Successful without profits: Personal factors that affect performance and innovativeness in NPOs

Abstract

Previous studies on personal characteristics and skills that influence the performance of man-agers in their job and their ability to innovate focused mainly on for-profit organizations. We ar-gue that non-profit organizations (NPOs) are substantially different in their organizational set-up and processes and hence demand different skills from their employees. In adding to existing re-search on Ajzen’s (1985) Theory of Planned Behavior we conduct a qualitative, model building study to derive personal factors that influence managers’ intention and behavior to perform and to innovate. We base our analysis on 15 interviews with knowledgeable informants that either work in NPOs, provide services to them, or conduct research on them. We derive 14 personal factors that can be aggregated in four categories (interpersonal skills, management skills, experi-ence, and virtues & vices) that each affects the individual performance and/or the individual in-novativeness of managers in NPOs. The organizational structure ...