Non-profit/Community-based Managers/Executives/Administrators
OBJECTIVE To examine and compare current leadership practices in for-profit businesses and non-profit human service agencies.
METHODOLOGY A total of 114 questionnaires were received from top administrative staff of human service organizations (60% response rate) as randomly selected from the Allegheny County United Way Directory and 83 (42% response rate) were received from a random selection of business corporations in the Business Directory published by the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce. Respondents completed the LPI-Self and provided demographic information. Male respondents were 49% of the total number from human service organizations and 98% of those from the for-profit sector. Eighty-six percent of all respondents had at least a college degree; the average years of managerial experience was 15% for human service managers and 24% for business organization managers.
KEY FINDINGS There were no statistically significant differences for Challenging, Inspiring, Enabling, and Modeling between administrators from non-profit human service organizations and those from for-profit businesses. Non-profit administrators scored significantly higher on Encouraging the Heart than did their for-profit counterparts. Gender and level of education and years were not significantly correlated with Challenging, Inspiring, Enabling, or Modeling. Those with above average (19+ years or more) years of managerial experience reported significantly more Inspiring and, Modeling, but no differences were found on this demographic variable for Challenging, Enabling, or Encouraging. On Encouraging, females reported greater frequency than males; those in human service organizations also reported Encouraging more frequently. Note, in regards to the findings about Encouraging, that females comprised less than 2% of the for-profit respondents and hence it is ambiguous about whether the Encouraging differences are truly due to gender or organizational differences.