leadership style. Results indicate that approximately half of the community foundations present themselves as transformational dominant although about a third demonstrate transactional dominance. The well-established leadership categories of transformational and transactional (a) give us a new way to explore community foundations’ roles in their communities, (b) help us better understand the way community foundations perceive themselves and their leadership, and (c) provide a mechanism to assess how community foundations are presenting their missions to their communities. In addition, by examining organizations as the unit of analysis, this research answers long-standing calls in leadership studies to consider levels of analysis beyond the individual.
Keywords
The community foundation (CF) population has grown by 75% within the last 25 years (Community Foundation Atlas, 2016), with 86% of that growth occurring outside of the United States in the decade between 2000 and 2010 (Harrow et al., 2016). This tremendous growth is important because CFs have been described as “community change makers” (Hamilton et al., 2004; Wolfe, 2006) with local officials and scholars emphasizing this aspect of their character (Duan-Barnett et al., 2012). But how do they see themselves? Or at least, how do they present their leadership to the public? Are they more donor or community focused? In other words, do they promote themselves as transactional leaders, transformational leaders, or somewhere in between?
Well-established leadership theory can address these questions and (a) give us a new way to explore the roles of CFs in their communities, (b) help us better understand the way CFs perceive themselves and their leadership role in the community, and (c) provide a mechanism to assess how CFs are presenting their missions to their communities. In addition, this research rectifies three problems in the current leadership literature: First, many scholars discuss the leadership roles of CFs but do not ground those assertions in empirically validated leadership theory. Second, by examining the organization as the unit of analysis, the research answers long-standing calls in leadership studies to consider multiple layers and levels of analysis beyond the individual with established leadership theories (Dansereau et al., 1984; Klein et al., 1994; Lord & Dinh, 2012; Rousseau, 1985) noting that “theoretical revolutions in science often occur when scientists consider levels above and below their typical focus” (Lord & Dinh, 2012, p. 34). Finally, this work provides a rare application of a dominant leadership theory within the nonprofit sector.
Using semantic analysis of publicly available mission statements, this article assesses the perceptions of CFs regarding their leadership roles, in particular, whether these foundations view or promote their leadership role as transactional, transformational, or a combination of the two.
Multipurpose Foundations
An identity balancing act has been faced by every CF, beginning with the first one created just more than 100 years ago in Cleveland, Ohio (USA), that was both designed to “accumulate and manage permanent charitable endowments” and “provide community leadership in defining community needs and restructuring philanthropic activity” (Guo & Brown, 2006, p. 269).
Harrow et al. (2016) write of the “dual challenge and potential paradox inherent within the community foundation idea, the need to be philanthropy-led and community responsive” (p. 3). Historically, Guo and Brown (2006) reference “a long-lasting debate between two schools of thought about whether CFs should be community focused or donor focused (p. 268)” and Knight (2014) reports a “tradition of community leadership and philanthropy” (p. 6). Suárez et al. (2018) identify two logics, market and community, where the market logic focuses on the CF “role as efficient managers of endowments” and the community logic places “more emphasis on solving social problems by building leadership and collaboration” (p. 211). Easterling (2008) writes that CFs “are struggling to balance two competing approaches to leadership: leading change versus facilitating change” (p. 94).
This tug of war between roles is also perceived by CF donors. For example, in a report by the Center for Effective Philanthropy, one survey respondent reported, “I sense internal issues between donor services and community leadership sides of the organization” (Buteau et al., 2014, p. 22) with the larger report concluding that “community foundation boards and leadership must pay careful attention to the capacity of their organizations to be able to deliver excellent customer service while positioning themselves to have impact in their communities” (p. 28). 1
Some scholars also include a third role, either “matchmaker” role that incorporates both donor interests with community needs (Daly, 2008; Harrow et al., 2016; Graddy & Morgan, 2006) or a grants focus as opposed to donor service and community-oriented foci (Leonard, 1989; Millesen & Martin, 2014), which seek to portray a more nuanced perspective. Understanding that classifications simplify complex phenomenon, for the purposes of this article, a dual classification has analytical utility and will be used to clarify and isolate the comparative qualities with leadership scholarship. Still, within this classification, the roles are not mutually exclusive, are fluidly expressed, and, as will be indicated in the leadership theory and in the findings, often overlap.
