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DPI 312 (GSE A130): Sparking Social Change Harvard Kennedy School; Fall 2012 Mondays and Wednesdays, 11:40-1:00 pm, Harvard Innovation Lab (i-Lab)

(10/25/12) Important Note: All classes will be held at the Harvard Innovation Lab (i-lab) in Room 122, the i-lab classroom. The i-lab is located in Batten Hall at 125 Western Ave, Allston, MA 02163. The i-lab is a ten minute walk from the Kennedy School over the Larz Anderson Bridge. Please see below for directions to the i-Lab. Archon Fung Mark Moore 124 Mt. Auburn St, Room 238 124 Mt. Auburn St, Room 234 [email protected] [email protected] Office Hours: Tuesdays 2-4pm Office Hours: Wednesdays 3:00-5:00 Course Assistants: Sarah Johnson: [email protected] Heather Dennehy: [email protected] Faculty Assistants: For Archon Fung: Juanne Zhao: [email protected] For Mark Moore: Mary Anne Baumgartner: [email protected] Getting to the Harvard Innovation Lab (125 Western Ave, Allston, MA 02163) http://ilab.harvard.edu/about/about-the-i-lab (This is very good map which has different layers to it. You can customize it to view the differ-ent layers). The i-lab provides transportation services between the i-lab and the Harvard Square and Long-wood campuses (trackable via the Shuttle Tracker system) to ensure easy access. MBTA bus and subway service also provides access to the facility. Metered parking is available for $1 per hour in the i-lab parking lot (entrance on Western Ave to the west of the i-lab) and by the day in the Harvard Business School parking lot. Free parking is also available on Western Ave. Walking to the i-lab: Come out of the Kennedy School and take a right onto JFK Street. Cross over the Larz Anderson Bridge (currently under construction). You will now be on North Har-vard Street. Harvard Business School will be on your left and Harvard Stadium Athletic Com-plex on your right. Enter the Business School campus through Harvard Way or Morgan Way. Make your way across the campus – see map. Cross through the Business School parking lot and you will be on Western Avenue. Take a right and 125 Western Avenue is a short walk and will be on your right. Biking: There are bike racks available at the i-lab. There are Hubway bike sharing stations lo-cated outside the HKS/Taubman Building and outside the i-lab (www.hubway.com)

DPI312 (GSE A130): Sparking Social Change, Fall 2012, Syllabus Page 2

Overview: Class and Assignment Schedule

Part I: Becoming a Social Change Agent 1) Fri. 9/7: Introduction, Survey, Ideas (Written Survey) 2) Mon. 9/10: Aruna Roy 3) Wed. 9/12: Broadmoor 4) Mon. 9/17: Yunus I 5) Wed. 9/19: Jean Ekins 6) Mon. 9/24 : Reflections on Me as a Social Change Agent

[Graded Written Assignment Due: Monday, Sept. 24th] Part II: Developing a Strong “Public Value Proposition”

7) Wed. 9/26: Exercise in Creativity: Alcohol in the Arctic 8) Mon. 10/1: Exercise in Creativity: Alcohol in the Arctic II

[Ungraded Written Assignment Due: Monday, October 1] 9) Wed. 10/3: Public Value and the Strategic Triangle

[Columbus Day: No Class] 10) Wed. 10/10: LISC 11) Mon. 10/15: Harlem Children’s Zone

[Graded Written Assignment Due: October 17th] Part III: Scaling Ideas for Social Change

12) Wed. 10/17: Scaling Ideas for Social Change 13) Mon. 10/22: Other Peoples Garbage 14) Wed. 10/24: Good Guide 15) Mon. 10/29: Unions and Kmart 16) Wed. 10/31: Yunus (II) 17) Mon. 11/5: Philanthropy 18) Wed. 11/7: Policing

[Veterans Day: No Class] 19) Wed. 11/14: Roe v. Wade 20) Mon. 11/19: Kerala

[Thanksgiving Vacation: No Class] 21) Mon. 11/26: Mockus 22) Wed. 11/28: Female Genital Cutting 23) Mon. 12/3: Social Media, Planned Parenthood 24) Wed. 12/5: Wrap-Up

[Required, Graded Final Paper Due: December 14th]


Course Objectives: This course is an inductive examination of a number of highly-varied social change initiatives that differ in terms of the position of the social change makers, the social sector and context in which they are operating, and the kind of social change they seek to make. We do so to stimulate the imagination of potential social change makers, and help them recognize the opportunities, and devise successful strategies for making social change at large and small, local and system-wide, scales. Central to our approach is the belief that significant social change can be made by individuals located in different social positions, standing on different institutional platforms, using different social structures and processes, and different human motivations to leverage their efforts to achieve important social goals.

The different social positions include individuals who are relatively disadvantaged with no formal authority and little informal influence, and those in highly advantaged posi-tions who have significant assets of their own, and hold positions of significant authority among the economic, social, political, and governmental institutions of society.

The different institutional platforms include positions inside government agencies; in for-

profit enterprises (both start up and established); in voluntary sector initiatives (both start up and established); in philanthropy; and in social movement and political organizations.

The different human motivations include material self-interest (understood as the desire

to promote one’s own well-being and not be a burden to others); altruism (understood as concern for the well-being of others); duty (understood as the desire to do right by others as social norms, laws and moral code define what is right); and social and political aspi-rations (understood to be the desires of individuals to help enact a particular vision of a good and just society). Just as material self-interest provides much of the fuel for, the guidance of, and the evaluation of markets as important social change processes, so this wider set of human motivations can be understood as the sources of energy, the norma-tive compass, and the ultimate arbiter of the value of the wider set of social change proc-esses that we consider here.

The different social processes include: the making and implementation of public policy;

the use of market mechanisms to motivate productive efforts focused on meeting the wants and needs of individuals in the society; the mobilization of volunteer and philan-thropic action to achieve civic and public goals; the use of constitutional law and com-mon law ideas about justice to advance social purposes; the mobilization of citizens to es-tablish and enforce informal norms guiding social behavior; and the mobilization of citi-zens to influence governmental action broad or narrow arenas. These processes are at once the things to be created by social change makers, and the forces that they can latch onto to help give their particular idea greater weight and scale.

