Public Administration

Public Administration

The non-profit sector plays an integral role in the economy not only by creating employment places but also by possessing subsets of organizations that are highly committed to providing job training. Many non-profit organizations (NPOs) help to prepare individuals for employment opportunities in case they lack formal education and adequate skills. Through such organizations, people gain vocational skills that help them secure a job in the future. Moreover, some NPOs help the needy by providing them with resources to improve their living standards. NPOs’ efforts aim to assist those who are in a hopeless situation due to their low socio-economic status; they help these individuals to meet their basic needs. The Newark Day Center is an example of an NPO that creates employment places, provides job training, and supports the needy (Hoque & Parker, 2014). For the Newark Day Center to continue contributing to society, it must have good leadership and governance. The concept of leadership and governance assumes a central role in monitoring and regulation of operations in organizations (Miladi, 2014). The objective of this study is to investigate how leadership and governance can be improved in NPOs. Four questions will guide the study to achieve the research objective:

a. How can leadership be improved in an NPO?

b. How can governance be enhanced in NPO?

c. Is there any unique influence that the nature of NPO has on the manifestations of the concepts of leadership and governance?

d. Which are the most effective tools that can be used to improve leadership and governance in NPO?

Method

Research Design

The study will adopt a qualitative research approach involving interviews and focus groups. A qualitative research design is appropriate for this study because it will provide authentic participants’ views (Brinkmann, 2013). The interviews will help in exploring the experiences, beliefs, and views of study participants regarding leadership and governance. Another advantage of the interviews is that they are more personal, which leads to higher response rates (Gubrium, 2012; Eriksson & Kovalainen, 2015). Questions for both interviews and focus groups will be designed to examine leadership and governance in the Newark Day Center and the impact of the nature of the organization on the concepts in question. The interviews will be conducted face to face, and they will be tape-recorded to provide a permanent record of the responses. Responses from the focus groups will also be recorded.

Setting and Participants

The study will be conducted at the Newark Day Center with managers or supervisors and employees. The Newark Day Center has been selected for this study because it is one of the NPOs that provide a wide range of services that contribute hugely to the well-being of society. It serves different types of interests and needs of people. Only those individuals who have worked in Newark Day Center for at least five years will be included in this study. The human resource manager will be requested to identify those who meet the eligibility criteria. Once recruited, all potential participants will be sent a letter that explains the nature of the study, the data to be collected, and information on how the data will be used and reported. The letter will also inform the participants that they are free to participate or withdraw from the study at any point without explanation. The participants will also be informed that they will be contacted later to see if they will consent to participate. Only the individuals that will consent to participate will be included in this study. Data recorded from the interviews will be coded to maintain anonymity and confidentiality.

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Data Collection

Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with managers at the workplace. The interviews will take 60 to 90 minutes, and they will be audio-recorded. Although semi-structured interviews are time-consuming, they allow the in-depth exploration of the concept in question and a different perspective on a known subject area that is required for avoiding bias (Gubrium, 2012; Galletta & Cross, 2013). Another advantage of semi-structured interviews is that the approach is flexible and allows the exploration of information that is important to study participants and which could have been thought of as pertinent (Jensen, Christy, Gettings & Lareau, 2013). The questions for the interviews will be open-ended to generate rich data. The interview will be piloted with two respondents before the data are gathered to establish if the schedule is acceptable and capable of generating information that is needed to meet the research objective. Pretesting the interviews will ensure that the questions adequately cover the research topic and the expected information is obtained (Fawcett & Pockett, 2015). The interviews will be administered to the pilot subjects in the same manner that will be applied in the actual study. Changes to the interview schedule and questions will be made based on the pilot study findings.

The participants will be asked to describe the leadership and governance in the organization and their views on how they can be improved. They will also be asked for their views on the tools that they think are the most effective in improving leadership and governance in their organization. The participants will also be asked for their views on the nature of the NPOs that they think influence leadership and governance. Moreover, they will be requested to give their general views on leadership and governance rather than limiting their responses to the direct experiences in their organization. During and immediately after each interview, field notes will be taken about ideas, thoughts, and observations, as it will help in the data analysis process.

The focus group will include the employees to gather data on their experiences with leadership and governance in the organization. Each focus group will have four members to ensure that each person has sufficient opportunity to speak. The questions to guide the focus group will be open-ended and move from general to more specific questions (Jensen et al., 2015). The discussion will be guided and monitored by a facilitator. The facilitator will guide the discussion without participating to avoid introducing bias by giving the respondents cues as to what they should say rather than be confident, honest, and open about their views (Dilshad & Latif, 2013). The facilitator will also ensure that one member does not dominate the discussion by giving all the respondents a sufficient opportunity to speak and encouraging the reticent participants to contribute.

Data Analysis

Responses from both interviews and focus groups will be anonymized. The responses will be transcribed verbatim to avoid bias and transcribed generated data will be coded and analyzed by using content analysis. Responses from each participant and focus group will be synthesized question by question, and each response will be read carefully to identify the pieces of text with similar content. Similar content will be categorized under one theme into a separate file. Common characteristics will be determined, and relations with other categories will be identified.

The concepts of interest, namely leadership, and governance will provide a framework for the initial categorization of texts into themes. The identified themes will be coded, recorded, and classified by assessing divergences and convergences in responses from managers and employees. An expert in this area will be requested to analyze the data separately, generate themes, and compare them with those generated during the first analysis to ensure the quality of results (Krippendorff, 2012). Additionally, the study findings will be circulated to the respondents to ensure that the results correspond to their experiences. Following these, changes will be made where needed.

Results Expected

The data will reveal the leadership styles and governance structure in the Newark Day Centre, focusing on leadership styles, leadership functions, skills, and actions. Under the governance structure, the data will show the bylaws of the organization and the structure of the authority in the Newark Day Center. The bylaws of an organization are rules that an organization operates under. The structure of the authority demonstrates the organizational chart of an organization (Miladi, 2014). These data will show the effectiveness of leadership and governance in the Newark Day Centre, identifying areas that need improvement. The results will also show the most effective tools that can be used to improve leadership and governance in NPOs.

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