Managerial Innovativeness and Project Effectiveness in Nonprofit Organizations: A Test of Trust-Control Framework

Abstract

Innovativeness is much desired in the nonprofit sector to meet emerging market challenges, yet research has largely neglected to examine factors that influence individual managers’ innovativeness on specific projects, or the effect of innovation on project outcomes. We develop and test a theoretical framework of main and interactive effects of organizational (control) and interpersonal (trust) factors using matched data from 197 project managers and referral raters in 36 organizations. Our analyses suggest that supervisory trust and process control play a complementary role in influencing project innovativeness and effectiveness in large organizations. In small organizations, supervisory trust is singularly dominant.

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations, Innovation, Trust, Control