While we often assume that effective social entrepreneurship has to be either political, or social or economic, our claim is that effective social entrepreneurship often involves finding the best combination of ways to use a particular position and platform, taking advantage of many differ-ent kinds of motivations and social processes to mobilize collective action and systemic change.

DPI312 (GSE A130): Sparking Social Change, Fall 2012, Syllabus Page 4 We think that virtually all important social change efforts are created by skillfully interweaving the different motivations, processes, and sectors of in society. Obviously, the scope of the course is very broad, and includes many different topics. What makes the course distinctive from others, and gives it an internal coherence are two characteris-tics of the work of those we are describing as social entrepreneurs.

First, the actors are always focused on the social impact of their work — the particular ways in which they think their work will create social or public value. It is this more than financial success, or the institutionalization of their efforts in some kind of durable insti-tution that commands their loyalty.

Second, their basic method is to find the means to significantly leverage their own per-sonal efforts, and that of the enterprises they lead, by both creating new, and aligning themselves with existing social forces operating above the level of their particular posi-tion or organization. This usually requires a very close diagnosis of the small and large social context in which they are operating, and an openness to developing and using col-laboration with other organizations to produce large scale social effects rather than com-peting with them for market share in an effort that is too small to deal with the social problem they set out to solve

Course Description The course is organized into three parts.

I. Becoming an Agent of Social Change The first part introduces the subject and the pedagogy of the course, and invites students to re-flect on their own commitments to and capacity for social change-making. In the first class, we will ask students to fill out a brief questionnaire that asks them about their experience in social entrepreneurship and social change-making, and their initial assumptions about this process. This will be used as the basis of small group discussions in class, and as a way of introducing students to one another and to the faculty. Subsequent classes will examine several individuals who have succeeded in catalyzing social changes from very different social and institutional positions. We will examine what it was about these individuals – their commitments, their personal resources, and the actions they took -- that made them successful where many others failed. Part of the aim of this portion of the course is to provide several models of social change agents for students to draw upon when reflecting on their own commitments and capacities, and crafting their own career trajectories. This part will conclude with a segment in which students take stock of their own commitments and capacities as social entrepreneurs, and try to develop a kind of public narrative that is useful in guiding themselves, and engaging others in causes that matter to them. At the end of this introductory segment, students will also be asked to present their initial idea for the social change effort they would like to initiate, and the particular assets they bring to that effort in a three page memo. The purposes of this memo are: 1) to begin the process of developing your social change plan; and 2) to demonstrate that you have under


stood the important relationship between you, the environment, and the idea you are hop-ing to achieve.

II. Creating Public Value Propositions Exploiting Opportunities in the Social Context The second part of the course is designed to help you become more creative in spotting opportu-nities to create public value, to imagine solutions to problems that have confounded others, and to become both more resourceful and more disciplined in testing and adapting these ideas as one continues thinking and learning about what is both valuable and possible to do. The first step is to explore what goes into being creative in imagining solutions to social prob-lems. To accomplish this goal, we will engage in an exercise in creativity in which the class as a whole searches for a plausibly effective solution to a particular social problem. For this effort, you will be asked to develop and be prepared to present and defend a proposal for dealing with the problem we set out in a brief 2 page memo. This will not be graded, but comments will be provided. The second step is to introduce a simple analytic framework that can be used for both generating and testing particular ideas about how social problems might be solved, and social opportunities spotted and exploited. This framework is called the strategic triangle, and it is designed to help change agents develop strong public value propositions by focusing attention on three critical issues: 1) what is the public value that the social change agent is trying to create; 2) who other than the social change agent will support the idea with valuable resources; 3) how will the de-sired result actually be produced? The third step is to examine public value propositions created by other social change agents to see how they work to produce desired results in a particular context. Seeing how these criteria are met in the different cases will enrich the abstract framework with particular examples. The last step is for each student to make elaborate and give more detail and justification for their proposed social change effort. Remember, this can be treated as an exercise for this course, but it would be better if it was something you were really considering doing. At the end of this part of the course, you will be asked to submit a five page document set-ting out your proposed “value proposition” describing what particular conditions in the world you hope to change, and what particular activities could be counted on to produce the desired result. This will be a graded assignment, and feedback will be provided. It would be best if you stayed with this idea through the last part of the course, but if on re-flection, you would rather shift to a different social change idea, that will be fine.

III. Taking the Public Value Proposition to a Larger Scale and Wider Social Impact The third part of the course takes on the challenge of finding ways to leverage the impact of a particular value proposition whose worth and feasibility has been demonstrated at a small scale, but has not yet succeeded in producing a larger scale, systemic change. This is the most challeng-ing and novel part of the course. It will focus on understanding the ways in which society is cur-rently organized in particular sectors and structures, and how getting one’s hands on some pieces of that established economic, social and political structure can provide leverage in producing so-cial change. Consider, for example, the following images of leveraging and idea to wider social change:


A progressive business executive rises to the top of a business enterprise, commits it to operating in accord with principles of corporate social responsibility, and uses the success of that strategy to challenge other firms in the industry to do the same thing

A consumer advocate finds a way to organize consumers to buy products from companies who paid their employees decent wages and their suppliers decent prices for their inter-mediate products so that there is an economic advantage for companies that operate in these ways

A neighborhood leader, concerned about rising crime and discord in his local neighbor-hood organizes a process, and a new relationship with both religious organizations and police that seems to restore a sense of security and harmony, and then finds through so-cial media that many other neighborhood leaders are interested in what he has done.

A victim of negligent conduct by a powerful organization finds that his experience was not an unusual event, but the result of what seems to be a systematic policy of the organi-zation, turns to the law for relief, and finds the basis for a class action suits

The innovative leader of a small non-profit program who was worked for 10 years help-ing women in poverty gain their economic independence finds a simple method for moti-vating this effort, shows it can work, and then creates a campaign to alter social work practices by pushing his ideas through a professional network, and securing governmental support for encouraging the adoption of her ideas.