Contextualizing Within Leadership
Whether primarily donor focused, community focused, or fluctuating somewhere on a continuum, many current CF CEOs “believe that their community foundations demonstrate community leadership” (Daly, 2008, p. 234). Outside funders share this belief as multiple private foundations have crafted and invested in initiatives to bolster the leadership capacity of CFs (J. Lowe, 2004). The type of leadership, however, differs according to which role a foundation is emphasizing or, in the words of Easterling (2008), “how much the foundation wants to prescribe the type of community change that should occur” (p. 94). Harrow et al. (2016) write of CF leadership roles that “[d]ifferentiation in interpretation of ‘community leadership’; with some overtly active, others appearing as passive, is an important research topic in its own right” (p. 21). Addressing Harrow et al.’s comment, this research explores the public messaging through mission statements of CFs’ roles within the framework of transactional and transformational leadership.
These constructs have been predominately analyzed at the individual level in leadership research, yet transformational leadership has been used to explain organizational outcomes and performance resulting from an individual leader’s behaviors (G. Wang et al., 2011). Expanding the construct to the organizational level, within CFs, donors and community actors represent coproducers of leadership, and leadership is expressed as a composite of the behaviors shared by those engaged in this creation process. The mission statement, then, represents shared beliefs about the organization’s leadership and signals that style to its various stakeholders.
In this interpretation, transactional leadership is akin to the donor-focused model found in CF leadership, and therefore serves as a good proxy to assess a foundation’s transactional leadership strengths. Transformational leadership, however, aligns with the more active community-focused model. Transformational leadership moves beyond the transactional relationship toward articulating a vision for the future, fostering group goals, and challenging followers to consider problems in innovative ways (Antonakis, 2012; Bass, 1998; Burns, 1978). Both transactional and transformational attributes are often displayed with varying degrees of effectiveness as incorporated into the Full Range Leadership Model (Avolio & Bass, 2002) as demonstrated in Figure 1.
Avolio and Bass Full Range Leadership Model.
CFs’ Roles as Leadership Models
The donor-focused model serves as a proxy to assess a foundation’s transactional leadership strengths. Transactional leadership focuses on the give-and-take relationship between leader and follower such as providing feedback and rewards (Bass, 1990). Transactional leadership can take the forms of management by exception or contingent reward with levels of effectiveness and action increasing with each (Avolio & Bass, 2002; Bass, 1985, 1996). Within management by exception, leaders operate in a more responsive mode, awaiting either the wrong behavior on the part of a follower (passive) or a lack of right behavior on the part of a follower (active) before intervening. Within contingent reward, the leader–follower relationship centers on the system of rewards or punishments used as inducements for participation and work outcomes. Burns (1978) describes transactional leadership as “when one person takes the initiative in making contact with others for the purpose of an exchange of valued things” (p. 19) and “a swap of one good for money” (p. 19) but determines that within transactional arrangements “bargainers have no enduring purpose that holds them together” (p. 20). Transactional leadership is more task and process oriented, less future oriented, and utilizes rewards and punishments as a mechanism for motivating behaviors. For CFs, transactional dominant mission statements emphasize the CF as a facilitator or broker that enables a donor to carry out their own desires. Agency in these cases leans toward the part of the donor with the foundation’s role being more passive. In the latter case, the donors are the ones actively pursuing goals with the foundation enabling them.
