Executive Leadership Change in BC Canadian Social Services Nonprofits: Support for Successful Transition
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Authors
Gerritsen, Theresa
Issue Date
2025-04-30
Type
Dissertation
Language
en
Keywords
succession planning , executive transition , nonprofit leadersip , nonprofit
Alternative Title
Abstract
BC community nonprofits have experienced problems of difficult and prolonged leadership transition during executive turnover. During CEO leadership transitions, nonprofits have dealt with low retention and high successive turnovers, causing a decrease in organizational performance, challenges in work culture and disruptions in strategic plans (Stewart, 2016; Stewart et al., 2021). The purpose of this study was to understand the conditions that supported successful leadership turnover during executive succession (Stewart et al., 2021). Qualitative methodology and narrative inquiry were used to collect CEOs lived experiences of their transition success (Clandinin, 2023). The population for this study were past or current CEOs of BC, Canadian community nonprofits. The sampling approach was purposive and nonprofit CEOs with a tenure of five years or more, were selected from public listings of BC nonprofits. In the interviews, 13 participants were asked about the conditions that supported their successful executive transition and tenure in their nonprofit. The data was analyzed through the review, coding, categorization, and re-storying of interviews where participant stories were collected into coherent narratives by observing common themes (Creswell & Poth, 2018; Jennings, 2018). Themes in the narratives supporting succession were CEOs' psychological ownership, the transfer of responsibility and the resources required for a smooth leadership transition and retention of CEOs in their BC nonprofit (Stewart et al., 2021). These findings were used to generate recommendations for BC nonprofit Boards to secure the successful integration and retention of new CEOs into their community nonprofit (Li, 2019; Stewart, 2016).
Description
Citation
Publisher
License
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States
openAccess
openAccess