Urban Differentiation, Characteristics of Boards of Directors, and Organizational Effectiveness

The internal differentiation of urban areas affects the support base of organizations by, among other things, its provision of a pool of potential supporters to organizations. In turn, the characteristics of actual supporters (in this case boards of directors) should be related to organizational effectiveness. Aggregate measures of the socioeconomic composition of boards of directors of thirty-four branches of the YMCA of Chicago are found to be correlated with demographic measures on the areas each serves. Furthermore, the composition of the boards is correlated with measures of organizational and board effectiveness. The demographic measures are also correlated with the spatial work-residence patterns of board members. The over-all import of the study is to link ecological and organizational analysis.