Transformational leadership, however, aligns with the community-focused model. Transformational leadership moves beyond the transactional relationship toward articulating a vision for the future, fostering group goals, and challenging followers to consider problems in innovative ways (Antonakis, 2012; Bass, 1998; Burns, 1978). Transformational leadership can take four forms: (a) individualized consideration where the leader expresses interest in the follower as a person, (b) intellectual stimulation where the leader fosters creativity, (c) inspirational motivation where the leader encourages the follower to excel, and (d) idealized influence (sometimes noted as charisma 2 ) where the leader models characteristics that the follower might choose to emulate. Burns (1978) describes the characteristics of leadership as “when one or more persons engage with other in such a way that leaders and follower together in a mutual and continuing pursuit of a higher purpose,” when the purposes of leaders and followers “become fused,” and leaders are involved in “elevating, mobilizing, inspiring, exalting, uplifting, preaching, exhorting, evangelizing . . .” (p. 20). As with the transactional style, the active role of the leader increases across each of the subcategories of transformational leadership. 3 Transformational leadership builds on transactional leadership and surpasses it by focusing a shared vision through individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and idealized influence. The transformational leader models aspirational characteristics that encourage followers to go beyond considerations of reward and punishment and seek a larger goal. Extrapolating to the organizational level for CFs, exhibitions of transformational leadership emphasize the shared impact on community, partnership, and collaboration. In these cases, agency is vested in the foundation which is characterized and leading community change, bringing together collaborative partners, and addressing community needs while creating partnership with the donor.
Both leadership styles can yield positive results toward goal attainment (Judge & Piccolo, 2004; K. B. Lowe et al., 1996). Transactional leadership, particularly contingent reward where the expectations in the relationship are clear, is known to strengthen trust between leaders and followers (see Antonakis, 2012, p. 261). Transformational leadership consistently demonstrates a larger positive effect on followers and collective goals (Antonakis, 2012; Burns, 1978; Podsakoff et al., 1990) as well as commitment to the group or organization (Bass, 1985, 1998a).
In this light, CFs may perceive or promote their role primarily as a reliable broker between the donor and community (transactional leadership); as a proactive leader in identifying community needs, articulating a vision for the community, and bringing donors alongside to meet those needs (transformational leadership); or some combination of the two. In the context of CFs, a transactional style would be demonstrated by viewing themselves as a vehicle to allow individual donors to make gifts that match their personal values and desires for the community, whereas a transformational style would focus more on matching donors with identified needs and established vision and transcending individual self-interests for the larger benefit of the collective community.
Method
Using computer-aided text analysis (Krippendorff, 2013; Short et al., 2010), this article analyzes mission and purpose statements from an international sample of 1,420 CFs to determine whether they present themselves as more transformational or transactional.
Mission statements are defined in the literature as “a written declaration that communicates the purpose of an organization” (Alegre et al., 2018, p. 456) and some of the literature identifies key elements of mission statements for firms (Bart, 1997; Pearce & David, 1987) and nonprofit organizations (Bryce, 2000; Minkoff & Powell, 2006). As strategic presentations of information, mission statements can be either a reflection of an organization’s self-identity or a demonstration of how the organization wants to be perceived by others or, ideally, both. Berlan (2018) argues that mission statements may provide an inaccurate assessment of a nonprofit’s mission which could hold true also for the subset of CFs, yet Pandey et al. (2017) find a clear connection between nonprofit mission statements and both instructive and expressive behaviors in nonprofits.
Mission statements are appropriate for this analysis because they publicly demonstrate how a CF portrays itself to its myriad stakeholders and articulates its purpose for existence (Bryce, 2000; Klemm et al., 1991 4 ). Mission statements have been used in empirical studies to help assess nonprofit organizational self-description (Chandra et al., 2016) and performance 5 (Besana et al., 2018; Kirk & Nolan, 2010; Koch et al., 2015; Palmer & Short, 2008; Pandey et al., 2017) and can also serve as an indicator of rhetorical leadership (Antonakis, 2012). Although most extant research on mission statements focuses on firms rather than nonprofits (Alegre et al., 2018), Fyall et al. (2018) find that mission statements are more accurate representations of the nonprofit organization subgroup than the oft-used National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) codes.
Content analysis is particularly effective with difficult-to-measure or latent constructs (Short et al., 2010) such as leadership, and mission statements are typical units of analysis for this technique (see Alegre et al., 2018; Holosko et al., 2015; Wilkerson & Crystal, 2018 for examples of peer-reviewed papers that use content analysis of mission statements).
