Fostering integrative community leadership

The Leadership Quarterly 21 (2010) 324–335

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

The Leadership Quarterly j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / l e a q u a

Fostering integrative community leadership Joyce E. Bono a,⁎, Winny Shen b, Mark Snyder b a b

Department of Human Resources and Industrial Relations, University of Minnesota, United States Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, United States

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Keywords: Community leadership Volunteer motives Community leadership development Community stewardship

a b s t r a c t This longitudinal field study examined the determinants of integrative, volunteer community leadership. Using a sample of 1443 participants in 43 community leadership programs across North America, we linked altruistic, social- and self-oriented motives to the breadth of individuals' volunteer involvement in their communities. Individuals who engaged in volunteer community leadership reported more altruistic motives (i.e., they volunteered because they were concerned about others). High levels of voluntary community leadership were also associated with social motives, such as getting involved in the community because friends or important others think doing so is important. Regardless of their motives, participants engaged in their communities in new ways following participation in a community leadership program, suggesting that such programs foster integrative community leadership. Programs that focused on team building as part of their curriculum were the most successful in fostering new community leadership activities, and programs that focused on knowledge and awareness of the community were effective in increasing participants' knowledge and awareness of the community. Considered as a whole, results of this study suggest that community leadership programs can increase both knowledge and awareness of the community and actual engagement in the community for community members who choose to participate in such programs. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Fostering integrative community leadership We must develop a network of leaders, drawn from all segments, who accept some measure of responsibility for the community's shared concerns. I call them networks of responsibility, leaders of disparate or conflicting interests who undertake to act collaboratively on behalf of the shared concerns of the community and the nation. - John W. Gardner In recent years, there has been a growing concern that societies' formal administrative structures (i.e., government and nonprofit organizations) are not well prepared to tackle the complex problems facing our increasingly global society: problems such as homelessness, healthcare, or preservation of the environment. Although traditionally such problems were tackled by special interest groups or government programs, there is increasing recognition in the past two decades that “sticky” problems such as these can only be addressed by collaboration among sectors, including government, non-profit organizations, and businesses. As

⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (J.E. Bono). 1048-9843/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2010.01.010

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noted by Crosby and Bryson (2005), these problems are those in which many individuals have a stake, “yet, each of these stakeholders has only some of the information, resources, and authority needed to remedy the problem” (p. XIV). It is problems such as these that require cross-sector collaboration, innovation, and integrative leadership, defined as leadership that fosters collective action by multiple stakeholders from various sectors of society who work together for the common good. As appreciation of the need for integrative leadership in the 21st century grows, more U.S. communities are seeking citizen engagement (e.g., Alliance for Sustainable Communities in Annapolis, MD; Citizen's Initiative in Sitka, AK; Vision for a Greater New Haven in New Haven, CT; and Families First! in Oklahoma City, OK) and research and teaching centers, which bring citizens and leaders from diverse backgrounds together to solve shared problems, are popping up across the nation (e.g., University of Minnesota Center for Integrative Leadership). Additionally, the role of business in society has also gained increasing prominence as a topic of study. Much existing research on cross-sector collaboration, corporate social responsibility, and integrative leadership has focused on organizations as the unit of analysis, asking questions such as, how can we bring business organizations together with governmental and non-profit organizations to solve complex societal problems? Additionally, research on social entrepreneurship often focuses on questions such as how non-profits can innovatively utilize the language, methods, or networks of the for-profit business world to further their philanthropic mission (Eikenberry & Kluver, 2004; Peredo & McLean, 2006). There is an analogous line of inquiry – dating back to the Greek city-states – focused on direct engagement of individual citizens with their governments and communities. In the U.S., demands for direct citizen participation in government and community affairs have continued to grow over the past half century, despite ongoing controversy about its efficiency and effectiveness. Research evaluating the efficacy of citizen participation provides a mixed picture of its success, in part because of the wide variety of contexts in which citizen participation is studied and the wide variety of evaluation methods used to study it (see Roberts, 2004 for a comprehensive review of citizen participation). Nonetheless, citizen engagement has been positively linked to various indices of community thriving (see Putnam, 2000). The primary purpose of our research was to examine integrative community leadership. Voluntary community leadership is integrative because individual citizens work together with non-profit community-based organizations to solve shared community problems and improve living and working conditions for citizens. Existing research on integrative leadership tends to focus on cross-sector collaboration, wherein business, government, and non-profit organizations work together, across boundaries, for the common good (e.g., Crosby & Bryson, 2005). In contrast, our research focuses explicitly on integrative leadership at the individual level, examining a) the motives of individuals who volunteer their time in service of their communities, and b) the efficacy of community-based programs intended to foster integrative community leadership. We ask two questions: 1) Why do individual citizens engage in voluntary leadership for the greater good of their communities? and 2) Are programs designed to foster volunteer community activities effective? These are important questions, given cuts in public services brought about by the economic climate of the early 21st Century (Riccardi & Fausset, 2008). Our first aim in this research is to better understand the motives of individuals who take on volunteer leadership roles in their communities. Why do busy managers agree to serve as volunteer members on the boards of small non-profit organizations? What motivates individuals to take leadership roles in working with other members of the community to develop and sustain programs that often provide no personal benefit to them, but meet the broader needs of the community? Our second aim is to examine the efficacy of a formal model of community leadership development that has become common in the U.S., and recently begun spreading around the world (i.e., Zee, 2001). Are formal programs aimed at developing integrative community leadership successful in increasing the engagement of individuals in their communities?

