Deciding to Give Online to Cultural Nonprofits: Affiliation, Attitudes, and Demographics
An online survey using a classical music organization?s list of donors, subscribers, and
other affiliates was conducted to compare differences in how each stratum made decisions
about gift-giving to nonprofit organizations. Using a model of cognitive consumer
decision-making to devise their questionnaire, the researchers asked respondents about
preferred media for accessing information, the relevance of information available on Web
sites, the types of information most critical for decision-making, and actual non-profit
giving preferences. The analysis found that concert subscribers and donors differed from
more loosely affiliated respondents in the types of information sources they consulted and
the types of information they accessed on Web sites. However, there was almost no
difference between donors, subscribers, single-ticket buyers, and online store purchasers
in the types of information used to make decisions about gift-giving to nonprofit
organizations. The sample was further divided into groups likely and unlikely to give
online in the future. In this second analysis, there were even fewer differences in
information preferences between groups, suggesting that nonprofit fund-raising campaigns
can be designed with similar content regardless of whether donors are inclined to make
gifts by traditional methods or online. This study has important implications for edevelopment
strategies.
Leadership and Change Mangement
The purpose of the present study is to examine the reasons and circumstances of strategic
change initiatives and how management and their behavior can go wrong. In particular,
how such change initiatives are being communicated, perceived, justified, and
implemented within organizations. Organizational change management is usually
understood on the basis of traditional strategy approaches and tends to focus on
technical issues. Of course, most managers work feverously to identify and pursue
change management. Executives that fail to plan for the human side of change will often
find themselves speculating why the plan has failed. No single methodology fits every
organization or situation. What this presentation will explore is why change is inherently
unsettling for people at all levels of the organization and why the leaders of the
organization must embrace new approaches first and develop ways to motivate the rest of
the institution. They must learn to speak with one voice and model the desired behaviors.
The executive teams must understand that, although the public face may be unified, it is
also composed of individuals who are going through stressful events and need to be
supported.
An Examination of Traditional and Nontraditional students evaluations of professorial leadership styles: tranformational versus transactional approach
The present study was designed to empirically examine how traditional
and nontraditional students varied in their perceptions of and appreciation for
"Transformational" versus "Transactional Leadership" Styles as indicated by
their survey responses. An "accidental" sample of 150 participants from the
general student population at a college in the rural southeastern region of the
United States participated in the investigation. The critical questions raised in the
present study were whether traditional students differed from nontraditional
students on the set of four transformational leadership styles scales. None of the
four scales differed by student type. A similar hypothesis was tested with a set of
independent samples t-tests. Only the t-test for grade orientation 2 was even
marginally significant. Traditional students reported a marginally higher level of
grade orientation than nontraditional students. Implications for college
professors and administrators are discussed.
Recession Economics and Non-Neutral Money
This paper examines the monetary policy choices before a central bank
during an economic downturn. The central bank can do nothing and allow credit
contraction, actively contract the money supply more, or expand the money supply to
offset the monetary contraction. The paper concludes that credit contraction during a
recession is a bad situation. However, activist policies that either expand or further
contract the money supply are worse.