An Investigation of Innovation in Nonprofit Organizations: The Role of Organizational Mission

Abstract

Nonprofit organizations are experiencing increasing pressures to be more business-like and to focus on financial outcomes for sustainability and growth. There have been questions whether this attention on performance might come at the cost of serving an organization's mission. The research presented here indicates that a nonprofit organization's mission can facilitate innovation, which has been shown to be a key mediating step in achieving superior organizational performance. Two studies were conducted among nonprofit hospitals in the United States to investigate the role of the nonprofit organization's mission in the innovation process. The findings indicate that a clear, motivating organizational mission helps an organization to focus its attention on those innovations that will most likely support the accomplishment of that mission. Such a mission also creates a climate in which innovations are given a fair chance to succeed. As a result, firms with clear, motivating missions tend to be more innovative.

Toward a Romanian NPOs Sustainability Model: Determinants of Sustainability

“…Another important difference is in terms of resources, especially financing. Compared to business sector, NPOs face significant volatility, doubled by diversity, across all their revenue sources, making multiple stakeholder management a reality in their case while simultaneously the main management focus is a fine tuning between money and mission [14,15]. However, non-profits have a more diverse set of tools at their disposal to ensure a flow of resources to support their activities [16], acquiring funds not only by earned income but also by governmental support and private donations.…”

Pathways to High Performance

“…The development of new services is of benefit to the organization as this can lead to higher levels of performance (Deshpande, Farley & Webster, 1993;McDonald, 2007). This research focused on the innovative activities that RSGBs put in place to satisfy their members, which are referred to as service innovations (Damanpour & Aravind, forthcoming 2012;Miles, 2005).…”

Tercer Sector e innovación: experiencias, desafíos y oportunidades

“…Pero este campo de investigación está aún poco explotado (Zimmerman, 1998;Osborne y Brown, 2005). Por último, la claridad de la misión organizativa -un ejercicio básico en los procesos de planificación estratégica-constituye un factor para el desarrollo y la adopción de decisiones innovadoras (McDonald, 2007).…”

“…En este contexto de reflexión se echan en falta estudios que aborden la cuestión de la aplicación de esta fuente de ventaja competitiva a otros agentes con peculiaridades y roles específicos, como es el caso tanto del sector público (Osborne y Brown, 2005) como del Tercer Sector (McDonald, 2007). En efecto, el interés por la innovación en las organizaciones del Tercer Sector es todavía incipiente y dista de estar en la agenda de este tipo de instituciones en el grado en que se encuentran otros asuntos como son la transparencia o la calidad.…”