The Benefit of Diversity in Nonprofit Boards

This research studies the relationship between the gender and leadership style in nonprofit organizations and its impacts on turnover intention in these organizations. The outcomes specifically focused on how the relationship between gender and leadership style impacted leader-member exchange, perceptions of inclusivity, and turnover intention, with the first two factors acting as mediators for turnover intention. This study focused on how the social role theory would affect the perception of female and male leaders depending on the leadership style being used. The study consists of 46 participants who were undergraduate students from the Claremont Colleges. The participants worked on a nonprofit project in teams of three with a team leader who was a confederate for the study. The leader was either a male or female, and both confederates used transformational and transactional leadership. The analysis showed that transformational leadership was able to increase LMX, increase perception of inclusivity, and decrease burnout in nonprofit. The analysis also showed that female leaders are able to increase perception of inclusivity. The findings encourage nonprofits to focus on encouraging their leaders to practice transformational leadership and be trained in specific characteristics from the leadership style and in providing more opportunities for female leaders. Future research should focus on performing this study long term in nonprofit organizations and expand on factors such as race, different leadership styles, and different types of nonprofits