TITLE:
Workload and Leadership in Non-Profit Organizations: An Empirical Study for Balancing Project Workload and Achieving Project Success
AUTHORS:
Amin Saidoun
KEYWORDS:
Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs), Leadership, Workload Balance, Project Success, Social Exchange Theory, Project Management Competences
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Business and Management,
Vol.14 No.4,
July
1,
2026
ABSTRACT: Non-profit organizations (NPOs) increasingly depend on project-based work to fulfil their social missions, yet project success rates remain persistently low. A principal contributing factor is the structural burden of workload: resource scarcity, chronic understaffing, and mission-driven overcommitment place project teams under pressure that directly undermines performance. While the project management literature has examined leadership competences as predictors of project success, the mechanisms through which leadership can buffer workload’s adverse effects in NPO contexts remain theoretically underdeveloped. This article pursues three interrelated objectives: 1) to introduce workload balance as an explicit empirical variable within the NPO project success model; 2) to theorize Leader-Leader Exchange (LLX) and Shared Values (SV) as joint leadership competences mediating the relationship between workload balance and project success; at the same time Workload Balance mediates the effects of LLX and SV on project success, and 3) to propose an empirical study testing in heterogenious NPO samples. Empirical findings are integrated from a prior mixed-methods study of 205 NPO stakeholders across 33 countries, which identified LLX, Shared Values, result orientation, and personal communication as significant determinants of NPO project success. The study advances three propositions. First, high-quality LLX relationships—characterized by active sponsor engagement and open communication—provide project managers with the support needed to distribute tasks equitably. Second, strong intra-team Shared Values create a climate of collective responsibility, enabling teams to absorb workload fluctuations through mutual support rather than individual burnout. Third, the combination of high LLX quality and deep value alignment generates a compounding buffering effect, particularly protective in resource-constrained NPO environments. This article makes an original contribution by positioning workload as a significant variable in NPO project success models, offering actionable insights for practitioners seeking to enhance outcomes through deliberate leadership development and workload governance.