ERNOP Online Series 2024-2025
Weathering the Storm: How External Crisis and Changes Impact Nonprofit Organisations
February 11, 2025, 10-11am (CET)
Speaker: Marlene Walk (University of Freiburg)
About this seminar:
The world is changing rapidly, and global crises affect almost every aspect of life – personal, social and professional. For organisations, these external changes often require significant adaptation and internal transformation. This ERNOP Science and Society webinar will focus on how nonprofit organisations respond to crisis and changes in the organizational environment, and the subsequent impact on staff, organisational structures and processes.
In the first part of the webinar, Dr. Marlene Walk, from the University of Freiburg, will present her research on how change affects nonprofit organisations and their internal structures. Building on the case of a crisis that had a great impact on our lives – the covid pandemic – she will explore how crises influence employees’ attitudes and loyalty towards the organisation.
In the second part of the webinar, Marlene Walk, joined by Enrique Ochoa from the ICRC, will discuss the practical implications of her findings for nonprofit practitioners. Participants will gain insights into how crisis and change affect nonprofit organisations and practical guidance on how to manage organisational change and support staff in challenging times. The interactive Q&A session will give participants the opportunity to ask questions, share experiences and discuss how these insights can be applied in their own organisations.
Please register for this webinar here.
About Marlene Walk
Marlene Walk is an Assistant Professor of Nonprofit Management at the School of Economics and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Her research focuses on human resource management and organizational change within nonprofit organizations. Prior to her current role, Marlene was an Associate Professor at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Indianapolis.
About the Chair of Public and Nonprofit Management
The interdisciplinary research at the chair lies at the intersection of organizational behavior, human resource management, and organizational change theory.
Specifically, individual research projects focus on employees and volunteers in the context of their (changing) work environment seeking to explain why individuals work for nonprofits, how they react to change, and what leads them to stay.
Since the organizational context significantly impacts how individuals see their work, we also explore why and how nonprofit organizations react to and implement change.
Qualitative and quantitative methods help to capture the complexity of interactions at multiple levels and to incorporate individual, organizational and contextual factors in the design and implementation of our research.
About Enrique Ochoa
Since 2023, Enrique Ochoa is ICRC’s Americas Head of Resource Mobilization Operations, steering the ICRC’s fundraising efforts in the Americas Region from states, international financial institutions and the private sector.
From 2005 to 2010 Enrique was a programme officer with the UNHCR, working in Ecuador, Sri Lanka, Venezuela and Haiti. He joined the ICRC in 2011 as a protection delegate in Colombia, and then served in field management positions in the Gaza Strip, Afghanistan, and Myanmar. In 2021 he was appointed Operations Coordinator for Asia and the Pacific in ICRC HQ, overseeing ICRC’s operations in Myanmar, Bangladesh, China and the Korean Peninsula. Before becoming a humanitarian worker, he was a financial analyst at the capital markets department of a multinational corporation.
Enrique holds an M.A. in International Relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University (US), an M.A. in International Humanitarian Action from Deusto University (Spain) and a B.S. in Business Administration from Navarra Public University (Spain) and HZ University (Netherlands).
About ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross)
The interdisciplinary research at the chair lies at the intersection of organizational behavior, human resource management, and organizational change theory.
Specifically, individual research projects focus on employees and volunteers in the context of their (changing) work environment seeking to explain why individuals work for nonprofits, how they react to change, and what leads them to stay.
Since the organizational context significantly impacts how individuals see their work, we also explore why and how nonprofit organizations react to and implement change.
Qualitative and quantitative methods help to capture the complexity of interactions at multiple levels and to incorporate individual, organizational and contextual factors in the design and implementation of our research.