1.1. Motives of volunteer community leaders According to a 2007 report by the Corporation for National and Community Service, volunteer rates in the U.S. are at historical highs: 26.7% of the adult population volunteered in 2006, as compared to 20.4% two decades earlier. In 2006, 61.2 million volunteers dedicated 8.1 billion hours of volunteer service, an average of 36.5 h per capita. “Overall, 31.2% of people in the U.S. engaged in civic life by volunteering, working with their neighbors, or attending public meetings” (Corporation for National and Community Service, 2007, p. 27). This level of volunteerism and civic engagement raises the question of why, in the absence of obligation, people get involved in their communities. To address this question, we draw on psychological research examining motives to volunteer (e.g., Omoto & Snyder, 1995; Clary et al., 1998, Penner & Finkelstein, 1998). Since large numbers of people volunteer and approximately two-thirds of them continue to volunteer from one year to the next (Corporation for National and Community Service, 2007), psychologists have focused their attention on volunteer motivation as a way to understand why people volunteer and what sustains that behavior over time. Clary and colleagues (1998) took a functional approach to volunteer motives, suggesting six unique functions that volunteering may fulfill for individuals: values (i.e., altruistic/humanitarian concern), social (i.e., friendship or social approval), protective (i.e., avoid negative feelings or problems), enhancement (i.e., ego boosting), understanding (i.e., learning knowledge or skills or about oneself or others), and career advancement (i.e., skill acquisition or social networking). This six function structure of volunteer motives has received support in the literature (e.g., Houle, Sagarin, & Kaplan, 2005; Okun & Schultz, 2003; Okun, Barr, & Herzog, 1998). Some research has focused on the importance of matching volunteer motives to the situation, showing that individuals are happiest when they are engaged in activities that fulfill their motives (Clary et al., 1998; Tschirhart, Mesch, Perry, Miller, & Lee, 2001). For example, an individual who volunteers to advance his or her career tends

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to be happiest when volunteering in a setting where new skills can be acquired or when provided opportunities to interact with powerful others with access to career opportunities. Other research has linked volunteer motives more broadly to outcomes, such as number of hours volunteered, satisfaction with volunteering, and ongoing commitment (Omoto & Snyder, 1995; Penner & Finkelstein, 1998). This research paradigm sometimes pits altruistic, other-oriented volunteer motives (e.g., values) against self- (e.g., understanding, career, protective, and enhancement) or socially-oriented volunteer motives to determine which type of motives are most strongly linked to volunteer activity, commitment, and satisfaction. Within this paradigm, the data are not entirely consistent. Clary and Orenstein (1991), Penner and Finkelstein (1998), and Farmer and Fedor (2001) found that altruistic motives were positively associated with volunteer length of service or contributions of time and money. In a related vein of research, Perry, Brudney, Coursey, and Littlepage (2008) found that public service motivation was associated with volunteering hours through a formal organization. Since self-sacrifice and compassion are components of public service motivation, their findings also suggest other-oriented values like altruism should be related to higher levels of volunteerism activity. In contrast to these studies, Omoto and Snyder (1995), in a sample of AIDS volunteers, found that self-interested motives (e.g., understanding, personal development, and esteem enhancement) were significantly and positively associated with volunteers' length of service. They conclude, “it appears, ironically, that volunteers motivated by more self-oriented concerns may actually provide greater benefits to others through their longer lengths of service” (p 583). Thus, it may be that altruistic motives lead people to volunteer, but self-oriented motives are associated with long term commitment to volunteering. Considered as a whole, past research suggests that both self- and other-oriented motives may be important predictors of volunteer community activities, although existing research has generally focused on volunteering within a particular community organization rather than taking a broader view of an individual's overall community involvement. Existing research also leaves unanswered the questions of how motives may be linked to community activities over time, because individuals may be motivated to start volunteering for altruistic reasons, but tend to continue over the long run out of self-interest, or because others they know volunteer. H1a. Altruistic (values) motives will be positively associated with lifetime volunteer community leadership activities. H1b. Social and self-oriented (career, understanding, and self-esteem enhancement) motives will be positively associated with lifetime volunteer community leadership activities. 1.2. Community leadership programs In thousands of large and small cities and communities across the United States (and more recently internationally) community leadership programs exist for the purpose of developing active and informed citizen leaders who can collaborate with other individuals and groups to solve community-based problems. The longest known continually operating community-based program connected to a city, Leadership Atlanta, began in the 1970s when the southern United States was in the throes of the civil rights movement and Atlanta had a “pressing need for informed, inspired, and committed leaders, and for a sense of unity, commonality, and dialogue between the diverse constituencies” (Leadership Atlanta, 2004, History section, paragraph 3). According to the Community Leadership Association (CLA; formed in 1979 to support local community leadership associations), community leadership programs vary in sponsorship and content, but most follow the Atlanta model in that they share the goal of developing integrative leaders. “Programs encourage people to be trustees of their communities — to work for the common good — and to become a leadership resource for the entire community, able to understand and facilitate collaboration, consensus building and creative problem solving in addressing community needs” (CLA, n.d., Who We Are section, paragraph 3). Although many local community leadership programs have conducted informal evaluations, mainly focused on participants' satisfaction, there are few published records in the academic literature related to the effectiveness of community leadership programs. In a qualitative study, Spalding (2003) reported that 100% of the community leadership program participants she interviewed felt the program had a positive impact on both their willingness to act as a community trustee and actual civic engagement. Tschirhart et al. (2001) found that after one year in the program, AmeriCorps volunteers tended to be moderately satisfied with their AmeriCorps experience and to report being more likely to volunteer with non-profit organizations in the future. Considering the limited available research, it is not entirely clear whether formal, community-based leadership programs are effective in broadening the involvement of participants in their communities (Stukas, Snyder, & Clary, 1999; Stukas, Clary, & Snyder, 1999). There is also little empirical research on the stability of motives. Clary and colleagues (1998) examined the stability of motives over a very short period of time (one month) with no intervention and found motives to be stable; test–retest reliabilities for the six motives for volunteering ranged from r = .64 to r = .78. In their study of AmeriCorps volunteers, Tschirhart et al. (2001) found that after a year in the program, volunteers showed decreases in some motives (including altruistic) and stability in others. Despite the paucity of formal and quantitative research, there is some evidence that participation in a community leadership program may influence participant beliefs and behaviors. Spalding's (2003) study of participants in one community leadership program revealed that “most participants reported increasing their civic involvement and experiencing personal change” (p. 182). Specifically, all participants (N = 20) reported increased community involvement, and most reported increased confidence, as well as critical reflection on themselves and their communities. Thus we expect the following: H2. Participants in a community leadership program will broaden their voluntary community activities by engaging in new types of activities, following program completion.