In looking for opportunities to take a small concrete idea and make it larger and more significant, we will be looking both for sources of energy, and structural points of leverage that will take the small idea to a larger scale. This section of the course will be divided into four sections corre-sponding to different forces, and different structural points of leverage:

Using and Contending with Market Forces to Produce Publicly Valuable Results

Shaping the Conventional Wisdom About Policies and Practices within Social Sectors

Using and Shaping the Power of the State to Improve Social Conditions

Building Social and Political Movements That Can Shape the Economic, Social, and Po-litical Culture and Conditions in the Society

During this part of the course, you will be expected to be working on two tasks: 1) to fur-ther develop and test your value proposition by consulting with at least three outside ex-perts about its value and feasibility; and 2) to develop an idea about how you might be able to scale the particular idea you have into a larger effort by capitalizing on the forces and structural points of leverage being discussed above. As an optional assignment, you can submit a first draft of your idea for making social change to receive feedback from the in-structors. But at the end of the course, we will require you to submit a 15 page plan that sets out your idea for making social change (the value proposition), and the idea about how the idea might be made to grow in significance (the scaling plan). This will serve as the final exam for the course.


In sum, Sparking Social Change aims to support those with “restless, value seeking imagina-tions” to use their imaginations and the actions guided by their imagination to greater effect. It seeks to clarify the nature of the commitments and assets that each individual can bring to this challenge, to develop their capacities to imagine, adapt, and recognize value creating initiatives, and to think strategically about how those ideas can not only be called into existence on a small scale, but built up to produce a significant social change. Course Requirements, Assignments and Student Evaluation The fundamental requirement of this course is that students enter into the process of thinking practically about how to produce social change with enthusiasm, imagination, rigor, and deter-mination, and that they improve their ability to spot and exploit opportunities for value creating change. The degree to which students meet this requirement will be judged on two bases: 1) the quality of their participation in class discussion; and 2) the development of their own plan for producing social change in written document that will be developed over the course of the se-mester, and whose completion will constitute the final examination for the course.

1. Quality of Class Participation: (40%) An important part of becoming a successful social change agent is learning how to exercise lead-ership in a group that is confronting a difficult problem to be solved. We think of the class as a problem-solving group whose job it is to help one another learn as much as possible about how to become a successful agent of social change. That requires that each individual in class exercise their own agency: that they come to class pre-pared to learn, and to contribute to the learning of others. Both parts of that readiness are impor-tant. We will expect regular attendance, and will make note of who has an unexcused absence. We will make “cold calls” in class. We will convene as a teaching group after each class to con-sider who seemed to be learning in public, and who was helping others, including the faculty, to learn. We will provide feedback on your participation at mid-term.

2. The Basic Requirement: Developing Your Own Social Change Plan (60%) Another part of becoming a social change agent is that you develop and exercise the skills to plan your own role and activities in making social change that reflects both a thoughtful diagno-sis of a real situation in which you find yourself, and what you could do in that situation to create a noticeable and valuable social change. In order for you to demonstrate and practice this skill, we will ask each of you develop your own “social change plan” over the course of the semester. The written assignments over the course of this semester will involve drafting and revising the various parts of this social change plan. The parts of your social change plan will reflect the three large parts of the course: (i) yourself as an agent of social change, (ii) testing a value proposition, and (iii) scaling your social change effort to increase scale and sustainability. Obviously, it would be best if you were already thinking about such a thing, and even better if you were committed to executing it when you leave the HKS. But you do not have to be this far along in the process in order to participate effectively and succeed in the course. If you are not now committed to developing your own social change plan, you can treat this requirement as a chance to put yourself in the position of thinking and acting as a social change agent, and see how you like it. Who knows, over the course of the semester you might become excited to and committed to a plan that you began merely as an exercise.

DPI312 (GSE A130): Sparking Social Change, Fall 2012, Syllabus Page 8 We will take the development of this plan in four steps corresponding to the pieces of the course as presented above in the course description. They are presented here again in the form of par-ticular written assignments for the course – some are required but not graded, some are optional, and three of the assignments are both required and graded.

a. Written Assignment 1: My Previous Experience, Current Commitment, and Working Assumptions as a Social Change Agent [Class Handout: Friday, September 7: Required by Not Graded]

To get started in the course, and on your own social change plan, and to help turn us into an ef-fective learning community devoted to helping each of us improve as a social change agent, we will ask each student in the first class to fill out a short questionnaire that asks about their previ-ous experience in making social change, the ideas that they are currently working on or entertain-ing, and the working assumptions they have about how they can make social change. This is a kind of baseline that can be used as a way of introducing yourself to one another, and to the fac-ulty. It can also be used to see how your ideas about social change making are developing and changing as we go through the course.

b. Written Assignment 2: Thinking About Myself as an Agent of Change (10%) [Due: Monday, September 24; Required and Graded with Feedback]

The next step will be for you to write a 3 page document at the end of the first part of the course in which you reflect on yourself as an agent of change. We ask you to write down a social change that you would like to make that can serve as the practical touch point for our discussions in class, and as the start of the social change plan that is the final written requirement of the course. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be novel. It doesn’t have to be very compli-cated. It is just something that you think you might like to achieve sometime in the next few years. You have to say what the change is, and why it is important to you to make happen. As part of this same document, we will ask you to think about what you as a person in a particu-lar social and institutional position can bring to the effort of making the change occur such as your personal assets, your distinctive skills and experiences, and your social networks. Everyone has resources that they can use to make change. Sometimes they have a lot, sometimes much less. The practical value of your personal assets often depends on the kind of change one is try-ing to make. You are already well positioned to make some kinds of changes; less well posi-tioned to make others; and it is important to be able to notice the difference. This assignment will get you started on your social change plan, and will also test what you have learned so far about the nature of social change on one hand, and how to assess the assets of the social change maker with respect to that change on the other.

c. Written Assignment #3: A Creative Idea to Solve a Social Problem [Due: Monday, October 1: This is required but not graded.]

