Understanding the value creation of the board in local non-profit organisations in Cambodia

Abstract

Governance in non-profit organisations in Cambodia is at a crossroads which requires careful attention from their boards, executive staff, and relevant stakeholders. The boards’ involvement in service, resource and control roles is likely to contribute to developing and sustaining the programme operations of local NGOs, as well as to regain trust and confidence from the government, donors, and beneficiaries. Cambodia is a developing country. Its non-profit sector is at an early stage of development and governance in this sector encounters two considerable problems: mismanagement of donors’ funds and competing projects between NGOs and government departments. The boards play significant roles in ensuring the continuity of the governance function by bringing in critical resources, specialist knowledge and experience, networks, and reputations to the organisations they govern. This thesis aims to understand the value creation of the boards in Cambodia’s local education NGOs. The researcher is a Cambodian national. Empirical studies related to the boards’ involvement and contributions were conducted in three case organisations. Very little has been published in terms of the value creation of non-profit boards in Cambodia and other developing countries. This master’s thesis is based on a qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews with twelve participants. Six of them were board members, and the other six were members of the executive team. After the interviews, the researcher collected the organisations’ documents relating rules and regulations constituting board roles and responsibilities, meeting procedures, and decision-making process. Data analysis involved the triangulation of information collected from the interviews and from the organisations’ documents. Thematic analysis was used to tease out themes which were frequently mentioned by participants with regard to the boards’ valueadded roles. A key finding from this study is that both the management and board members value the boards’ contributions as a way to ensure long-term sustainability of the organisations, especially in terms of strategies, policies and organisational development. Such contributions help improve their organisation’s capacity to satisfy the shift in donors’ priorities, promote organisation’s reputations and cope with uncertainty in the external environments. The boards have a role in preparing the organisations to adapt with changes in government’s regulations and donor’s requirements which emerged as major external contingencies. This study also explains a number of contextual factors that influence the boards’ processes, roles, and behaviour. These factors pertain to board members’ attributes and commitment, boards’ orientation, the role of board chairs in organising and leading their board, and the relationship between the board and executives. The findings in this study make a small empirically-based contribution to the future design of board structure, roles, and processes that would maximise the contribution of non-profit boards in developing countries. It appears that this research has brought up some findings that differ from the normative literature on non-profit board roles, specifically due to the nature of the developing country context that was chosen. One area that potentially contributes to the body of knowledge is around the notion of the boards’ involvement in developing its organisation’s capacity and staff’s capability.