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H3. There will be an increase in the altruistic motives of individuals who participate in community leadership programs. Since community leadership programs vary in the content of their programming, we were also interested in whether a program's curriculum content affected participants' knowledge and awareness of the community or community involvement. Many community leadership programs explicitly attempt to increase participant's knowledge and awareness of the community on the assumption that knowledge of community needs may lead participants to contribute more, because they better understand where the needs of the community are and how things get done in the community. Perry et al. (2008) reported that volunteers often refer to a sense of community (e.g., a moral obligation to or connection with others in the community) as a primary reason for volunteering. For this reason, some programs focus more on declarative knowledge, changing what participants know, and others on procedural knowledge, changing what participants can do. In the absence of a strong theoretical framework, we explored the association between program content and subsequent knowledge of the community and volunteer community leadership activities. RQ 1 Does the impact of a community leadership program on participants' voluntary community behaviors vary according to program content? RQ 2 Does the impact of a community leadership program on participants' knowledge of the community vary according to program content?

2. Method 2.1. Participants and procedures Participants for this study were recruited from the membership of the Community Leadership Association (CLA), a non-profit organization whose mission is to build community leadership capacity. Emails were sent to program directors notifying them of our research and a booth was set up at the 2003 CLA annual conference. Programs were invited to participate in this study if they ran cohort programs with at least three face to face sessions during the calendar year. The typical community leadership program holds a series of half- or full-day monthly class sessions over the course of the academic year (i.e., September–May). Content of these sessions ranges from talks by local media and politicians on how to get things done in the community, to leadership skill development exercises, to visits to human service agencies in the community, to bus tours aimed at educating participants on the history and current conditions of their local community. Programs with an explicit emphasis on youth or elders, programs in high schools or within business organizations, and programs formed to address a specific community problem were excluded. Participating programs were required to a) allocate 45 min at their orientation session to administer paper surveys to their participants (Time 1 participant survey), b) complete a survey describing the community served by the program and curriculum content (Program survey), and c) provide email addresses at the end of the program for the purpose of a one-year post-program online follow-up survey (Time 2 participant survey). Programs were also required to email their participants requesting participation in the Time 2 survey. Initially, 52 community leadership programs agreed to participate; however, three programs were dropped due to failure to administer the required surveys as requested and two were dropped due to unusual characteristics of the programs (i.e., one program was two years long and the other was housed within a senior center). Additionally four program directors failed to complete program surveys. Community leadership program participants completed two surveys. Time 1 (T1) participant surveys were completed on paper at the program orientation (N = 1598 persons, but listwise N = 1443 due to missing items). T1 surveys assessed demographic information, motives for community involvement, and number of volunteer community activities the individual had engaged in prior to the entering the program. Time 2 (T2; N = 750) surveys were administered online approximately one year after program completion and asked about activities in the year since the program ended, motives, and knowledge of the community. Based on T1 and T2 survey responses, approximately 46% of the sample completed the T2 survey; however, this figure is a lower-bound estimate as there was limited attrition of T1 participants throughout the duration of the program. Additionally, we were unable to match some T1 and T2 data for three reasons: 1) Some participants did not attend the orientation session due to scheduling conflicts or because they were late enrollees; 2) Some participants dropped out of the program, though this number was small; 3) We matched participant data at T1 and T2 by name and some individuals neglected to enter their name or entered it differently at T1 and T2. Thus, matched T1 and T2 data was available for 736 participants. Matched participant T1, participant T2, and program survey data was available for 43 community leadership programs. These programs were located throughout North America (U.S. and Canada) and represent a broad variety of communities, ranging in size from 12,500 to 16 million, with an average community size of about 800,000. These programs had been in existence for an average of 17 years (range 5–31 years). Seventy eight percent of participating programs were founded by a Chamber of Commerce (either solely or in conjunction with business partners), 12% by groups of individuals in the community, 7% by foundations, and 1 by a single individual; at the time of the study, 59% were operated by a local Chamber of Commerce. The number of class sessions ranged from 6–20 with an average of 12 (including orientation, graduation, and program days). Most (93%) held an off site retreat at some point during the program, required some reading (62%), and included a group project (75%) linked to the community.