Data
The CFs included in the study were identified and selected through the Community Foundation Atlas online database (Knight, 2014). 6 This database houses demographic information regarding 1,938 CFs around the world along with the results of a proprietary survey. Using the Atlas database addresses a deficiency and U.S. bias in mission statement research noted by Alegre et al. (2018) and Besana et al. (2018). After removing all organizations that did not contain a mission or purpose statement as part of their profile, duplicates, and organizations which only listed funding interests (e.g., education and health) in their mission or purpose categories, the final data set included 1,420 observations from 58 countries. 7
Analysis
Following the construct validity process recommended by Short and colleagues (2010), data were analyzed using computer-assisted qualitative data techniques which allow for quantitative analysis of qualitative data (Barry, 1998) and arguably provide methodological consistency (Richards & Richards, 1994) among mission statement inquiry. To obtain deductive content validity, the Burns (1978) and Bass and Riggio (2006) definitions of the constructs (transactional and transformational leadership) and subconstructs (idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, and inspirational motivation) were used to serve as the base language. Following Podsakoff’s transformational–transactional leadership model, transactional leadership was used as a single construct rather than breaking out management-by-exception, active and passive, or laissez-faire leadership subconstructs (Podsakoff et al., 1990, 1996). Using the guiding definitions, a deductive approach was used in developing an initial word list for each construct and subconstruct. Synonyms were then identified for each of the words in the initial word list using synonymfinder.com. Because the data cover multiple countries, variant spellings were incorporated.
The resulting lists were then amplified so that each aspect of the word was captured in the list. For example, verbs were amplified to include all tenses of the verb (enhance, enhances, enhanced, and enhancing) and singular nouns were made plural (individual and individuals). Lists were cross-referenced so that no word appears on more than one construct or subconstruct list (see Tables 1 and 2 for descriptive statistics and sample word lists for each construct and subconstruct). If a word initially appeared on more than one list, the word was reviewed and its context from a CF perspective was analyzed, and then, the word was placed in the list which best seemed to represent its meaning in context of CFs. 8
Construct and Subconstruct Descriptive Statistics.
Twenty Most Frequent Words in Each Category. a
A complete list of words included in each leadership category is available from the author upon request.
Seven word lists were created: Leadership (containing only forms of the word leadership which could apply to either transactional or transformational), transactional (259), transformational (132), and the four transformational leadership subconstructs: idealized influence (184), inspirational motivation (147), intellectual stimulation (218), and individualized consideration (120).
During the next phase of inductive content analysis, the mission and purpose statement texts were searched for the words in the construct list. Frequently used words from the mission and purpose statements were analyzed to determine whether they were consistent with the guiding definitions and word lists.
In addition, because the leadership constructs applied have been predominantly analyzed at the individual level, words were also assessed to determine whether they would be indicative of the CF perspective (mezzo-level) rather than the individual (micro-level) perspective. This mezzo-level approach is warranted by calls for more analysis at the organizational level in leadership research (Dansereau et al., 1984; Klein et al., 1994; Lord & Dinh, 2012; Rousseau, 1985). This research follows a compositional model “in which lower level inputs are combined to produce a higher level output that is essentially the same form (is isomorphic) as the lower level units” (Lord & Dinh, 2012, p. 32). In this case, the mission statements demonstrate the aggregate, group-level beliefs or desires to represent their values expressed by multiple actors within each CF.
To ensure reliability, coding was conducted using NVIVO for text analysis including the presence and frequency of the construct or subconstruct for each observation. These codes were then utilized to descriptively analyze the data and also aggregated to the country level for descriptive purposes.
Results
CF mission statements represented a range of leadership language. Based on the frequencies of transformational and transactional words within the mission statements, each organization was numerically classified by the number of transformational words minus the number of transactional words used in their statements. Scores ranged from −16 (high transactional dominance) to 20 (high transformational dominance). Figure 2 represents the relationship between frequency of leadership language across the organizations in the data, and Table 3 provides examples of mission statements in each leadership category.
Frequency of leadership language in CF mission statements.
Percentages of Mission Statements Utilizing Some Form of Transactional or Transformational Language by Highly Represented Countries.
Transactional Scope and Characteristics
While more than 1,000 organizations (73.38% of the data set) used some form of transactional leadership language in their mission or purpose statements, only 34% of organizations had a higher level of transactional language than transformational. Frequency of transactional language within observations ranged from 0 to 10 with a mean of three transactional words per observation. Only 137 observations had transactional language but no transformational language (although seven of those observations do have nonspecific leadership language).
