Normative understandings of nonprofit governance: everyday discourses and research perspectives

This chapter analyses normative ideal types of organizational governance that are prevalent in nonprofit practice and scholarly literature. Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) practise a wide variety of governance models. From close up, one could say that each NPO has a unique governance system: a leadership system, control protocols, property rights, decision rights, and other practices that give the organization its authority and mandate for action. Such an understanding of nonprofit governance corresponds to the holistic meaning of the word ‘governance’ which comes from the French gouverner, which means to govern and to rule, which is equivalent to Latin gubernare and Greek κυβερνάω. These ancient words mean to control the direction of something, such as a ship. Each NPO has its own system for staying on course.From a distance, typical patterns in NPOs’ governance systems can be identified. These patterns are historically and culturally contingent.