A narrative inquiry of non-profit organization turnaround: Leadership through operant focus

This qualitative research articulated a narrative inquiry investigation about how three leaders turned around their non-profit organizations. Three leaders were purposefully selected. The subjects represented a leader (head coach) from a college football program, a leader (chairman of the board of directors) from a non-profit art museum, and a leader (governor) from a state government. Data were collected during one-on-one semi-structured oral history interviews and analyzed through the narrative inquiry process suggested by Clandinin and Connelly (2000). The inquiry process included four phases: (a) field texts as data gathering (interviews), (b) field texts as data gathering (field notes), (c) field texts into narrative texts, and (d) submission of research narrative for leader verification. Field texts as data gathering included semi-structured interviews with each leader and the use of the researcher's field notes. Field texts included interim texts and field notes that were written into narrative texts as a process of analyzing data Clandinin and Connelly (2000) call "back and forthing."; The data were then coded into themes for similarities and to find outliers. The final narrative text created the platform for this study's findings. There was one important finding for the initiation response of the leaders. They changed the attitudes of followers inside and outside their organizations through the use of an operant focus. There were four important findings of leadership actions, all relating to the operant focus, taken after the initiation response stage. These include the following: (a) leaders continued to change attitudes of followers inside and outside the organizations, (b) leaders employed the right people in the right jobs for the right situations, (c) leaders took "little steps" on their way to success, and (d) the leaders continued to use the operant focus to sustain the turnaround.