This assignment asks you to develop and be prepared to present a proposal for dealing with a public problem that is (ideally) unfamiliar to you and challenging after we have had a chance to discuss in small groups in class. It is designed to get the creative juices flowing on one hand, and to developing your critical and discriminating skills on the other. You will be asked to write a 2


page memorandum or power point presentation that can serve as the basis of an oral presentation about how you would solve the problem we give to you.

d. Written Assignment 3: Creating and Testing My Public Value Proposition (20%) [Due: Wednesday, October 17: Required and Graded with Feedback]

The second step is to write a 5 page paper setting out your “public value proposition” – a de-scription of the change you want to make, why it would be publicly valuable to make this change, who would agree with you that it was important to make the change and what kind of support could they give you, and what exactly would have to be done operationally to produce the desired result. This would be due at the end of the second part of the course, and would test your ability to understand and apply the “strategic triangle” to your social change idea, which is the principal focus of the Part II of the course.

e. Written Assignment 4: Combined Social Change Plan: Self + Value Proposition + Scaling My Public Value Proposition (30%) [Due: December 14: Required and Graded as Final Exam]

The third step is to write a 15 page paper — the final assignment for Sparking Social Change —in which you combine the first two pieces of work with a third piece in which you plan for how you could “scale” your idea into something that would have a large and lasting effect by taking advantage of powerful social forces and structures that can leverage your idea into something sustainable, large and important. This would be due at the end of the course, and would test your ability to understand how to take advantage of favorable social forces and reachable social insti-tutions to allow your idea to endure, and become increasingly significant in the world. You are also invited to submit a draft of this paper to receive feedback before presenting your final paper. You will receive prompt feedback from the instructors at each step along the way. The test we will apply in grading is not only some absolute standard of quality, but also a standard that no-tices the rate of improvement. This seems necessary since individuals in the course will be start-ing at different points in terms of their knowledge and experience in developing social change plans. Note that for some students, learning may involve learning these ideas for the first time. For others, the learning may involve deepening their own knowledge, or even re-thinking some of the ways they have done this work in the past. Required Materials

Required materials will be provided in course packets to be purchased at the Course Materials Office and also on the DPI-312 course web page.


DPI 312 (GSE A130): Sparking Social Change

Detailed Schedule of Activities and Assignments

Wednesday, September 5: SHOPPING DAY (HKS, Starr Auditorium)

Part I: Becoming a Social Change Agent

Friday, September 7 1: Initial Ideas About Social Change Making and Social Entrepreneurship:

Required Readings: William Drayton, “Everyone a Changemaker; Social Entrepreneurship’s Ultimate Goal”, Innovations, Vol. 1, Issue 1 Winter, 2006 Mark H. Moore, Archon Fung, George Veth, “Sparking Social Change Analytic Note #1: The Social Change Agent, the Social Context, and the Strategy” (available on course web page)

Reading Discussion Questions:

1. Who is authorized to be a “social change agent,” or “social entrepreneur,” or “public

leader” in a democratic society? Is the authorization to act an internal psychological phenomenon, or an external social condition?

2. What assets do individuals bring to social change efforts? What constrains their ac-tions? How soon and in what ways do their efforts have to become social and collec-tive?

3. What assumptions are you making, what beliefs are you relying on in imagining the

ways in which you might succeed in making social change? Are you relying on faith in market forces, or political forces, or the instruments of government, or a strong sense of civic responsibility and voluntary action?

4. What forms the platform on which social change agents are standing when they try to

make social change? Is it their social position (status in the society), or their institu-tional position (job), or some combination of the two? Are they working from an es-tablished position within a given organization, or hoping to create an institutional platform that does not now exist? Is the institutional position they hold or are trying to create in the market sector, in the voluntary sector, in the political sector, or in government?


Monday, September 10 2. Platforms for Making Social Change: Aruna Roy

Case: Aruna Roy and the Birth of a People’s Movement in India (Draft May 28, 2009) by Kenneth Winston KSG Case No 1929.0 Case Questions: 1) What considerations led Roy to leave the prestigious and powerful IAS? 2) What does she lose as a social change agent in moving from the organizational “plat-

form” of the IAS to work in civil society organizations? What does she gain? Is this a good choice for her, for anyone?

3) How important is Roy’s vow of poverty and commitment to “living simply?” Why is

this choice important or unimportant?

4) Should most people in Aruna Roy’s position do what she did — leave the IAS — in order to make the greatest social change? Why or why not?

Required Reading:

Jenkins, Rob and Anne Marie Goetz. “Accounts and Accountability: Theoretical Implica-tions of the Right-to-Information Movement in India.” Third World Quarterly 20.3 (1999): 603-22. Reading Questions: 1) What is the goal of the MKSS? How does information relate to social justice in their view? 2) What is their method for making information available to villagers? What obstacles face information campaigns? 3) How does information contribute to social action in the MKSS model? What are the other factors, other than just information, that produce social action?

Wednesday, September 12 3. Community Organizing and Neighborhood Revitalization

Case: Broadmoor Lives! A New Orleans Neighborhood’s Battle to Recover from Hurricane Katrina (A, B, Sequel) HKS Case #1893.0, 1894.0, 1894.1

[Broadmoor Lives! slideshow to be shown in class]


Case Questions: 1) Before Hurricane Katrina, was the Broadmoor neighborhood a place of high or low

social capital? Was it well organized or not? 2) What are the different factions of neighbors in the Broadmoor neighborhood? What

are their “natural” conflicts of interest? 3) Who were the leaders of the Broadmoor neighborhood? What capacities and re-

sources did each bring to the effort? 4) What are the important steps in the processes that leaders designed to bring residents

back to the neighborhood and to involve them in rebuilding efforts? 5) The Broadmoor Improvement Association formed many partnerships with organiza-

tions outside the neighborhood that brought critical resources of various kinds. Who were these partners? What made the BIA attractive as a partner for these outside enti-ties?