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Most programs received applications from more individuals than they could admit, with an average acceptance rate of 80% across programs. Based on T1 data, the average age of participants was 40.97 years (SD = 9.30) and 55% were female. Eight percent of the sample was high school graduates, 40% held bachelor's degrees, 39% of held master's degrees, 6% held Ph.D.s, and 8% held other degrees. The majority of participants were white, with 18% from minority groups. On average, participants were employed at their current organization for 7.49 years (SD = 6.97) and lived in their current community for 16.75 years (SD = 13.82). Most (75%) had family living in their community. Participants' average salary was $77,404 (SD = $55,310). To determine if those who completed T2 surveys differed from the original sample, we compared them to the full sample on a number of demographic characteristics and focal variables collected at Time 1. We found that participants who completed the T2 survey were more likely to be female (X2(1) = 5.90, p = .02; Φ = −0.06), white (X2(5) = 12.49, p = .03; Φ = 0.09), older (t(1587)= − 4.04, p < .001; d = 0.20), had longer organizational tenures (t(1410) = − 2.93. p.01; d = 0.16), and had lower T1 career motives (t(1606) = 2.04, p = .04; d = − 0.10). However, the magnitudes of these differences were small (average |d| = .15 and |Φ| = .08). Our matched participants did not differ from our unmatched participants on educational level, family or time in community, or on any of the other motives. 3. Measures 3.1. Participant background variables Background variables (T1 participant survey) included several one item questions to assess age, race, sex, and educational level (high school, BA/BS, MA, PhD, and other). 3.2. Participant motives for community involvement We adapted the Volunteer Function Inventory to assess participant motives in our context. This inventory is a commonly used and well validated measure of volunteer motives, along six dimensions (Clary et al., 1998). All items from the original inventory were contextualized to reflect the community context. Participants reported how important each item was in motivating them to get involved in their community using a 7 point scale (1 = not at all important to 7 = extremely important). Each of the six motives was assessed with five items, for example, “I feel compassion toward people in need” and “I am genuinely concerned about my community” (values motive); “People I am close to want me to get involved in the community” and “People I know share an interest in community service” (social motive); “Community involvement is a good escape from my own troubles” and “If I am feeling bad, community service helps me forget about it” (protective motive); “Community involvement makes me feel important” and “Community involvement makes me feel needed” (enhancement motive); “I can explore my own strengths” and “I can learn more about my community” (Understanding motive); and finally, “I will be able to get a foot in the door at a place where I would like to work” and “Community involvement will help me in my chosen profession” (Career motive). Participant motives for community involvement were assessed in the T1 and T2 surveys. 3.3. Community activities Community involvement was assessed pre-program (lifetime involvement) and post-program (activities during the year following program completion). As the basis of assessing community activities, we used the Community Involvement Inventory (CII; Bono, Snyder, & Duehr, 2005). This inventory includes a broad variety of volunteer and civic activities. There are 22 items in the CII representing a broad variety of ways that individuals might be engaged in their communities (e.g., participated in charity events; volunteered for community health effort; volunteered time for human service or arts organizations; visited the sick, homebound, or elderly; tutored a member of the community).Of the 22 items, three were designated as leadership items because they involved leading, organizing, or influencing change: 1) Served on a board of a community or non-profit organization; 2) Helped plan a fundraiser for a charitable organization; and 3) Organized a community effort (e.g., block party). At T1, participants reported on “past” community activities using the following responses: 0 = “I have never engaged in this activity”, 1 = “I have engaged in this activity once”, and “If you have engaged in this activity more than once, indicate how frequently using the scale below” (2 = rarely to 6 = frequently). The mean of these scores formed the lifetime community involvement score. At T2, participants reported any activities they had engaged in during the year since they completed the community leadership program. They chose from two of the same responses used in the T1 survey (0 = never and 1 = once) and slightly different third response (2 = “More than once”). We computed two scores for each participant: lifetime community involvement (22 activities) and lifetime community leadership (3 items). 3.4. New community activities Because one of our primary aims was to determine whether individuals broadened their community involvement following completion of a community leadership program, we used the T1 and T2 data together to determine how many new community activities each participant engaged in during the one year following program completion. Because the Time 1 survey covered the entire lifetime prior to the community leadership program and the Time 2 survey covered only the first post-program year, we

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recoded Time 1 survey responses so that each participant was assigned a T1 score of 0 (has never done the activity) or 1 (has done the activity at some point in the past). We used the same process for the T2, so that participants were assigned a T2 score of 0 (has not done the activity since graduating from a community leadership program) or 1 (has done the activity since program completion). For each of the 22 activities, participants were coded as having engaged in a new activity if their Time 1 score was zero and their Time 2 score was 1. We then summed the number of new activities, assigning each participant a new community activity score that ranged from 0–14 (of 22 possible) and a new community leadership score which ranged from 0–3 (of three possible. 3.5. Community knowledge At T2, we also assessed participants' knowledge of the community using a scale developed by Pigg, Lovell, and Reed-Adams (2007) for the purpose of community leadership program evaluation. The scale included eight items, including items such as “I have knowledge of local, county, and state resources,” “I feel I have a good understanding of the important public issues facing our community,” and “I understand my community's structure and dynamics.” 3.6. Program background variables Data on program selectivity (i.e. number of applicants admitted out of total applicant pool) and urbanity (i.e., “On a 1 to 5 ratings scale, with 1 being rural and 5 being urban, how would you characterize the community that your program serves?) were provided by program directors. Program size was determined by the number of participants present at the orientation session. 3.7. Program focus In the early stages of survey development, we consulted with several program directors and CLA to better understand program content. Through these interviews, we identified five broad categories of program content: developing leadership skills, developing knowledge of the community, developing awareness of community needs, team-building activities, and hands-on experience with community organizations. Program directors were asked to report the extent to which their program focused on each of the five content areas using a five point scale (1 = not focal to 5 = extremely focal). Due to a strong correlation between them (r = .63), the community knowledge and community awareness variables were averaged to form a single variable labeled “community knowledge and awareness.” 4. Results 4.1. Linking motives and community participation Our first set of analyses was conducted at the individual level; full descriptive statistics, scale reliabilities, and correlations are included in Appendix A. Due to moderate inter-correlations among the six volunteer motives, we conducted a regression analysis (see Table 1) in which we regressed lifetime community involvement and lifetime leadership activities on participants' demographic variables (i.e., age, gender, education, and race) and motives for volunteering. Since the T1 survey reported on all

Table 1 Regression analyses predicting lifetime community involvement. Variable

Lifetime community involvement β

Age Sex Education Race Values motive Social motive Protective motive Enhancement motive Understanding motive Career motive R2 F (df)

.26 ⁎⁎ −.04 .11 ⁎⁎ .12 ⁎⁎ .31 ⁎⁎ .16 ⁎⁎ .08 ⁎⁎ −.02 −.06 .03 .26 50.97 (10, 1422)

Lifetime leadership activities B

.55 − 1.61 3.01 6.20 6.24 2.44 1.49 −.24 − 1.04 .51

β .20 ⁎⁎ −.01 .05 ⁎ .06 ⁎ .23 ⁎⁎ .13 ⁎⁎ .04 .02 −.09 ⁎⁎ .03 .13 21.88 (10, 1422)

B .01 −.01 .04 .11 .15 .06 .02 .01 −.05 .02

Note. N = 1433. β = standardized regression coefficient; and B = unstandardized coefficient. For sex, 1 = female and 2 = male. For race, 1 = White and 2 = minority. For educational level, 1 = high school, 2 = BA/BS, 3 = MA, and 4 = Ph.D. ⁎ p < .05. ⁎⁎ p < .01.

