Exploring the Rhetorical Foundations of Board Governance: Market-Based Strategies versus Common Good Claims in Five Nonprofit Organizations

The last several years have seen a renewed emphasis on ensuring nonprofit organization efficiency and effectiveness. Predictably in a political economy in which belief in the market is so strong, many advocates of such views have advanced the idea that to secure improved fiduciary and programmatic accountability, nonprofit organizations need only adopt more “business-like ” (read more market-driven) governance and management strategies. Such a stance leads board members and executive directors alike to press for accountability strategies that enshrine efficiency as a cardinal aim and that, implicitly at least suggest that there is no distinction between the missions and governance of for-profit and nonprofit organizations. We are interested in exploring how governing board members and executive directors assimilate such claims when determining the governance strategies they adopt. Are governance strategies framed in market-based rhetoric? Do governors distinguish between their nonprofit missions and market-based claims for management and accountability change strategies or simply assume the efficacy of the latter? More deeply, do trustees, many of whom are drawn from market institutions, recognize a distinction in the social roles of these institutions in the first instance? To begin to address these large looming questions, we propose to interview trustees and executive director