Strategic Management

Strategic Leadership in the Nonprofit Sector: Opportunities for Research Kelly A. Phipps Mark E. Burbach University of Nebraska-Lincoln ABSTRACT The field of strategic leadership, or the study of how top-level leaders influence organizational performance, has not yet been widely extended to the nonprofit sector. Prior research on nonprofit leadership suggests strategic leadership theory is applicable in nonprofit organizations. However, the exercise of nonprofit strategic leadership may differ from that found in the for-profit sector. Drawing from the literature on both strategic leadership and nonprofit leadership, propositions are offered to explain the ways in which nonprofit strategic leadership contributes to organizational performance. Propositions developed to explain organizational performance concern learning capacity, capacity for change, managerial wisdom, organizational context, organizational innovation, and mission trajectory. Introduction The field of strategic leadership focuses on the way top-level leaders (i.e., executives) have an impact on organizational performance through their leadership. One of the seminal works in strategic leadership illustrates the importance of strategic leadership by asserting that organizations are a reflection of their top leader (Hambrick & Mason, 1984). Subsequent research has found strategic leadership associated with numerous positive organizational outcomes. However, very little of the research in the field of strategic leadership has considered the sector in which leadership occurs (Boal & Hooijberg, 2000). As a result, most of the theory development in strategic leadership has assumed that it occurs in the for-profit sector. This leaves nonprofit leaders to either interpret the empirical findings regarding strategic leadership to fit the nonprofit sector, or to reject the findings as inapplicable. Evidence suggests that strategic leadership in nonprofits may be different (Thach & Thompson, 2007). Warren Buffet...