Nonprofit Failure and Resiliency: A Cross-Cultural and International Perspective From Nonprofit Sport Organizations

• In Event: Organizational resilience

Abstract

Failure has begun to receive more attention from researchers in the management and entrepreneurship disciplines (Danneels & Vestal, 2020; Vinck, 2017). Cameron et al. (1988, p. 9) defined failure as the ‘‘deterioration in an organization’s adaptation to its microniche and the associated reduction of resources within the organization.’’ The notion of failure has often been a sensitive topic for nonprofit practitioners and seldom discussed due to fears over future support from resource providers. However, the nonprofit sector and its diverse set of subfield “cannot progress if we only have access to rose-tinted research findings” (Whitley et al., 2020, p.28). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore nonprofit failure and resiliency in an international sample of nonprofit sport organizations. More specifically, the study is guided by three research questions: (1) what meanings do nonprofit leaders attribute to organizational failure?; (2) how (if at all) have their organizations' experienced failure; and (3) what elements do nonprofit leaders perceive as critical for resiliency for overcoming and learning from failure?

Prior studies on nonprofit failure have almost exclusively been centered around organizational ecology and national financial data sets (cf. Hager et al., 2004; Helmig et al., 2014). More recent scholarship, however, has indicated that prior approaches to studying failure do not always reflect the reality of nonprofits’ operations due to issues stemming from a lack of common understanding of failure (Helmig et al., 2014; Searing, 2020). Our study was informed by prior in-depth qualitative nonprofit studies that indicate discrepancies in the meanings that nonprofit practitioners ascribe to concepts discussed in the literature compared to how researchers have defined those concepts (Andersson & Willems, 2018; Svensson et al., 2020). At the same time, the fact that organizations increasingly face uncertainty warrants consideration of the role of resiliency in how organizations respond to failure (Carmeli & Schaubroeck, 2008; Williams et al., 2017). Resiliency has been associated with the broader nonprofit sector at an institutional-level (cf. Salamon, 2015) due to the difficult yet evolving institutional pressures and norms placed upon civil society. Yet, how nonprofits can be resilient at the organizational-level has received limited attention (Searing et al., 2023).

For this study, an interpretive qualitative research design was employed, guided by a social constructivist perspective (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Data collection is currently in progress with semi-structured interviews being conducted with leaders from sport clubs and federations in Belgium as well as sport for development and peace organizations operating across several countries and is expected to be completed by February 2024. The sample shares a commonality around sport, while allowing enough flexibility to explore perspectives on failure and resiliency between membership and non-membership structured nonprofits. Data will be analyzed through a two-cycle inductive coding process (Saldaña, 2021). The findings are expected to advance the current body of knowledge around the practical realities associated with nonprofit failure and resiliency. Furthermore, we expect our findings to allow for the identification of recommendations for how resource providers can better support nonprofit practitioners for responding to and overcoming failure.

References

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Authors

• Géraldine Zeimers, UCLouvain

• Per G. Svensson, Louisiana State University