The CEO and the Community-Center's Performance: The Moderating Role of Community Awareness

Abstract

Third sector organizations are having more responsibilities than ever, responsibilities that once were under governmental liabilities (i.e., the first sector). The community center is one of the leading third sector organizations. These centers are part of the community, mainly operating non-formal education activities but also cultural and sports events and more. Although accumulating scientific evidence shows that the CEO has a pivotal role in shaping the organization's performance in business organizations, research concerning the CEO's role in the community center's performance is scant. Here we focused on the CEO's performance and hypothesized that it would reflect in the organizational performance. Further, since, in nature, the community center should be an integral part of the community, we also assessed the role of the CEO's community awareness. We surveyed 164 CEOs, employees, and board members of 55 community centers across Israel to examine our hypotheses. We measured the CEO's performance and community awareness, and the center's success as it reflects in participants' perceptions. As hypothesized, we found that both CEO's performance and community awareness positively correlate with the center's performance. Moreover, we found an interaction effect such that community awareness moderates the CEO's performance and the center's performance relationships. A simple slope analysis revealed that the correlation between the CEO's performance and the center's performance relationship is more robust for CEOs with high community awareness. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for the selection of CEOs.

Keywords

• ceo performance
• community center
• community awareness
• israel