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AbstractPrescriptive approaches place the nonprofit board of directors at the hierarchical pinnacle of the organization's management structure. Empirical research finds this view incomplete at best. The results of an attribution study indicate that nonprofit chief executives are perceived as centrally responsible for outcomes. Given such centrality, what skills differentiate executives who are regarded as especially effective from others? This article describes research suggesting that more‐effective executives provide leadership for their boards. The implications for executive behavior are reviewed.

The increasing recognition of the public nature of nonprofit organizations and the changing relationships between governments and nonprofit organizations provide the context for, and underline the importance of, understanding effective executive leadership in such organizations. A study of 50 nonprofit organization chief executives revealed that reputationally effective executives engaged in more reported leadership behaviors in relationship to their boards of directors than executives not so reputed. No difference was found in reported leadership behaviors directed at staff. The results suggest that "board-regarding behaviors" are an important and distinct cluster of skills for effective leadership by nonprofit chief executives. The results are consistent with a resource-dependence perspective, and the authors argue that effective executives work with and through their boards in order to affect the constraints and dependencies in the nonprofit organization's environment.

The commonplace view of nonprofit organizations sees the board in control and responsible for the governance and outcomes of impor tant events in the organization. This point of view is empirically examined by analyzing how chief executives of nonprofit organiza tions and their board presidents attribute responsibility for outcomes of critical incidents. The results suggest both chief executives and board presidents believe in the "psychological centrality" of the chief executive in a hierarchy of responsibility for organizational outcomes. The authors discuss how those in responsible positions in nonprofit organizations come to understand and explain the reality of their organizational experience and raise the implications for a theory of nonprofit organizations.

As the definition of public affairs and administration expands to encompass nonprofit organizations and as more university programs in public administration begin to develop curricula in nonprofit organization management, questions of what such curricula should include have become increasingly important. Based on a program of research on nonprofit management skills, the questions that have been raised about appropriate curricula are reviewed, the literature and research program that serve as foundations for the proposed approach to curriculum are described, four executive roles for nonprofit organizations and the implications of each for curriculum are specified, and four sets of behaviorally oriented skills are proposed as useful and appropriate components of nonprofit management curricula.

Interviews with forty-five chief executives of nonprofit organizations in the Kansas City area provide evidence about the nature of man agement in nonprofit organizations suggesting, first, that adapting programs to shifts in funding patterns has been a major challenge and, second, that fundraising and board-executive relations-issues generally regarded as distinctly characteristic of nonprofit organiza tion management-are often experienced as critical.

AbstractThis study of sixty‐four locally governed nonprofit charitable organizations used a social constructionist perspective to investigate the relationship between the extent to which nonprofit boards use prescribed board practices and stakeholder judgments of the effectiveness of those boards. A social constructionist perspective implies that different stakeholders use and evaluate different kinds of information in making judgments about board effectiveness. The results suggest that there is wide variation in the use of the prescribed board practices, that judgments of board effectiveness often differ substantially, and that chief executives' judgments of the effectiveness of their boards is moderately related to the extent of use of recommended board practices.

AbstractRecent research by the authors adds to their evolving model of the leadership provided by effective chief executive officers of nonprofit organizations. Effective chief executives understand the centrality of their leadership role and accept responsibility as initiators of action—with their boards—to find resources and revitalize the missions of their organizations. These actions are carried out as part of the political dimension of effective executives. The importance of this criterion of leadership practice is examined in light of the hesitance of chief executives to espouse or advocate political action. Implications for chief executive training and development are discussed.