Often these transactional dominant mission statements emphasized the gift vehicles and areas of giving available to donors such as “administering grants” and “assist[ing] donors with building, managing and distributing” funds.
The purpose of the foundation is to collect funds from donors and invest the funds, using the income for the benefit of the citizens of ---------. 9
Although passive, the role of the foundation in transactional dominant statements is one of assuring donors their funds will be well looked after using words such as “accountability,” “stewardship of entrusted funds,” “effectiveness,” . . .
The foundation seeks to connect donors with their interests and community needs, increasing charitable giving . . . and ensuring stewardship and accountability for effective community investment of donor dollars.
The foundation manages, invests, and administers charitable funds given by numerous donors to numerous community charities.
In terms of rewards, several transactional dominant mission statements emphasize the benefit to donors of giving to the foundation.
[t]he foundation seeks to provide prospective donors an effective way to invest in the future of ---------, and to maximize tax savings to the donors and their estates.
Transformational Scope and Characteristics
Seventy-one percent of CF mission statements in this study (1,015 foundations) contained language from the transformational leadership list. More than half of these observations (572) also demonstrated language from at least one and up to four of the subconstructs 10 with 32 observations including language from all the four subconstructs. In total, 1,202 organizations (85%) have some form of transformational language, from one of the five transformational lists, in their mission or purpose statement, and 46% of the statements were transformational dominant, meaning they contained more transformational than transactional language.
Rather than emphasizing the role of the donor, transformational dominant mission statements focus more on the aspirational role of CFs as agents of community change. For example,
To encourage businesses to maintain active participation in social tasks, give help themselves . . . promote cultural and social, as well as strengthen understanding and personal commitment to the liberal democratic state and develop an awareness of responsibility.
This statement positions the CF as encouraging, not donations, but rather social participation and betterment. The CF is the agent of change in this example, instilling positive attributes (“understanding” and “awareness”) to others and drawing out their participation in civil society. Within these community goals, the CF also seeks to benefit the individual by using “personal” which connotes individualized consideration. Other transformational dominant statements demonstrate individual consideration with phrases such as “shape a healthy, vital, and caring community” and a desire to develop a city “sensitive to the needs of others.” In another transformational dominant example, the common thread of “strengthening” the community is apparent:
To be a catalyst for strengthening community well-being, now and for future generations, by promoting philanthropy, creating partnerships, and supporting diverse charitable organizations.
Here, also, the emphasis on the CFs’ ability and desire to promote change rather than the status quo is embodied with “catalyst,” a word used 132 times by CFs in the study and which represents the idealized influence subconstruct. Intellectual stimulation is invoked with “creating partnerships” where the CF is fostering an intellectual as well as interpersonal connection between those seeking “community well-being.” Finally, the emphasis on “future generations” speaks to the transformational behaviors of articulating vision and encouraging movement toward group goals.
Balanced Transactional–Transformational Scope and Characteristics
Although 80% of the CFs demonstrate dominance of either transactional or transformational language, 15% have perfectly balanced frequencies of both types of leadership language in their mission statements. 11 Nine hundred eighty-one of the mission statements had at least some language associated with both categories, indicating that those organizations see and present themselves as a blending of both styles of leadership within their mission statements, thus placing them on a continuum scale. The following example illustrates this balance with agency demonstrated by both donor and foundation:
OUR MISSION is to connect people who care with causes that matter in . . . Counties and surrounding areas. Your vision and our stewardship build permanent investment resources to benefit our community, for good, forever.
Attributing vision to the donor and active stewardship (with the use of the word build), this statement asserts a partnership where both parties are pursuing a shared goal: to benefit the community. In another case, we see four active verbs (i.e., strengthen, empower, attracting, and managing) attributed to the foundation yet still a demonstrated focus on the means of this action, the endowment funds:
To strengthen and empower community capacity for the betterment of its island community by attracting and managing endowment funds.
