International Nonprofit CEOs are accountable to what, to whom, and how?
This was the question posed by Assistant Professor Paloma Raggo in her dissertation on the accountability of CEOs in international nonprofits, which was awarded the 2015 Best Thesis Award from the Association for Nonprofit and Social Economy Research (ANSER). She will receive the award at the association’s banquet on June 4th.
Dr. Raggo, a professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration’s Master of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership program, studied the perceptions and practices of accountability held by 152 CEOs of international nonprofit organizations.
“The leaders of these organizations are uniquely positioned in an accountability nexus as they negotiate between internal organizational demands for accountability and external operational constraints faced by their organizations,” writes Raggo. She argues that these leaders and their organizations often suffer from “accountability dissonance disorder”, a mismatch between their ideals and their practices.
Dr. Raggo recommends the creation of an overarching framework that would offer a more integrated approach to CEO accountability and would “target the communication of accountability performance to specific audiences”.
She plans to publish a book and numerous articles on her research in the coming months.
