Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.), Franklin University, 2024, Business Administration

Cultural competency has gained significant attention in the past two decades, particularly within human services nonprofits. These nonprofits often operate under the governance of white, affluent, college-educated individuals while providing services to minority populations with limited financial resources and education. These differences may create cultural understanding challenges. This study endeavored to shed light on the effective cultural competency approaches employed by these organizations in serving a diverse population. Using qualitative comparative analysis, this research examined the disparities among human services agencies in terms of successful strategies for fostering cultural competency within their board of directors. The study involved conducting semi-structured interviews with 28 directors from human services agencies categorized into two groups based on their annual revenue: agencies with an annual revenue between $100,000 and $999,999 and those agencies with $1 million and higher. The findings showed that 25 of the 28 agencies described themselves as successful and implemented cultural competency building efforts among their board members. Of the 25 successful agencies, 13 directly linked their success to their cultural competency building efforts. The other 12 successful agencies stated they could not directly link their success to their cultural competency efforts. These results implicate the need for additional research that looks at a larger sample with broader demographics and other approaches that allow for deeper probing of cultural competency training efforts.

Committee: Lewis Chongwony (Committee Chair); Christopher Washington (Committee Member); Bora Pajo (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration; Management; Organization Theory