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Item Volunteers as Active Shapers of their Work: The Role of Job Crafting in Volunteer Satisfaction and Organizational Identification(2022-01-28) Walk, Marlene; Peterson, EmilyVolunteer satisfaction is a significant concern, as volunteers have lower barriers to exit than employees and tend to leave nonprofits when dissatisfied. While volunteer management predominantly focuses on the implementation of management practices, this study alters that perspective. Through job crafting, one form of proactive behavior in organizational contexts, we study volunteers as active participants in their volunteer experience. We posit that volunteer job crafting is an important, yet overlooked, factor in volunteer outcomes such as satisfaction and organizational identification. We test and (partially) confirm our hypotheses using a sample of 678 volunteers in one youth-serving nonprofit organization in the Midwest region of the United States. This study extends job crafting research further into the non-work domain by adding a multifaceted conceptualization of job crafting in the context of volunteer work. We distinguish between behavioral and cognitive crafting and provide empirical support on how those crafting forms relate to volunteer satisfaction and organizational identification.Item Competition is on the rise: to what extent does traditional fundraising performance research apply in competitive environments?(2022-01-14) Walk, Marlene; Curley, Cali; Levine Daniel, JamieResearch on fundraising performance links organizational size, professional donor engagement, and legitimacy with fundraising outcomes. But can we assume the same factors will positively impact fundraising performance in light of increasing competition among nonprofits? This study explores whether and how traditional factors known to impact fundraising performance perform in the context of online fundraising tournaments, an environment that is explicitly competitive as those who lose drop out. Our analysis draws on data from 596 US nonprofits that participated in such tournaments. This inquiry addresses increasing competitive pressures placed on nonprofits as they likely cannot avoid competition in the future.Item Leaders as change executors: the impact of leader attitudes to change and change-specific support on followers(2022-01-11) Walk, MarleneOrganizational change research has long regarded leaders as instrumental for the successful implementation of change. Leaders, however, are not always initiating change but rather executing it. In those cases, leaders may hold negative attitudes with regards to the change content or even resist change implementation while also being less effective in supporting their followers. This study tests whether, and to what extent, leader attitudes alongside leader change-specific support impact follower resistance to change. Using survey data from school principals and teachers in the public education sector in Germany, findings from multilevel linear regression show that leader resistance is positively related to follower resistance while leader attitudes to change content are unrelated to follower resistance. Leader change-specific support strengthens the relationship between follower attitudes towards change content and their resistance to change. Thus, this study raises awareness of the negative impact leaders can have on their followers when they are executors rather than initiators of change.Item Activating Community Resilience: The Emergence of COVID-19 Funds Across the United States(Sage, 2020-11) Paarlberg, Laurie E.; LePere-Schloop, Megan; Ai, Jin; Ming, Yue; Walk, Marlene; Lilly Family School of PhilanthropyThis article draws upon concepts of community resilience to explore the antecedents of community philanthropic organizations’ response to COVID-19. Although the pandemic is a global threat, responses have been local. We test a model of community resilience activation in the context of the emergence of local COVID-19 funds. We find that a philanthropic organization’s capacity to act in a crisis and respond to the needs of the community depends on the stock of community capitals and organizational capacity. The importance of economic, cultural, and political factors in predicting the emergence of a fund raises important questions about disparities in resilience along class and race lines and the role of political ideology in shaping perceptions of crises. Our research contributes to our understanding of community philanthropic organizations’ capacity to activate community resources during a crisis.Item COVID-19 as a nonprofit workplace crisis: Seeking insights from the nonprofit workers' perspective(Wiley, 2021) Kuenzi, Kerry; Stewart, Amanda J.; Walk, Marlene; School of Public and Environmental AffairsDue to the COVID-19 pandemic, nonprofit organizations face increased demands for services alongside decreased revenues and must make tough choices on how to weather these stressors. Alongside these organizational changes, COVID-19 impacts nonprofit workers and could be a career shock for these individuals, potentially altering how they think of their work and career intentions, even jeopardizing their commitment to the sector. Therefore, this paper outlines a research agenda to understand how the pandemic impacts nonprofit workers and their commitment to working in the sector. Several areas for future research are identified including human resource policy, leadership development, generational differences, gender effects, nonprofit graduate education, and mission-specific work effects.Item ‘Help, I need somebody!’: Exploring who founds new nonprofits(2021-11-23) Andersson, Fredrik; Walk, MarleneRecent research suggest that the founding of a new nonprofit is seldom an activity done in solitude, rather, new nonprofits emerge from the efforts and contributions of multiple individuals working together as a team. Yet, to date we know very little about these collective efforts to start new nonprofits, especially during the earliest, nascent, stage of the founding process. This research note draws on survey data from 69 early-stage nonprofit founders to examine how many individuals are involved during the nascent stage of founding, who these individuals are, how they are related, and to illustrate how they contribute to the founding process.Item States of COVID-19: Synthesis of State-level Nonprofit Reports on the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic(2021-05-05) Stewart, Amanda J.; Kuenzi, Kerry; Walk, Marlene; Klippel, AbbyItem COVID-19 as a nonprofit workplace crisis: Seeking insights from the nonprofit workers’ perspective(2021-03-17) Kuenzi, Kerry; Stewart, Amanda J.; Walk, MarleneDue to the COVID-19 pandemic, nonprofit organizations face increased demands for services alongside decreased revenues and must make tough choices on how to weather these stressors. Alongside these organizational changes, COVID-19 impacts nonprofit workers and could be a career shock for these individuals, potentially altering how they think of their work and career intentions, even jeopardizing their commitment to the sector. Therefore, this paper outlines a research agenda to understand how the pandemic impacts nonprofit workers and their commitment to working in the sector. Several areas for future research are identified including human resource policy, leadership development, generational differences, gender effects, nonprofit graduate education, and mission-specific work effects.Item Competition and Collaboration in the Nonprofit Sector: Identifying the Potential for Cognitive Dissonance(2021) Curley, Cali; Levine Daniel, Jamie; Walk, Marlene; Harrison, NickyNonprofits compete with collaborators and collaborate with competitors regularly. Collaboration, a long-standing normatively preferred strategy for nonprofits, is utilized as modus operandi without thought to the potential unintended consequences. While competition, long deemed a dirty, word for nonprofits is a necessary but undesirable reality, avoided without consideration to the potential benefits. Nonprofits leaders may not be willing to explicitly acknowledge the use of competition as an operational strategy, which makes room for cognitive dissonance to impact the study of nonprofits. This piece identifies impacts of cognitive dissonance offering direction for future research exploring the interactive nature of competing with collaborators.Item Gute Arbeit verlangt gute Arbeitsbedingungen. Von den Konsequenzen inklusiver Schule für die Lehrkräfte(Blätter der Wohlfahrtspflege. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Soziale Arbeit, 2015-12) Walk, Marlene; Schinnenburg, Heike