Required Readings: Robert Putnam, Chapter 18 “Safe and Productive Neighborhoods” in Bowling Alone: The Decline and Rise of American Community (New York: Simon& Schuster, 2001): 307-318. Michael Taylor, Chapter 1 “Introduction: The Problem of Collective Action” in The Pos-sibility of Cooperation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987): 1-33. Xavier de Souza Briggs. Introduction [selections] and Chapter 2, “Democracy and Public Problems” of Democracy as Problem Solving: Civic Capacity in Communities Across the Globe (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008): 3-17; 27-45. (available on course web page) Reading Questions:

1) What is the collective action problem? Why is it a problem for those who want to

make social change? How can it be overcome?

2) What, if any, is the difference between civic capacity and social capital? 3) What distinguishes Briggs’ problem-solving notion of democracy compared to what

he calls pluralist and deliberative notions of democracy?

4) What are the reasons to think that democratic [participatory, inclusive, accountable] public action will be effective? Do you accept any of these reasons?


Monday, September 17 4. Social Entrepreneurship: Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank: The Origins

Case: Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank (A) KSG Case No 1881.0

Case Questions:

1) Has Muhammad Yunus discovered an important opportunity for social entrepreneur-ship? What is the nature of that opportunity? How large is it? What is necessary to exploit it? How could it go wrong?

2) What, if anything about the opportunity Yunus sees makes it an opportunity for “so-

cial” as opposed to “commercial” entrepreneurship? What, if anything, makes it dif-ferent from a government program?

3) What does Yunus bring to this opportunity that others have not had? Required Reading: Mark H. Moore, “Social Entrepreneurship: A Preliminary Exploration of its Meaning and Social Significance” (Speech Prepared for Skoll Foundation Colloquium, June 2007) (available on course web page) Reading Questions:

1) What is the definition of “social entrepreneurship”? Does it describe a position or a

kind of practice in making social change? What are the key ideas in the practice of social entrepreneurship?

2) What is the potential of the idea of social entrepreneurship in tackling major social

problems such as education, health care, poverty reduction, and oppression of particu-lar social groups? What, if anything, limits the kinds of problems in the social sector that can be ameliorated by social entrepreneurship as you understand it?

3) What, if anything, distinguishes the idea of “social entrepreneurship” from the idea of

“social change making”? Is it in the motivations of those seeking to produce the change? Or does it lie in the forces one is relying on to create the change (e.g. eco-nomic or social or political? Or, does it lie in the character of the kinds of changes that are being sought?

4) Could these concepts be seen as subsets of one another, or are they distinct ideas? If

they are distinct ideas, is there an overlap between them or not?

DPI312 (GSE A130): Sparking Social Change, Fall 2012, Syllabus Page 14 Wednesday, September 19 5. Public Innovators: Jean Ekins and the Family Learning Center

Case: Jean Ekins and the Family Learning Center (A) KSG Case No 870.0 Case Questions:

1) Is Jean Ekins a “public innovator”? What is it about what she does that makes it rea-sonable to describe her as such? How important do you think her work is? Is it some-thing you would be proud to have done?

2) What motivations and purposes seem to animate and guide her action? What kind of

person is she trying to be? What values seem to guide her innovative efforts?

3) What personal assets does she bring to her work in general, and more particularly for creating the Family Learning Center in Leslie, Michigan? What liabilities does she have?

4) What are the key opportunities she spots, and the key actions she takes that breathe

life into the Family Learning Center?

5) At the end of the case, Jean Ekins and the Family Learning Center seem threatened. What is the size and character of the threat? What do you think will happen if Jean Ekins does nothing? What can she do to preserve her program? What should she do?

Required Reading:

Charles Leadbetter and Sue Goss, Civic Entrepreneurship, Introduction, pp. 9-18 (Lon-don, Demos, 1998) Reading Questions 1) Can individuals who work for government, or provide advice to government officials,

be important social change makers? What about their positions support or constrain them from acting as important social change makers?

2) Does the potential to make social change from given positions in government differ

according to whether the change-maker in government is politically elected, politi-cally appointed, civil servant, or contractor? What does government organize itself to innovate?

[Graded Written Assignment #1: My Social Change Idea and Me; Due September 24th]


Monday, September 24 6. Reflecting on Myself and Us as Social Change Agents: In this class, we will reflect on the social change-makers whose work we have analyzed in the previous four classes. To facilitate the discussion, we will distribute a survey in class that asks each student to give their individual views about the nature of the social change that was made, and most importantly what assets and commitments the social change agents brought to their work. The questionnaire will also ask students which of these change makers they identify with most closely, and whether there are other social change makers who both inspire them, and give them guidance about the best way to go about this difficult work. Individual responses to the questionnaire will not be publicly discussed without prior permission, but they will be used in the presentation of aggregate data so that each of us can get a rough sense where the rest of the class is with respect to their ideas about social change-making. This will not be graded, but in order for it to be useful, we need everyone to faithfully submit their survey so that all can be rep-resented. In advance of this class, we will also ask individual students to prepare a three page memo that sets out their current thinking about the social change they would like to make, and inventories the assets they bring as individuals to the making of that social change. Since part of the analytic focus in this first part of the course is on individuals, and their social and institu-tional positions, and what they bring to the effort to make social change, we would like to give you a chance to think about this issue in the context of your social change plan. We are also try-ing to move you along in the semester long process of developing your own social change plan. This assignment is required, and will be graded.

Required Reading:

William Drayton, The Citizen Sector: Becoming as Entrepreneurial and Competitive as Business, California Management Review Reprint Series CMR vol . 44, number 3, Spring 2002.

Reading Questions: 1) What do you think you bring to society’s efforts to identify and solve problems, or

find and exploit significant opportunities for improvement? What assets can you per-sonally call on to improve the quality of individual and social life?

2) What is the most significant thing you have done so far to make a significant social

change? How did it start? What did you see that others had missed? What allowed you to exploit the opportunity?

3) How would you define social entrepreneurship? What, if anything, makes it different

from community organizing, political advocacy, or public leadership? What seems similar to you among these different concepts?

4) What “institutional platforms” seem to fit you best? For-profit organizations? Politi-

cal organizations? Community self-help organizations? Government agencies? What


is it about those platforms that suit you better than others? What do you think gives these platforms leverage in trying to produce social change?

