Shaping Manager Well‐Being and Functioning in Declining Nonprofit Organizations: The Critical Role of Strategy Implementation

ABSTRACT Under the roof of Christian churches in Central Europe, some nonprofit organizations (NPOs) grow, while others are in marked decline. Our study in this context extends a previous focus on financial indicators to NPO managers' experiences, their role clarity and job satisfaction, during phases of organizational growth and decline. Specifically, we investigate how differences in strategic orientation (i.e., structure and market orientation) and its implementation (i.e., strategy awareness, performance objectivity, and leadership presence) between mid and late‐stage NPOs help explain the relationship between life stage and managers' job satisfaction and role clarity. We conducted 15 expert interviews and an online field survey with lower‐, middle‐, and upper‐level managers ( N = 818) in churches and church‐affiliated welfare organizations in Central Europe. We found that managers in declining NPOs (i.e., churches) experience more structure orientation and less market orientation, as well as a weaker emphasis on strategy implementation, compared to managers in growing NPOs (i.e., welfare organizations). Moreover, we found that the weaker emphasis on implementation, but not the specific strategic orientation, was related to lower levels of role clarity and satisfaction. It thus seems (more) critical for NPOs in later life stages to effectively implement and communicate their strategy, rather than to fundamentally change their strategic orientation, to foster managerial role clarity and job satisfaction.