Category: Courses and curriculum

Announcing the Social Innovation & Change Research Seminar Series

Greg Dorchak

The Social Innovation and Change Research Seminar is a venue for researchers of social innovation and social change to present and receive feedback on their research. The seminar is explicitly multi-disciplinary; work may draw on fields as diverse as sociology, political science, psychology, economics, and other social science approaches.

On behalf of the recently launched Social Innovation and Change Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School, we invite you to join our inaugural research seminar.

THE FIRST SEMINAR IS TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 2017, featuring
Maureen Scully, Associate Professor of Management at the University of Massachusetts – Boston
on “Mobilizing the Wealthy: Doing “Privilege Work” and Challenging the Roots of Inequality”
Time: 12:30-2:00pm; Location: 124 Mt. Auburn, Suite 160, Room 105

Summary: Wealthy individuals stand to gain materially from economic inequality, and moreover, have shaped many organizational and societal practices that perpetuate economic
inequality to their advantage. Thus, they are unlikely allies in the effort to remedy economic inequality and indeed likely to contest systematic policies to reduce inequality. In this paper, however, we study the mobilization of a small group of wealthy activists who join allies from lower socioeconomic strata to expose and redress the root causes of wealth consolidation. They offer an instructive alternative to “philanthrocapitalism,” whereby the wealthy present their wealth accumulation as a superior qualification for addressing societal problems and do not address the root causes of how their wealth was amassed. Our study contributes to the growing literature on inequality and organizations, which are the vectors for distributing wages and investment returns, by examining how the wealthy may sometimes wrestle with the sources of their wealth. Advocacy from wealthy allies is unexpected and may jolt attention and change. We derive the concept of “privilege work” from our observations of an often awkward and fraught process that enables the wealthy to engage with their own privilege, use their insider knowledge of wealth accumulation as a lever for change, and work respectfully alongside underprivileged allies. Privilege work represents a new type of ally work along the dimension of socioeconomic class, with potential, even if limited, to disrupt escalating inequality. 

We hope to see you there!

Learn more about the Social Innovation and Change Initiative (SICI ; pronounced “sigh-see”)  and see listing of upcoming seminars at: http://sici-hks.org/

MLD Shopping Event – Inspiration, Thanks, and Presentation

Greg Dorchak

Thanks to the over 125 students who attended last night’s MLD Area Welcome and Shopping Event.  As Jim Bildner eloquently put it, “Our Theory of Change is YOU,” and you have the MLD Faculty inspired for the year ahead!

Please find below (linked for download) the presentation from the program. We welcome further questions by email to greg_dorchak@hks.harvard.edu
Continue to watch our site for updates on the many courses, programs, and initiatives introduced last night. Again, thanks and welcome!

coverslide

2016 Ash Innovations Applications Open

Greg Dorchak

The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School has kicked off the application process for its prestigious Innovations in American Government Award.  For the second straight year, the Ash Center is also funding a second innovation award, the Roy and Lila Ash Innovations Award for Public Engagement in Government, to better highlight the work of public engagement and participation programs, policies, and initiatives from around the country.

The Innovations in American Government Awards are heralded as the premier public-sector honor in the nation and are given to programs that serve as examples of creative and effective government at its best. The Ash Center will once again be awarding two $100,000 top prizes, for the Innovations in American Government Award and the Roy and Lila Ash Innovations Award for Public Engagement in Government. All units of government—federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial—within the United States and their partners are eligible to apply.
Applicants for both awards will be judged on the standard Innovations in American Government Awards criteria of novelty, effectiveness, significance, and transferability. Programs seeking the Roy and Lila Ash award will also be judged on their impact on public engagement and participation. Specifically, the Ash Center seeks to recognize government-led innovations that demonstrate enhanced public engagement and participation.  Find out more here.  Application deadline is April 15, 2016.

Join us for the MLD Shopping and Welcome Event on August 28th!

Greg Dorchak

The HKS Management, Leadership, and Decision Sciences Faculty (The MLD Area) invite all HKS degree program students to join us for our Shopping and Welcome Event on Monday, August 28th from 5:00 – 6:15pm in the Allison Dining Room, (Taubman Building 5th floor).

The purpose of this event is to provide students with a centralized opportunity to hear about courses in Management, Leadership and Decision Sciences, to meet the faculty, as well as to hear about the numerous related co-currcular activities in the MLD space. Examples of the latter include the Behavioral Insights Group (BIG), Social Innovation and Social Change (SICI) Studio, and the Kennedy School Negotiation Project (KSNP). Faculty in attendance will provide detailed overviews of our course offerings, and will introduce the MLD Certificate program. Plus… there’ll be cupcakes!

