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Nonprofit
Professional
Performance
Magazine
T
he work of high-performing nonprofit
organizations entails creating continuous
and purposeful cycles of good-to-great as they
fulfill their missions. Embedded in this is the
organization’s ability to identify and enact the
practices that transcend the organization from
a problem-solving mentality to a frame of
reference anchored in the positive enablers of
extraordinary organizational success. Positive
Organizational Scholarship (POS) provides
a perspective to explore positive enablers
(Cameron, Dutton & Quinn, 2003). POS
emphasizes understanding the positive enablers
of extraordinary success and how these dynamics
can be sustained. Furthermore, POS examines
positively deviant behavior of organizations and
their members that intentionally depart from
norms of a referent group in an honorable way
(Spreitzer & Sonenshein, 2003).
In nonprofit organizations, we contend that
positive deviant behavior is grounded in
specific “enablers,” the processes, techniques,
and practices used to produce extraordinary
results (Cameron & Lavine, 2006; Wooten &
Cameron,2010).Enablers can be conceptualized
into four general themes to help organizations
identify the actions that lead to sustainable
positive outcomes: create, control, collaborate,
and compete. Interestingly, the four themes
of positive deviance behaviors are paradoxical
through two polarities of organizational life
making up a “Competing Values Framework”
(Cameron, Quinn, DeGraff & Thakor, 2006).
The paradoxes of organizational life highlight
the need for organizations to be adaptable
(create) versus stable (control),while focusing on
internal processes (collaborate) versus external
positioning (compete). When an organization
is intentional about the four enablers of positive
deviance, it embodies a culture of high-quality
connections, stakeholders are intrinsically
motivated to go beyond expectations and
sacrifice for the common good, and the norm
is to envision and experiment with possibilities
(Quinn, 2012).
Create
In nonprofit organizations, the create enabler
focuses on adaptable practices that produce
innovation, facilitate a culture that embraces
change, and position the organization for
futuristic opportunities and challenges in
relationship to its external environment.
Excelling by focusing on creating means that
the organization must empower members to
constantly think about how they can reconfigure
activities to produce new products and services.
One nonprofit organization channeling
work energy through the create enabler is
the Acumen Fund, whose mission is to raise
charitable donations to invest in companies,
leaders, and ideals that are changing the way
the world tackles poverty. To accomplish this
goal, the Acumen Fund invests in an innovative
model of “patient capital” that responds to the
gap between traditional charity and business
enterprises. It seeds a diverse array of new social
ventures with the goal of generating returns to
reinvest in new enterprises, and is willing to
Enabling Excellence in Nonprofits
A Positive Organizational Scholarship Perspective
lynn wooten & Kelle Parsons
Academic Desk