Such balanced mission statements often attribute the collaborative nature of the transaction between donor and foundation. For example,
By bringing caring people and charitable endeavors together, the foundation makes donors’ dreams shine for the good of the community by serving as the vehicle for donors’ charitable dreams, awarding grants to charitable projects and organizations, and addressing community needs as a catalyst and convener.
This statement focuses on the agency of the foundation, but the role is one of “bringing caring people,” not just donors, into the collective purpose. The foundation describes itself as both leading, managing, and serving, but both donor and foundation are working together “for the good of the community.”
Only 81 (5.7%) foundations in the study have neither transactional nor transformational language as coded in this study in their mission or purpose statements; these foundations are geographically dispersed across Australia (6), Canada (10), France (1), Germany (24), India (1), Indonesia (1), Latvia (1), Mexico (1), Pakistan (1), Russia (3), South Africa (1), South Korea (1), Spain (4), United Kingdom (6), United States (17), and Uruguay (2). Overall, when aggregated to the country level, 12 most countries with multiple observations in the data set reflect high levels of both transactional and transformational language. In fact, only two countries exhibited less than 50% transactional language: Germany where only 23% of the foundations in the final data set used transactional language and Australia with 44% transactional. All highly represented countries utilized large percentages of transformational language, ranging from Australia’s 59% to the United States’ 75%. Table 3 demonstrates the levels of transactional and transformational word usage across the six countries with the highest numbers of observations in the data set. 13
Conclusion
Understanding CF perceptions of their leadership role has both academic and practical implications because how organizations lead affects the decisions they make. On the academic side, this research directly examines a dominant leadership theory at the organizational level within a new context in the nonprofit sector as well as furthers our understanding of the way CFs convey their leadership roles. The current study contributes to our understanding of CFs by applying leadership theory to the CF. Leadership is often mentioned as part of the CF’s role, but previous studies do not use established and validated leadership constructs in their analyses. In terms of practical import, the study may serve to help CFs consider (a) their leadership role, (b) whether they intend to be more transactional or transformational leaders in addressing community needs, and (c) how they are conveying this role to the public through their mission statements. Overall, this research indicates that, although mission statements of CFs can be identified as either leaning toward transactional or transformational leadership, most of the mission statements of CFs studied around the world reflect multiple leadership roles by exhibiting high levels of both transactional and transformational language.
There are multiple theoretical and practical reasons that might account for these findings. Theoretically, organizational isomorphism (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) is a likely influencer in the development of CF mission statements across the globe. For example, approximately 100 German CFs in the original data set had the same mission statement indicating organizational mimicry. While CFs are by their nature local organizations, national policy or orientation may influence the development or operations of organizations at the local level, and the unique contexts of each country influence the development of these organizations (Feurt & Sacks, 2000; Leonard, 1989). In addition, both a social origins perspective (Salamon et al., 2000) and typologies of nonprofit and governmental relationships (Young & Casey, 2016) point to the influence of national government on nonprofit organizational types and scope of work at lower levels of civil society. China provides an excellent example of national policy influencing local foundations in that its CFs can be either government led or civil society led (Guo & Lai, 2019). Berry and Berry’s (2014) work on policy diffusion would also indicate the potential for organizational type to be diffused to other parts of the world or for specific geographic regions to express tendencies for the scope and even presence of CFs.
Practically, the reason for heavy representation of transactional leadership language is likely a pragmatic one: the need to sustain operations. As scholarship indicates, “the principal concerns of community foundations remain, of necessity, operational rather than strategic” (Daly, 2008, p. 234) and “the survival of a community foundation hinges directly on how well it acquires and manages its assets and only indirectly on how well it distributes the funds” (Guo & Brown, 2006, p. 282). Other scholarship has also found evidence suggesting that patterns of dominance emerge in different geographic areas regarding how much CFs prioritize their community leadership role; for example, Daly (2008) found that in the United Kingdom, “donor engagement clearly takes priority over community engagement” (235). And yet, CFs, as organizations with myriad stakeholders, experience both internal push and external pull to exhibit leadership in their communities, creating the desire to represent themselves as more agentic. The widespread use of transformational language indicates the aspiration of CFs to practice community-focused leadership.