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past activities, over the course of a lifetime, it is not surprising that older participants were more involved in their communities than were younger participants. Highly educated individuals and non-white minorities were also more involved in the community. Gender was unrelated to community activity. With respect to the link between volunteer motives and community engagement, results in Table 1 show that individuals with altruistic reasons for community involvement (i.e., values motive) engaged in significantly more community activities (β = .31, p < .01) and more leadership activities (β = .23, p < .01). Altruistic motives were the best predictor of community leadership over the lifetime, supporting Hypothesis H1a. Individuals who got involved in their communities for social reasons also reported greater lifetime involvement in community (β = .16, p < .01) and leadership activities (β = .13, p < .01). Although we did find a small association between the protective motive (i.e., those who get involved to avoid their problems) and lifetime community involvement (β = .08, p < .01) and between the understanding motive and lifetime leadership activities (β = −.09, p < .01), the other self-oriented motives (self-esteem enhancement and career motive) were not linked to community involvement. Thus, Hypothesis H1b, that social and self-oriented motives would be related to more community involvement and leadership activities was partially supported.

4.2. Linking program participation to participants' post-program community knowledge and engagement First, we examined the number of new activities engaged in by participants in the one year following program completion. Means, standard deviations, and correlations for all study variables at the program level are presented in Table 2. Results indicate that, on average, participants engaged in 1.99 new community activities and .76 new leadership activities in the first post-program year, supporting Hypothesis H2. Our results show that the majority of participants engaged in at least one new community activity and one new leadership activity following program completion (78% and 61% respectively). To better understand what type of new activities were most common, we looked at the top five activities where new participation occurred; they included joining a speakers bureau, joining the board of a non-profit organization, participating in a community support group, getting involved in political activities, and volunteering at a school. Second, we examined the effects of program participation on participant motives. Comparing motives for community involvement at program orientation with motives one year after program completion, we found generally modest changes in mean levels (see Table 3). Participants' altruistic values did not increase after participation in a community leadership program; therefore Hypothesis H3 was not supported. The largest change in motives we found was an increase in the social motive (preprogram mean = 3.40 and post-program mean = 3.75; t (735) = 7.13, p < .01). Small changes were also found in all of the selfinterested motives. Specifically, there was a decrease in volunteering for self-esteem enhancement and understanding, and a small increase in volunteering for protective and career reasons. Although we hypothesized (but did not find) increases in altruistic motives, our results reveal that the biggest change in motives following community leadership program participation was for social motives, which increased for 58% of participants. This is an interesting finding because social motives were positively related to community engagement over the lifetime (β = .16 and. 13, p < .01) for lifetime community involvement and leadership activities respectively; Table 1).

Table 2 Program level means, standard deviations and correlations. Mean 1. Leadership skills 2. Hands-on experiences 3. Team building 4. Commun. knowledge 5. Program size 6. Program selectivity 7. Urbanity 8. Mean age 9. Mean sex 10. Mean education 11. Mean race 12. T1 community acts 13. T1 leadership acts 14. T2 community acts 15. T2 leadership acts 16. New community acts 17. New leadership acts

3.01 4.02 3.74 4.64 38.13 0.82 3.65 41.02 1.44 2.43 1.17 51.64 1.37 15.70 0.56 1.99 0.76

SD 1.09 1.14 1.03 0.62 11.44 0.15 1.10 3.20 0.12 0.22 0.13 6.13 0.17 1.64 0.10 0.51 0.28

1

2

.16 .27 .25 −.19 .13 −.27 .29 .03 .01 −.13 .28 −.30 .01 .05 .23 −.10 .25 −.03 .21 −.12 .23 −.19 .09 .04 .23 −.20 .21 .05 −.03 .01 .01

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

−.06 .04 .23 −.14 .06 −.09 .19 .13 .61 −.19 .22 .33 −.03 −.14 .07 .04 .15 .35 .08 −.02 −.04 .28 .25 .49 −.07 .50 .41 .32 .29 −.17 .06 −.06 .32 .20 −.29 .35 .33 .15 .31 −.31 .52 .52 .03 .73 .54 .35 .07 .20 −.35 .44 .42 −.07 .60 .51 .90 −.03 .48 .13 −.25 .30 .25 .09 .25 .26 .37 .25 .00 .25 .26 −.17 .16 .12 .33 .13 .03 .27 .21 .54 −.23 .05 −.37 .04 −.45 −.01 −.17 −.61 −.24 −.53 −.55 .05 −.02 .20 −.34 .13 −.01 .13 −.06 −.23 .18 .20 .12 .28 −.46 −.71 −.39

Note. N = 43 programs (except N = 38 for program size and program selectivity). Correlations greater than .31 are significant at p < .05 and greater than .39 are significant at p < .01. For community urbanity, higher scores indicate more urban communities. For sex, 1 = female and 2 = male. For race, 1 = White and 2=minority. For educational level, 1 = high school, 2 = BA/BS, 3 = MA, and 4 = Ph.D.