Should you have questions, please contact  MLD Area Administrator, Greg Dorchak at greg_dorchak@hks.harvard.edu  We hope you will join us on August 28th!

Please note: This event is not meant to be a substitute for the regularly scheduled MLD course shopping sessions taking place during the day on 8/28 and 8/29 at which you will hear in much greater detail about the fall and January courses.

The New World Social Enterprise Fellows Program launches

Greg Dorchak

The New World Social Enterprise Fellows Program is an innovative, “next-generation” incubator for highly effective social change. It draws upon the insights and expertise of the world’s top social enterprise practitioners, and the research and teaching strengths of Harvard University to home in on what works—and leave out what doesn’t—to train students to launch and figure out plans to scale-up new social ventures, propose new innovations for existing programs and organizations, and, ultimately, create far-reaching solutions for the world’s most pressing social problems.

The incubator will include HKS course work, intensive co-curricular workshops, and a strong experiential component.

Full details on the program here.

2015-16 ACADEMIC YEAR: PILOT PROGRAM BEGINS

The pilot cohort will be comprised of up to ten exceptional second year and mid-career Harvard Kennedy School students with an established commitment and desire to change the world through social enterprise. The core objective of the program is to arm students with the theoretical and practical knowledge to succeed in and strengthen the field of social enterprise.

In addition to HKS curricular studies, participants will:

  • Attend regular co-curricular sessions focused on mastery topics throughout the school year;
  • Interface with a cadre of international social entrepreneurs, major foundations, and sector leaders;
  • On a needs-basis, be eligible for an award of up to $5,000 during the academic year; and
  • Be eligible for a post-graduate job placement with a major institution, city, or social enterprise stakeholder or post-graduate funding of a start-up based on satisfactory completion of the program requirements and a competitive awards process.

The Fellows Program and Incubator has an exceptional capacity to give students the skills, experiences, peer networks, and operating knowledge needed to effectively tackle society’s most complex issues and lead social change in new and existing ventures across the nonprofit, government, and business sectors.

What Works in Public Sector Management | MLD-125 with Elizabeth Linos

Greg Dorchak

In this age of deep societal challenges and growing complexity, when government at all levels is tasked with implementing a wide and growing range of policies to ensure and improve the public good, public managers and those working with governments can find it very difficult to move the needle on important programs and policy initiatives.
With her course MLD-125 What Works in Public Sector Management, Professor Elizabeth Linos introduces graduate students to the central elements of public management and policy implementation, with a focus on three core challenges that public managers face: managing programs; managing people; and managing change.  A sampling of the questions explored in this course include:

  • How can governments use data and evidence to improve program performance and what do you do when the data is bad?
  • How do we reduce administrative burdens in government and why does it matter?
  • How can we recruit, retain, and support frontline workers?
  • What are the big dilemmas around algorithmic decision-making, nudging, participatory government, and other innovations that an effective public manager should consider?

Using academic theory from public management, real-world case studies, and a series of guest speakers who work in and with government, students will learn about the barriers and opportunities to make a difference through government.  While most of the cases studied will focus on federal, state, and local government challenges in the U.S., Linos draws on best practices and studies from around the world.

Portrait photo of Elizabeth Linos smiling
Elizabeth Linos

Dr. Elizabeth Linos joined HKS in July 2022 as the Emma Bloomberg Associate Professor for Public Policy and Management.  Linos is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College with majors in Government and Economics. She earned her PhD in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2016, and went on to spend 5 years as Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley
Between college and graduate school, Linos worked directly in government as a policy advisor to the Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, focusing on social innovation and public sector reform. While pursuing her doctorate, Linos spent two years as Vice President, Head of Research and Evaluation at the Behavioral Insights Team – North America, working with government agencies in the U.S. and the U.K. to improve programs using behavioral science and to build capacity around rigorous evaluation. In 2021 she was appointed, and now remains, a non-resident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution.

Linos’ research focuses on how to improve government by focusing on its people and the services they deliver. Specifically, she uses insights from behavioral science and evidence from public management to consider how to recruit, retain, and support the government workforce, how to reduce administrative burdens that low-income households face when they interact with their government, and how to better integrate evidence-based policymaking into government. To those ends, Elizabeth founded and now directs The People Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government with a mission to empower the public sector by producing cutting-edge research on the people of government and the communities they are called to serve. For more information, follow the work of The People Lab on Twitter.

MLD-125 will be offered in the spring semester. For questions about these courses, or any other in the MLD curriculum, email Greg Dorchak, MLD Area Administrator.