II. Creating Public Value Propositions Wednesday, September 26 7. Public Value Propositions (I): An Exercise in Creativity Case: Alcohol Abuse in an Eskimo Community Exercise:

In this class, we will begin to work with one of the biggest assets that you bring to the process of making change – not just your commitment, but also your creative imagination. To discover how much imagination each of has alone, and all of us have together, we will present you with an important social problem in a small area that cries out for a solution. The class will consist of developing and beginning the process of testing ideas to deal with this problem.

In the first part of the class, each student will be asked to spend 10 minutes imaging pos-sible solutions to the problem. There are no right answers at this stage, and no effort to test the proposed solutions for value or feasibility. All we want is ideas. In the second part of the class, we will divide the class into small groups. Each of the small groups will have three tasks over the rest of the class session.

The first task of the small groups is simply to hear and list the ideas that each individual in the group has. Each person should be allowed to describe their idea. A note keeper should list the ideas on pads.

The second task of the group is to see if they can add some ideas to the list. Again, there should be no efforts made to sort or organize or consolidate or evaluate. The task is sim-ply to generate lots of different ideas – including both variants of what was previously proposed, and totally new ideas.

The third task of the small group is to begin to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the various proposals. There will not be time to do this systematically for all ideas, so a group could start by nominating several ideas that seem particularly promising through some kind of vote, and then begin to evaluate the proposals in terms that seem relevant. It would be useful at this stage for everyone to be a bit self-conscious about the criteria they and others in their group were being used to vet the ideas. But it is not important at this stage to make those explicit. Stay focused on the concrete discussion of the ideas.

The goal of the class as a whole is to get individuals engaged in creative thought about how to deal with the social problem assigned. Success in the class will consist of having stimulated individual thought with as many possible solutions as possible. The goal is not to come to an agreement within the group, or the class as a whole. This is all fodder for individuals to use for the next class exercise. See below.


Required Reading: Steven Ko and John Butler, Creativity: A Key Link to Entrepreneurial Behavior, Business Horizons (2007) 50 365-372 (available on course web page)

Monday, October 1 8. Public Value Proposition (II): An Exercise in Coherence and Persuasion Case: Alcohol Abuse in an Eskimo Community (Continuing) Exercise and Assignment 3: In this class, we will practice developing and using of the most important skills you will need to develop as a social change maker – the ability to present an idea you have for making change in a very tight, short, coherent argument that can be persuasive with many individuals you hope you can persuade to join the cause. In the previous class, each of you will have heard many different ideas about how to solve the problem represented by the case. For this class, we will ask each of you to write a two page proposal that you would submit to the Mayor of the Town a proposal that you think would deal with the problem in the town that you would be pre-pared to carry out. In the class, we will randomly select students to present their idea in less than three minutes to the Mayor. The point of the exercise is to begin the task of disciplining creativity without shutting it down. You will have seen that there are many different ideas about how to solve a given prob-lem. The challenge is to begin testing those ideas against practical judgments of acceptability, and do-ability. But the process of vetting ideas isn’t a simple process of accepting or rejecting ideas – it is often a process of adapting ideas to practical challenges. Those challenges may be sufficiently tough that one may end up producing an idea quite different than one previously had. But the point is that you need creativity in adapting your first idea to meet pragmatic challenges, as well as creativity in developing the first version of the idea. It is a continuing process of imag-ining, testing, imagining an adjustment, seeing a new opportunity that one hadn’t seen before, etc. At any particular point, however, one has to have a clear, simple story to tell. And to produce that clear simple story, one needs to be highly disciplined in the purposes to be achieved, and the means to be relied upon. You will have to go through the process of sorting through the ideas you heard, testing them in your mind, tentatively committing to one, developing that idea further, and boiling the idea down in for a three minute presentation. This is much harder than writing a 10 page paper because the discipline is much more exacting. While we will get to hear only about 15 or so presentations in class, we will read and comment upon the others.

DPI312 (GSE A130): Sparking Social Change, Fall 2012, Syllabus Page 18 Wednesday, October 3 10. The Strategic Triangle: A Framework for Spotting and Exploiting Opportunities

Lecture: Strategy in the Social and Public Sector Cases: Reflections on the Value Propositions Developed in the Exercise Above 1. What was the public value you were proposing to create? (in the short and long run) 2. What operational capacity were you relying on to produce the public value? (in the

short and long run) 3. Where would the money and the political and social support come from to support

your effort? (in the short and long run) 4. What immediate action steps seemed necessary and valuable in producing the desired

results? 5. What indicators or measures would you use to reassure yourself and others that you

were on the right track? Are these measures of processes or outcomes? Required Reading:

Mark H. Moore, “On Creating Public Value: What Business (And Non-Profit Organiza-tions) Might Learn from Government About Strategic Management” (September, 2003)

Reading Questions: 1. What is the concept of public value? What makes it different from private value, or is

it simply the sum of individual private valuations?

2. How could one tell if one was producing public value as a social entrepreneur or so-cial change maker? Where do the individual valuations of those who benefit from the entrepreneurial effort fit into this scheme? Where do revenue streams earned by the sale of products and services, or those made by voluntary donors, or those made by government agencies fit into judgments as to whether public value is being created or not?

3) How could one measure the production of public value in non-financial terms? Would

it be useful to do so? How easy would it be to convert publicly or socially valued re-sults into either financial measures, or revenue streams?

4) Why do strategy models in the private sector not include the “legitimacy and support” circle of the strategic calculation? Is legitimacy and support not crucial to their suc-cess? Where does it come from?

Monday, October 8 [Columbus Day: No Class]


Wednesday, October 10 10) Developing and Testing Value Propositions (I): Defining, Measuring, and Paying for Public Value

Case: LISC: Issues in Assessing the Impact of Social Investment (Kennedy School of Government Case # 1370.0) Case Questions: 1) What social or public value is LISC trying to create? 2) What is the logic model, or idea about a value chain, that they are relying on to create

that value? 3) How could one measure the degree to which LISC has been successful in creating

that social or public value? 4) How important is it for LISC to be able to demonstrate objectively that any improve-

ments in social conditions can be attributed to its operations? What burden does that place on the development of measurement systems?