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Table 3 Paired-sample t-tests examining change in motives. Motive

Values Social Protective Enhancement Understanding Career

Time 1

Time 2

Paired samples t-test

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean difference

SD

5.86 3.40 1.98 3.82 5.20 3.14

.96 1.28 1.05 1.23 1.07 1.25

5.85 3.75 2.09 3.63 5.00 3.23

.95 1.29 1.09 1.21 1.01 1.22

−.01 .35 ⁎⁎ .11 ⁎⁎ −.18 ⁎⁎ −.20 ⁎⁎ .10 ⁎

.84 1.34 1.05 1.11 1.05 1.15

t (df) t t t t t t

(732) = − 0.40 (735) = 7.13 (729) = 2.86 (732) = − 4.49 (732) = − 5.21 (733) = 2.25

Note. N = 730–736. ⁎ p < .05. ⁎⁎ p < .01.

4.3. Examining programs' curriculum content Our final analyses linked program curriculum to participants' new community (and leadership) activities, as well as to their knowledge of the community. Addressing Research Questions 1 and 2 we sought to determine whether some programs are more effective than others at fostering community knowledge and engagement. To answer the question of how program curriculum affected outcomes, we used random coefficient modeling (HLM 6; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002) to examine the effects of program curriculum (program level data) on participants' post-program knowledge of the community and new community and leadership activities (individual level data). Because program characteristics (e.g., size, selectivity and location, or participant demographics) may influence program effectiveness, we included program level controls in this analysis. Results in Table 4 show that when programs focus on knowledge and awareness of the community, they achieve mixed results. On the one hand, and not surprisingly, participants in programs with curricula focused on community knowledge and awareness do report higher levels of community knowledge (γ = .10, p < .05). On the other hand, programs with a knowledge and awareness focus are not more successful at fostering new community participation. Indeed, across all community activities, curriculum focus was unrelated to new community involvement. Thus, the increase in postprogram community participation that we found (Table 2) appears to be distributed equally across programs. But, when we linked program curriculum to new leadership activities, we found a positive association between a team-building focus in the curriculum and new activities (γ = .13, p < .01); programs that focused on team building in their curriculum were more likely to have participants who engaged in a new leadership activities during the first post-program year. 5. Discussion Considered as a whole, our results present an optimistic view of the efficacy of community leadership programs. On average, participants in these programs engage in two new community activities in the year following program completion and most participants engaged in at least one new leadership activity. This results in more than 2500 new acts of community engagement

Table 4 Multi-level analysis linking program's curriculum focus to post-program community and leadership participation and knowledge of community. Variable

New community activities Coefficient (B)

Intercept Program controls Program size Program selectivity Urbanity Mean age Mean sex Mean education Mean race Curriculum focus Leadership skills Hands-on experience Team building Community knowledge and awareness

New leadership activities

SE

t

0.09

23.09

− 0.01 0.17 − 0.17 0.02 0.08 − 0.94 0.32

0.01 0.61 0.13 0.04 1.13 0.71 0.95

− 0.77 0.28 − 1.32 0.37 0.07 − 1.32 0.33

− 0.03 0.02 − 0.18 0.11

0.10 0.09 0.11 0.19

− 0.31 0.24 − 1.70 0.58

2.18 ⁎⁎

Coefficient (B)

Knowledge of community

SE

t

0.03

22.47

− 0.63

0.00 0.20 0.05 0.02 0.41 0.25 0.32

− 0.27 1.37 0.50 − 1.58 − 2.51 2.36 − 1.98

− 0.04 − 0.02 0.13 ⁎⁎ -0.11

0.04 0.04 0.04 0.07

− 1.01 − 0.55 3.40 -1.58

0.78 ⁎⁎ 0.00 0.27 0.02 − 0.03 − 1.03 ⁎ 0.58 ⁎

Coefficient (B)

SE

t

0.02

178.57

− 0.01 − 0.26 0.02 0.02 ⁎ 0.37 − 0.01 0.30

0.00 0.14 0.03 0.01 0.25 0.16 0.21

− 1.82 − 1.91 0.55 2.21 1.48 − 0.06 1.45

− 0.05 ⁎ 0.03 0.02 0.10 ⁎

0.02 0.02 0.02 0.04

− 2.29 1.29 0.79 2.43

3.70 ⁎⁎

Note. Level 2 N = 38 and level 1 N = 598. For community urbanity, higher scores indicate more urban communities. For sex, 1 = female and 2 = male. For race, 1 = White and 2=minority. For educational level, 1 = high school, 2 = BA/BS, 3 = MA, and 4 = Ph.D. ⁎ p < .05. ⁎⁎ p < .01.

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J.E. Bono et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 21 (2010) 324–335

