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Mission, money, and merit: Strategic decision making by nonprofit managers
Author(s) -
Krug Kersti,
Weinberg Charles B.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
nonprofit management and leadership
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.844
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1542-7854
pISSN - 1048-6682
DOI - 10.1002/nml.37
Subject(s) - portfolio , quality (philosophy) , dimension (graph theory) , field (mathematics) , business , strategic planning , strategic choice , strategic thinking , strategic management , public relations , marketing , political science , finance , industrial organization , philosophy , pure mathematics , mathematics , epistemology
Public and nonprofit organizations need to make strategic choices about where to invest their resources. Theyalso need to expose hidden managerial assumptions and lack of adequate knowledge that prevent the attainment ofconsensus in strategic decision making. The approach we developed and tested in the field used a dynamic,three‐dimensional model that tracks individual programs in an organization's portfolio on theircontribution to mission, money, and merit. The first dimension measures whether the organization is doing the rightthings; the second, whether it is doing things right financially; and the third, whether it doing thingsright in terms of quality. Senior managers provide their own evaluations of the organization's programs. Boththe consensus view and the variation in individual assessments contribute to an improved managerial understanding ofthe organization's current situation and to richer discussions in strategic decision making. In field tests,this visual model proved to be a useful and powerful tool for illuminating underlying assumptions and variations inknowledge among managers facing the complex, multidimensional tradeoffs needed in strategic decision making.