5) What is LISC’s “distinctive competence” that makes it different from ordinary banks?

How valuable is that to society? Who will pay for it? Required Readings: Kaplan, “A Balanced Scorecard for Public-Sector Organizations” HBS Case No. B9911C Mark H. Moore, “The Public Value Scorecard: A Rejoinder and an Alternative to ‘Stra-tegic Performance Measurement and Management in Non-Profit Organizations’ by Rob-ert Kaplan,” March 2004 (Cambridge © 2004), pp 1-19

Reading Questions: 1) Why can’t financial systems perform the same vital role in assessing the value creat-

ing performance of government and non-profit organizations that they can in the pri-vate sector?

2) What would private sector managers have to do to assess the value creating perform-ance of the organizations they led if they could not have information about the reve-nues they earned through the sale of the goods and services they produced?

3) One way to think about the problem of “recognizing social or public value” is that it is merely a technical problem. All we have to do is find some way to impute value to effects that occur in society, and matter to individuals living in the society, but do not necessarily pass through markets where their value can be registered in explicit ex-changes. The most common idea is that we should find some way of determining an individual’s willingness to pay even when we can’t observe them taking this action. The alternative idea is that the problem is not just that we can’t see individuals valu-ing goods and services in markets, but that individuals are not necessarily the right


“arbiter” of social or public value; the right arbiter of social or public value should be a collective, or at least an individual acting on an individually held view of what would be good for the collective, rather than individuals deciding what they want for themselves. Which seems more accurate to you?

4) How big a problem is created for social entrepreneurs working in government, in

nonprofits and for profit enterprises if it proves difficult to measure the public value they are creating through their efforts, to monetize the value of that result, or to tie the value created to a particular revenue stream.

Monday, October 15 11. Developing and Testing Value Propositions (II): Developing the Ideal

Case: The Harlem Children’s Zone (HBS Case #9-303-109) Case Questions:

1) What is the key value proposition that is now guiding the actions of Harlem Chil-dren’s zone? How plausible do you think it is? What evidence do we have that the value proposition is correct? Is it an argument based on fact, on logic, or on ideology?

2) Do you think the value proposition being advanced and tested by the Harlem Chil-

dren’s Zone is a scalable idea? How can the enterprise grow? What will be the princi-pal constraints to scaling up?

Required Reading:

Susan Colby, Nan Stone, Paul Carttar, “Zeroing in on Impact” Stanford Social Innova-tion, Fall, 2004 (available on course web page) Reading Questions: 1) A “market opportunity” in the private sector consists of a group of individuals with

desires and needs that could be satisfied by a product or service offered by a produc-ing firm at a price that those potential customers would be both able and willing to pay. How would one describe the nature of the “social opportunity” that is the distinc-tive focus of a social entrepreneur? To what extent is that opportunity defined by the desires and needs of a particular group of individuals considered particularly needy and deserving? To what extent is that opportunity defined by some concept of a social problem that needs to be ameliorated?

2) How do some social conditions get identified as social problems that should be ad-dressed even if the individuals benefited from the solution cannot pay for the solu-tion? How do some individuals get identified as being needy or deserving of help from third parties of one kind or another?


3) How does one calculate what is necessary to do to change social conditions? Some-

times this calculation is described as “developing a theory of change.” Other times it is described as a “policy analysis” that explores how a collectively desired social out-come could be achieved. Still other times, it is described as product or program de-sign. What do all these terms have in common? What is the core work that has to done by social change makers to attract enthusiasm for themselves, and their enter-prises?

[Written Assignment # 2: My Value Proposition: Due Monday, Wednesday, Oct 17] Part III: Taking Value Propositions to Scale and Significance

Wednesday, October 17 12. Scaling Good Ideas into Meaningful Social Change: An Exercise in Framing the Sub-ject for Discussion Exercise: In this class, we will shift our attention from how one might develop a good idea, and get it up and operating on a small scale, and turn our major attention to the question of how a social change -maker might help an idea to grow into a significant social change. To get our minds fo-cused clearly on this subject, we have to come to grips as a class with three important questions: 1) what sort of change in individual and social life should count as an important social change; and 2) what processes seem to cause those changes to occur; 3) what can individuals with good ideas that could change society in important ways do to help their ideas grow.

To begin that discussion, we will start with an exercise in which we nominate a large number of phenomenon that might be called important social changes in a survey instrument. With respect to each of these events, we will ask you to present your own views on the following questions:

Do you think that the phenomenon described was in some sense big enough to

count as an important social change? Do you think the phenomenon described moved society in a positive direction to-

wards the good and the just? What social conditions made the times ripe for such a change? Who do you think played an important role in making the change, and what did

they do?

The class will close with a brief lecture about how we will approach the subject of acting to produce significant, positive social change.

DPI312 (GSE A130): Sparking Social Change, Fall 2012, Syllabus Page 22 Monday, October 22: 13. Market Forces I: Organizing for Economic and Social Advantage

Case: Other People’s Garbage: Brazil’s Waste Pickers Struggle for Income, Respect, and Solidarity” by Andrea Tissenbaum [Draft - August 2009] pp. 1-18. [video segment to be shown at beginning of class] Case Questions: 1) What is the value proposition of Waste Pickers’ Cooperatives?

2) Waste pickers pursue a variety of value: income, social status, self-government. Are

there trade offs between these values?

3) There are complicated relationships between different kinds of organizations in this case: small cooperatives, networks of cooperatives, the local state, national state. Draw a figure depicting, as best you can, the relationship between the different organ-izational actors in this case.

4) What is the “public value” that is captured by the organization of the waste pickers

and the creation of a public policy that benefits those organizations?

5) The democratic self-management of cooperatives seems to be important to the waste pickers. Is the cooperative structure, as opposed to a more conventional hierarchical form of organization, a help or obstacle to the goals of the waste pickers?