and more than 1000 new acts of leadership from participants in the 43 programs in our sample. Given that our sample represents approximately 10% of the membership of the Community Leadership Association, and that most programs have a new, similarly sized class of participants each year, we conclude that community leadership programs, in aggregate, have a meaningful impact on the extent to which individuals engage in integrative leadership in their communities. This is an important finding because community leadership programs are sometimes viewed more as social networking groups than as important venues for fostering integrative community leadership. To better understand how community leadership programs affect engagement, we linked their curricula to outcomes. Specifically, we addressed the question of whether certain programs are more effective than others in fostering integrative community leadership, based on their program content. Results show higher post-program community knowledge in programs that focused on knowledge and awareness of the community, as compared to those who did not. Programs with a teamwork focus were slightly more effective at fostering new leadership activities than those that did not focus on team building in their curriculum. New community participation was not significantly linked to program content. Our results also shed light on the factors that lead individuals to volunteer their time to work with others in the community on important social issues. We found that background factors (e.g., age, education, and race) explained some variance in participant's lifetime community engagement. We also found that individuals' reasons for community engagement (i.e., their motives for getting involved) were significant predictors of their behavior. Specifically, individuals who reported being involved in their communities because of altruistic concerns (values motive) and those who were involved for social reasons (i.e., because their friends or colleagues were involved, or because important others thought community involvement was important) tended to engage more frequently – over the course of their lifetime – in volunteer community activities and to take on more leadership responsibilities. Given the association between motives and level of community engagement, we were also interested in whether or not individuals' motives were changed during their participation in a community leadership program. The question is whether individuals who participate in these programs get more involved in their communities because their motives change. The answer to this question is not straightforward. The strongest predictor of community involvement over the lifetime was having altruistic motives, but altruistic motives (on average) did not increase over the duration of the program. The second strongest predictor of community involvement over the lifetime was social motives and we did observe a significant increase in social motives after participation in a community leadership program. One year after program completion, participants were more likely to report getting involved in their communities for social reasons. This may be a natural outcome of the structure of the typical community leadership program, as anecdotal evidence suggests that strong social networks form among participants. After completing a community leadership program, most participants probably know more people who think community engagement is important, and thus may become motivated by social concerns. Our results suggest that the development of these social networks may elevate participants' social motives, which are in turn associated with post-program community engagement. Despite Tschirhart et al.'s (2001) findings, we were surprised to find that participating in a community leadership program did not increase participants' altruistic motives. One possible explanation for our findings (and Tschirhart's) is that participants, on average, may have presented an inflated view of their altruistic motives as they enter volunteer programs. This possibility is plausible because participants' in our study were surveyed at the orientation session of a program into which they were accepted, in part (and for most, but not all programs) based on the content of an application in which they portrayed themselves as someone with altruistic concerns for the community. Furthermore, although their responses were private, they completed their survey in a room with other class participants, which may have led them to feel that altruistic motives for participation were more socially desirable than self-interested motives. Alternatively, it may be that altruistic motives are stable across the lifetime, representing core underlying values. If this is the case, then programs such as those we studied would have little effect on altruistic motives. Given that we found some differences in program effects based on their curriculum, it would be practically helpful to summarize our results with respect to program content. On the one hand, our results show that – irrespective of curriculum content – individuals who participate in community leadership program experiences changes in their motives for community leadership involvement (social motives increase), and they get involved in their communities in new ways. On the other hand, our results suggest that some programs were more slightly more effective than others at fostering community knowledge and leadership activities. A curriculum focused on community knowledge and awareness appears to affect participants' knowledge of the community. In contrast, a curriculum focused on teamwork is more likely to foster new leadership behaviors in the community, but we found no particular curriculum focus to be more effective in increasing general community engagement. On balance, these results suggest that curriculum focus is not a key predictor of program effectiveness (at least when effectiveness is broadly defined as fostering community engagement), but since this is the first systematic research focused on program curriculum, replication is warranted. A final issue that emerged was a distinct difference in the effectiveness of urban and rural programs. Participants in rural communities were far more likely to engage in new volunteer community activities than were participants in urban communities; however, this apparent greater effectiveness of rural communities is due to fact that participants in rural programs were less involved in their communities when they entered the program. These results have important implications for communities whose aim is to develop community stewardship of the type we examined, especially with respect to their selection processes and procedures. It may be that voluntary community leadership can be increased to a much greater degree in urban programs if the selection criteria were less tied to past community leadership experiences and more tied to desire, potential, or motives. Programs that aim to make a big difference in their communities may be able to increase their impact by

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333

selecting individuals who report altruistic and social motives for involvement, but who have limited prior experience in community leadership. 5.1. Contributions and limitations Like all studies, this one has some limitations. First, although we used a comprehensive inventory of community engagement, our measurement of leadership activity was limited to only three broad categories of activity, at the possible exclusion of other, important, ways that individuals can lead in their communities. Although, the CII was created in consultation with the community leadership programs and through a comprehensive review of the literature on volunteering and civic engagement, we may have missed some important avenues for voluntary, integrative community leadership. Second, our method of measurement did not allow us to assess whether or not graduates of community leadership programs may have deepened their involvement as well as broadened it. Although we did assess frequency of involvement in both Time 1 and Time 2 studies, it is not possible to use these data to assess changes in depth of involvement (e.g., increased time spend with an organization) because our Time 1 measure assessed involvement over the course of a lifetime and our Time 2 measure was over the course of a year. Third, our choice to survey participants at one year after graduation was arbitrary. It may take 2–3 years for the full impact of program participation on voluntary community leadership activities to emerge. Alternatively, it may be that in the enthusiasm of the first year following program completion, new community leadership emerges that is not sustained over time. Given the importance of developing sustained community involvement (Clary & Snyder, 2002), this is an important issue for future research. A fourth limitation of our study is that we do not have much detail about the actual nature of the interactions between program graduates and the community organizations they serve. We argue that voluntary community leadership is integrative because it involves individuals' participating in community organizations with which they are not typically involved (outside of the scope of work and hobby activities). However, we cannot determine from our data whether these associations are truly integrative or collaborative in nature. The spirit of integrative leadership is to bring individuals together across sectors so they can work together collaboratively for the common good. An important issue for future research is to examine the nature of the processes used and relationships formed when individuals' such as those in our study take on volunteer leadership roles in community organizations. A final limitation is the nature of our sample. Applying to a community leadership programs is voluntary, so our sample was a randomly selected group of citizens; participants in our study were already interested enough in their community to apply. Thus, it is not perfectly clear whether randomly selecting community members and asking them to participate in a community leadership program would have the same effects that we found. This is an important topic for future research. Despite these limitations, our research also has a number of strengths, including a large sample drawn from all regions of the United States and limited regions in Canada, use of a well established inventory of volunteer motives, and inclusion of a broad array of community involvement activities. Despite the breadth of our sample, we note that most (59%) of the programs we studied were operated by Chambers of Commerce and all followed a similar program format. Thus we cannot be sure that our results would generalize to other types of community leadership programs, such as those operated through extension services of land grant universities, or condensed programs where participants come together for a single intense week-long curriculum. Furthermore, although we did not use an experimental design and thus cannot assert causality with complete confidence, it is plausible given the longitudinal nature of our study and that we obtained information from multiple sources across geographically dispersed programs, that the increases in community engagement that we found were due to the participants' involvement in a community leadership program. Nevertheless, it is possible that community involvement over a lifetime was the source of participants' altruistic motives rather than altruism leading to community involvement. Community involvement at an early stage may build or reinforce altruistic motives that lead to subsequent involvement. We cannot tease out causality in our study and believe it likely that the causal effects are reciprocal (engaging in the community increases altruistic motives and altruistic motives encourage further community involvement). Despite these limitations, our research makes a contribution to the literature by being the first to empirically examine the effects of community leadership programs on participants' motives and behavior. Another important contribution is our examination of the stability of motives over time. Although a multi-year panel design would tell us more about the sustainability of motive change, our results suggest that social motives, which are associated with high levels of engagement over the lifetime, can be influenced. Results also suggest that curriculum content can have an important effect on outcomes, including participants' knowledge of the community and community engagement behaviors. 6. Conclusion The primary purpose of this research was to examine the factors that lead individuals to become involved as volunteer community leaders. We found that self-oriented, social, and altruistic motives are all important to community leadership. Furthermore, our results suggest that when individuals participate in a formal program designed to foster integrative community leadership, they become more deeply involved in their communities in part because they become linked to social networks of likeminded individuals. Programs such as those we studied have the biggest impact when they recruit participants who are not already engaged in their communities and when they focus on knowledge and awareness of the community, with mixed results for those who focused on topics such as leadership, teamwork, and hands-on experiences.

