Building resilience: Alignment of nonprofit leaders’ understanding of environmental challenges

Abstract

The ways in which a common understanding of environmental challenges is established among nonprofit leaders are not clearly presented in the literature, despite the importance of such understanding as an antecedent of organizational resilience. In response to this research gap, this paper seeks to identify how such an alignment is facilitated. We use a qualitative research approach and investigate seven international nonprofit organizations whose leadership is aligned on environmental challenges. The data collection is twofold. First, leaders of these organizations, being the board chair, one board member, and the managerial executive, respond to closed and open-ended survey questions. Second, we analyze organizational documents of the participating nonprofits. This includes for example their bylaws, codes of conduct, and strategic plans. Our results indicate that transparency, clarity, flexibility, and quality relationships among the leadership are key interaction characteristics associated with leadership alignment. Good board chair leadership and board gender balance are crucial personal characteristics. The present paper provides insights to academics as well as practitioners who aim to enhance cohesion of their leadership's understanding of environmental challenges.