Chris Cornforth

The Governance of public and non-profit organisations: what do boards do?

Boards play a crucial role in ensuring that public and nonprofit publicly accountable and perform well. Following various failures and scandals they face increasing scrutiny, pressure and expectations. Serious questions have been raised about the ability of boards to govern effectively. Such concerns have stimulated a renewed interest in organizational governance, and a growing literature on the subject. Much of the current literature, however, has been criticized for underestimating the constraints and conflictions demands that boards face and recommending unrealistic solutions. There have been relatively few detailed empirical studies of what boards do in practice. This book fills that gap by bringing together analyses based upon some of the best recent empirical studies of public and non-profit governance in the UK. Using a new theoretical framework that highlights the paradoxical nature of governance the book throws light on the questions at the heart of recent debates about nonprofit boards: * Are boards publicly accountable or is there a democratic deficit? * Are boards able to exercise real power, or does management run the show? * What do boards do? Are they effective stewards of an organizations resources? Can they play a meaningful role in setting organisational strategy? * What effect are regulatory and other changes designed to improve board effectiveness having? The book will be essential reading for academics and students with an interest in the governance and management of public and nonprofit organizations. It will also be of value to policy-makers and practitioners who wish to gain a deeper understanding of how boards work and what can be done to improve their performance.

What Makes Boards Effective? An examination of the relationships between board inputs, structures, processes and effectiveness in non‐profit organisations

Based on a survey of charity boards in England and Wales this paper examines what influence board inputs, structures and processes have on board effectiveness. The findings provide mixed support for the normative literature on board effectiveness. Using stepwise logistic regression the research suggests that board inputs and three process variables are important in explaining board effectiveness, namely: board members have the time, skills and experience to do the job; clear board roles and responsibilities; the board and management share a common vision of how to achieve their goals; and the board and management periodically review how they work together.

The Governance Challenges of Social Enterprises: Evidence from a UK Empirical Study

The social enterprise sector in the UK is going through a period of rapid growth, and is being seen by government as another important vehicle for delivering public services. As a result the issue of public trust in social enterprise is of growing importance. While there is a growing literature on the governance of voluntary and non-profit organizations, with some exceptions (e.g. co-operatives) there has been little research on the governance challenges and support needs of social enterprises. The research reported here aimed to help fill that gap. Based on interviews and focus groups with governance advisers, board members and chief executives it explores the typical governance challenges faced by social enterprises. Based on the research the paper develops a new, empirically-grounded typology of social enterprises based on their origins and development path, and presents findings about some of the governance challenges that are common across the sector and some that are more distinctive to the different types of social enterprise.

Nonprofit Governance Research Limitations of the Focus on Boards and Suggestions for New Directions

This article examines some of the main limitations of research on the governance of nonprofit organizations. It argues that there are limitations in both the way governance has been conceptualized and the ways in which it has been researched. It suggests that research has focused too narrowly on the boards of unitary organizations, and ignored both the wider governance system and the more complex multilevel and multifaceted governance structures that many organizations have evolved. It also argues that the dominant research designs employed have been cross-sectional and positivist in orientation. As a result, too little attention has been paid to board processes and change and how they are influenced by contextual and historical factors. Based on this analysis, some new directions for nonprofit governance research are briefly mapped out.

Patterns of Cooperative Management: Beyond the Degeneration Thesis

This paper presents case studies of the development of four relatively long-standing and successful worker cooperatives in the UK. It focuses in particular on how, as a result of growth and pressure for greater efficiency, the cooperatives have developed new management structures and a more specialized division of labour, and how these changes have affected democratic control and accountability. The paper presents further evidence that degeneration is not inevitable as cooperatives age and grow, and details how processes of regeneration may occur. The paper concludes by highlighting some of the different conditions and strategies that support workplace democracy. In particular, as cooperatives grow their management structures and procedures will need to be regularly reviewed and changed, both to remain efficient and give renewed expression to democracy.

Board Roles in the Strategic Management of Non-profit Organisations: theory and practic

This paper presents findings from an in-depth empirical study of the role of boards and their relations with senior managers in four organisations from the public and non-profit sectors. The findings are interpreted using a conceptual framework which sees the outputs of boards as shaped by board inputs, processes and contextual factors, in particular wider institutional pressures. The results indicate that the strategic contribution of boards varies widely and depends on a complex interplay of factors: the system of regulation, sectoral traditions and norms of governance, the way board members are chosen, board members skill and experience, organisational size and status, and the way boards are organised and run. The wider institutional pressures that shape these factors can result in boards facing tensions and trade-offs that can result in their contribution to stragegy being squeezed by other board roles.

Governing Cross-Sector, Inter-Organizational Collaborations

Abstract This article addresses the governance of cross-sector, inter-organizational collaboration in the context of public administration and management. It conceptualizes the governance of collaborations in terms of structures and processes that enable actors to direct, coordinate and allocate resources for the collaboration as a whole and to account for its activities. It argues that the need to pay attention to considerations of ‘collaborative governance’ and ‘governing collaboration’ in cross-sector collaborations gives rise to a number of challenges and tensions that need to be addressed if the governance form is to be sustained and the collaboration is to yield advantage.

Beyond Nonprofit Management Education: Leadership Development in a Time of Blurred Boundaries and Distributed Learning

This article argues that three broad trends—changes in nonprofit organizations, changes in the ways they are led, and changes in the available technologies of learning—combine to challenge the long-term viability of discrete full-time programs of nonprofit management education. To explore this contention, the authors draw on several sets of evidence. First, they examine literature about these trends. Second, they draw on their research and consultancies in nonprofit management and in large-scale educational strategies. Third, they draw on their experiences of developing and teaching nonprofit management education programs in the United Kingdom. They argue that new problems have overlaid old problems in the nonprofit world. However, these are linked to broader societal trends that reflect new ways of organizing, and this shifts the focus of learning and development. Finally, they review the implications for nonprofit management education and set out some principles to guide new developments in this field.

Understanding and combating mission drift in social enterprises

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to develop a better understanding of the pressures that can cause mission drift among social enterprises and some of the steps that social enterprises can take to combat these pressures. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is conceptual in nature. It draws on resource dependency theory, institutional theory and various extant empirical studies to develop an understanding of the causes of mission drift. This analysis is then used to examine the practical steps that social enterprises can take to combat mission drift. Findings – The paper highlights how high dependence on a resource provider and the demands of “competing” institutional environments can lead to mission drift. Based on this analysis, the paper sets out various governance mechanisms and management strategies that can be used to combat mission drift. Practical implications – The paper sets out practical steps social enterprises can take to try to prevent mission drift. While governance mechanisms provide i...

The Role of Boards in the Failure and Turnaround of Non-Profit Organizations

This article reports on research that examined the role that boards play in the failure and turnaround of non-profit organizations. The article concludes that boards do often play an important hands-on role in turnaround, which is different from that described in much of the normative literature. As well as needing skills, such as leadership, those board members leading the change process need high levels of commitment, emotional resilience and a ‘safe place’ to formulate plans.