SD

1

4

.06

.17**

.02

.01

.00

−.05

−.05

.02 −.02 −.06 −.07 −.03 −.08* .07

−.15** −.02 −.06 −.05 −.15** −.13** .00

.05

.08**

.01

−.02

.04

.03

.03 −.08 .03 −.06 .05 −.02 .07

.08**

.02 – −.01 .13** −.01 .01 −.02 .11** −.08** .01 −.11** .15** −.05 .04 .14** .16**

–

3

−.08**

.09** −.04 −.28** −.02 −.12** −.14** −.21** −.13** −.13**

–

2

.06

.18**

.04 .47** .18** .26** .17** .23** .14**

.18**

(.82) .29** .41** .31** .41** .23**

6

−.04

−.02

−.10** −.03

.16**

.17**

.61** .08 .02 .13** .27** −.03 .19**

.25**

(.86) .17** .14** .25** .42** .05 .36**

5

.07

.06

−.07

−.02

−.05 −.07

.05

.09* .25** .38** .61** .31** .37** .02

.11**

(.78) .44** .50** .13**

8

.07

.05 .14** .54** .40** .15** .19** .07

.11**

(.83) .55** .20** .35** .16**

7

.05

(.79) .06*

10

.01

−.01

.08

.04

.01

−.06

.04

.07

.22** −.07 .17** .26** .11** .26** .24** .35** .49** .23** .25** .60** .04 .03

.09**

(.80) .42** .16**

9

.32**

.32**

.24** .20** .02 .07 .20** .05 .53**

.71** –

.28**

.30**

.12** .15** .05 .08 .12** .07 .37**

12

.25**

.20**

(.87) .14** .03 .15** .41** .00 .32**

13

.11**

.02

(.86) .60** .20** .36** .02

15

−.05

.06

.02

.19** −.04

.15**

(.86) .26** .42** .35** .45** .23**

14

.35** −.11** −.02

−.44** −.40** −.05

–

11

.04

−.03

.02

.05

(.79) .46** .51** .09*

16

−.05

−.04

.19**

.17**

(.80) .39** .24**

17

.01

−.04

.10*

.09*

.33**

.60** –

19

.05

.20**

20

−.31** −.68**

−.01

(.80) .07 –

18

.01

−.07

(.91)

21

−.19**

–

22

Note. For sex, 1 = female and 2 = male. For education, 1 = high school, 2 = BA/BS, 3 = MA, and 4 = PhD. For race, 1 = white and 2 = minority. For family in community, 1 = yes and 2 = no. For T1 variables, listwise N = 1433. For T2 variables, listwise N = 617. *p < .05 and **p < .01.

1. Age 40.97 9.30 – 2. Sex 1.45 0.50 −.04 3. Education 2.46 0.73 .14** 4. Race 1.18 0.38 −.02 5. T1 Values 5.86 0.98 .07* 6. T1 Social 3.46 1.33 .01 7. T1 Protective 2.02 1.09 −.06* 8. T1 Enhancement 3.84 1.27 −.10** 9. T1 Understanding 5.23 1.07 .00 10. T1 Career 3.24 1.30 −.22** 11. T1 Community 52.42 20.10 .28** acts 12. T1 Leadership 1.39 0.64 .21** acts 13. T2 Values 5.84 0.93 .03 14. T2 Social 3.77 1.24 −.06 15. T2 Protective 2.11 1.09 −.15** 16. T2 Enhancement 3.67 1.20 −.14** 17. T2 Understanding 5.01 1.00 −.06 18. T2 Career 3.26 1.22 −.31** 19. T2 Community 16.05 5.89 .08 acts 20. T2 Leadership 0.57 0.32 −.03 acts 21. T2 Knowledge 3.71 0.50 .11** of community 22. New community 2.14 2.28 −.06 acts 23. New leadership 0.79 0.85 .10* acts

Mean

Appendix A. Means, standard deviations, scale reliabilities, and inter-correlations among Time 1 and Time 2 participant variables

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