CEO Power and Nonprofit Performance: Evidence from Chinese Philanthropic Foundations

Abstract

CEO power and its implications have been largely neglected in research on nonprofit governance. This lack of attention is surprising considering the crucial role of CEOs and the importance of power analysis in understanding governance. This paper is an initial attempt to address this gap by developing a two-dimensional framework for conceptualizing CEOs structural power and strategic power in nonprofits and proposing several indicators to operationalize these two kinds of power. Drawing data from an original survey on 163 CEOs of Chinese foundations, this study is among the first to specifically assess how much power a CEO has and the relationship between a CEO’s power and nonprofit effectiveness. My findings suggest that CEOs structural power is positively associated with private donations while strategic power has a negative impact on nonprofits’ social performance.