The high use of both transactional and transformational language reflects that agency, and thus power, varies between the donor and foundation in the coproduction of community leadership. While only 15% had perfectly balanced mission statements, a majority (981 of 1,420, or 69%) used a mixture of both transactional and transformational language. As public statements, CF missions need to advertise services to potential donors but, strategically, these missions also convey the aspirations CFs have for themselves and their communities. Essentially, these balanced statements embody the tension inherent in the leadership roles of CFs. They signal transformational leadership but do not neglect the nature of the transaction taking place; the transaction is a means for donor and foundation to share in common goals for the community.
Limitations
The study’s limitations include a potential Western bias, underrepresentation of some countries in the data set, the potential difficulties of replicating results found in any qualitative research, and general critiques of transformational leadership theory. The concept of transformational leadership has been considered Western-centric by some, which would limit the generalizability of the findings; however, some research on global culture and leadership (Hofstede et al., 2010; House et al., 2004) has determined that many countries prefer transformational leadership to other types of leadership. Cultural differences in the use of language surrounding transactional and transformational leadership may also be at play. While international in scope, the data underrepresent CFs outside of the United States and particularly in eastern portions of the globe which is typical of current research in this area (L. Wang et al., 2011). It is also important to note that not all generalizations regarding CFs within the United States will apply in other countries. Although the data coding followed a strict process, it is possible that other researchers coding the same data would obtain different results. The rigor of the process and the multiple words employed in the searches helps to mitigate bias in this regard. External validity of the word lists needs to be carried out in the future by comparing two samples or using other narrative data to examine the constructs (Short et al., 2010). Finally, conceptualizations and measures of transactional and transformational leadership have been critiqued for potentially confounding outcomes with leadership, for requiring theoretical clarity (Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013), and for potentially applying more to firms than public organizations (Jensen et al., 2019). This research addresses Jensen et al.’s concerns by focusing on the mission statements as signals of leadership preferences, not on outcomes, and applying the theory to public organizations rather than firms.
Areas for Future Research
This work highlights several opportunities for additional advancement relative to our understanding of CF leadership roles. First, while this research provides important perspectives on the ways CFs represent their leadership style, it does not explain whether these foundations behave in accordance with their mission statements. To explore and address criticisms that CFs need to be more strategic in their leadership behavior, future research should also explore relationships between leadership style and other organizational criteria. Does prioritizing community leadership have any negative effect on the donor-focused side? 14 Additional research that examines how the leadership style conveyed is practiced is also warranted. In other words, are these CFs practicing what they preach in their mission statements? And if so, how?
Incorporation of instrumental leadership (Antonakis & House, 2013; Rowold, 2014), stewardship theory (Caldwell et al., 2007; Davis et al., 1997), or stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1994; Friedman & Miles, 2002) could help address foundation leadership behaviors and the relationship of these organizations with their followers. This study’s results could encourage further development of the matchmaker perspective (Daly, 2008; Graddy & Morgan, 2006; Leonard, 1989) articulated by Harrow et al (2016) as encompassing “being both donor and community facing” (p. 10). Yet, a stronger tie to leadership studies could view these mission statements as representing the Full Range Leadership Model.
CFs serve a vital function within many communities and are increasing across the globe (Council on Foundations 2017). Their structure of encouraging many gifts from smaller donors to address primarily local needs serves as a model of community participation, self-efficacy, and agency. How CFs portray themselves to their multiple stakeholders offers a key to their priorities and how they view the relationship between themselves and their donors. Balancing their roles as a facilitator for donor desires and as a community leader encouraging donors to participate in a shared vision, foundations demonstrate both transactional and transformational leadership within their communities.
Considering CFs in the light of transactional and transformational leadership models gives academics and practitioners a new lexicon to explore the roles CFs navigate as they strive to improve their communities around the globe. These CFs, built by numerous hands connected by regional ties, can be powerful forces for positive, grassroots change. Understanding how these foundations perceive their leadership roles and convey those roles to their communities can help better position them as both stewards and change agents, guardians of the present, and vanguards of the future.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I wish to express my appreciation to David L. Sloan, PhD, and the three anonymous reviewers for their insights and recommendations and to Barry Knight for sharing the Community Foundation Atlas data.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
