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Articles

Nonprofit Leadership Development in the Post-Socialist Context: The Case of Croatia

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Pages 314-341 | Published online: 20 Apr 2012
 

Abstract

While nonprofit social services are developing rapidly in post-socialist countries, little is known of their leadership. This research examines models of leadership as perceived by social service administrators in Croatia. Technical management with limited stakeholder involvement is recognized as most prevalent, though inadequate in many respects. More relational styles are considered desirable, but not feasible at present, while advocacy-oriented and purely Western approaches are more strongly rejected. We analyze these findings in the context of social legacies, dependency on state funding, Western aid paradigms, and fiscal crises commonly found in post-socialist countries. We assess implications for future development of, and research on, nonprofit leadership in these settings.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors express their gratitude to the anonymous reviewers, to the NGO study participants, and to Jelena Matančević for her assistance in data collection and analysis, and the students involved in collecting data: Vlatka Kezele, Andrea Šutić, Marko Jukić, Luka Škreblin, Ivana Crnjac, Stela Fišer, and Helena Buhinjak.

Notes

2. See, for example, CitationHerman and Associates, 2005. The only comparative material comes from one chapter on “The Internationalization of the Nonprofit Sector” by Anheier and Themudo, and even here the models of leadership described are derived from Western literature. The international research project GLOBE has been identifying how culture matters to the evaluation and expectations of leader attitudes and behaviors (CitationHouse, Javidan, Hanges & Dorfman, 2002). However, its focus on CEOs and middle managers of industrial organizations limits its applicability to the assessment of nonprofit leadership; moreover, it includes only those post-communist settings with the highest development of market economies.

3. Health, mental health, and social service NPOs represent a new sector of response to social needs; examining their views of leadership is thus critical to understanding the evolution of their role, mission, and relationships to other sectors.

4. All quotations are translated from written responses or oral transcriptions of interviews in Croatian.

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