Organizational change within charities: improved performance via introduction of market orientation and other strategic orientations

Market orientation is recognised as the key strategic orientation enabling for-profit organizations to gain improved performance. Adopting such an orientation can also aid nonprofit charities facing pressure to become more businesslike due to increasing competition in the current global environment. Knowledge regarding exactly how charities can change is however highly under-researched. Based upon examination of multiple case studies of charities that underwent organisational change to improve performance, the change management process is analysed using a discourse transformation framework to identify how charity managers successfully introduced new strategic orientations dominated by a market orientation. A “checklist” is developed that offers nonprofit charity managers valuable insights to assist performance improvement. Few previous papers have studied the process by which management of charities can successfully implement change towards market orientation and aspects of other strategic orientations. The paper also expands the use a discourse transformation in examining the change management process within charities.