6) What is, and what should be, the relationship between city authorities — such as

those changed with maintaining streets and sanitation — be to the waste pickers? Required Reading:

Offe, Claus, and Helmut Wiesenthal. “Two Logics of Collective Action” in Political Power and Social Theory 1 (1980): 67-115. (available on course web page)

Reading Questions:

1) Earlier in this class, we have encountered the problem of collective action and the role of the political entrepreneur in solving collective action problems. Constructions such as the “prisoners dilemma” and “assurance games” are highly abstract. What, if anything, does the more “sociological” approach to collective action of Offe and Wiesenthal add to these abstractions.

2) The central claim of Offe and Wiesenthal is that individuals with different social po-sitions (workers, capitalists) face fundamentally different kinds of collective action problems. Why do they think it is far more difficult for workers to act collectively than for capitalists? Are they right?


3) Offe and Wiesenthal argue that workers must agree on what interests they hope to ad-

vance through organization — they must alter their very identities — and that this makes their collective action quite difficult. Did the waste pickers have to reach such agreements and reinvent themselves in order to organize? How difficult was this?

Wednesday, October 24: 14. Market Forces II: Using Market Forces & Morals to Make Social Change (II):

Case: GoodGuide (http://www.goodguide.com) Case Questions: 1) Go to GoodGuide.com [disclosure: Archon Fung is on GoodGuide’s Board] and look

up a product that you regularly use. Can you envision this tool, or one like it, altering your purchasing decisions? Why or why not?

2) What is GoodGuide’s public value proposition? Do you think this proposition is cor-

rect? What are the most likely ways that it is incorrect? 3) GoodGuide is incorporated as a for-profit corporation. It is financed principally

through venture capital. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the for-profit platform for this enterprise, as opposed to a non-profit platform?

4) What are the largest barriers to GoodGuide becoming successful? Required Readings: Daniel Goleman. “Full Disclosure” in Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything (New York: Broadway Books, 2009): 83-100. Archon Fung, Mary Graham, and David Weil. Chapter 4, “What Makes Transparency Work” in Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency (New York: Cam-bridge University Press, 2007): 50-105. Reading Questions: 1) What does it mean for a transparency policy or system to be “effective.” 2) Think of various information policies and systems that you encounter in your own

life. Which ones change your behavior and which ones do not? Do any of them actu-ally make you behave in ways that are bad for you or bad for society?

3) What is the “action cycle” of transparency?

4) Do you think that GoodGuide’s information efforts will be effective, in light of the

“action cycle” analysis?

DPI312 (GSE A130): Sparking Social Change, Fall 2012, Syllabus Page 24 Monday, October 29: 15. Market Forces III: Scaling Social Change from the Bottom-Up(I)

Case: Kmart Union in Greensboro Fights for a Contract (A) and (B) HKS Case #C15-00-1603.0 and #C15-00-1604.0 Case Questions: 1) ACTWU and the Pulpit Forum are organizations that in different ways claim to ad-

vance the interests of workers at the Kmart distribution center in Greensboro. In what ways do these two organizations represent well and fail to represent the interests of workers?

2) Is unionization a good thing for workers in Greensboro? For Greensboro overall? 3) Was the disruption of the Greater Greensboro Open golf event (in the (A) case) stra-

tegically wise? What would have made this action more effective? 4) What was the effect of the Pastor’s civil disobedience (in the (B) case) on the Kmart

negotiations? Who are the different actors that figure, both in the foreground and background, of this negotiation and the drama around it?

Required Reading: John Gaventa. “Finding the Spaces for Change: A Power Analysis.” IDS bulletin 37.6 (2006): 23-33. Reading Questions: 1) What are the three dimensions of power? 2) What different kinds of power are at work in the Greensboro/K-Mart case? 3) What are the alliances at work in this case, and how do they change?

4) What does the union gain and loose in its alliance with the Pulpit Forum?

Wednesday, October 31 16. Using Market Forces to Make Social Change IV:

Case: Mohammed Yunus and the Grameen Bank: (B), (C), (D) [C and D Cases to Be Handed Out in Class]


Case Questions (B) Case:

1. Was Yunus right to think that his best chance of increasing the durability and scale of

Grameen was to develop new branches in new locales? Who is he trying to persuade 2. that the Grameen model is viable? What do these players bring to his effort to scale

up Grameen?

3. Should he try to make Grameen work in the difficult circumstances of Tangail? Are there any adaptations in the Grameen model he should consider making?

4. Should he try to screen out members of Gonobahini, or welcome them to the

Grameen enterprise? Required Readings: Andrew H. Van de Ven, Douglas E. Polley, Raghu Garud, and Sankaran Venkatarman, The Innovation Journey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) Chapter 2 pp. 21-66 (available on course web page)

Monday, November 5 17. Conventional Wisdom I: Two Models of Philanthropy

Case: Going Against the Grain: A “Conservative” Think Tank in Massachusetts (HKS Case C14-98-1429.) Case Questions: 1) The Pioneer Institute is devoted to developing long term ideas that will change poli-

tics and policy. They think others are executing short term strategies. What is the dif-ference between the two? Think of other organizations in this political advocacy space. Which ones are short term and which ones long term?

2) What makes a good policy issue for the Pioneer Institute? What makes for a bad is-

sue, one that it should not take on?

3) Who is the audience of the Pioneer Institute? What are other potential audiences that the Institute has chosen NOT to address?

4) Is the Pioneer Institute involved in implementing projects? Should it be?

5) How should the Pioneer Institute measure its own success? Required Reading:

Covington, Sally. Moving a Public Policy Agenda: The Strategic Philanthropy of Con-servative Foundations (National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, July 1997).


Reading Questions: 1) Sally Covington argues, to use a term latter developed by Sidney Blumenthal, that

conservative philanthropy amounts to a vast “right wing conspiracy.” Is that just an-other term for effective social change agents?

2) She characterizes mainstream liberal philanthropy as “pragmatic.” What are the char-acteristics of this liberal pragmatic philanthropy?

3) With enough philanthropic resources, would it be possible to use the strategies that

Covington identifies to create a vast “left wing conspiracy?” Or, are there asymme-tries between the two broad agendas (e.g. reducing the size and scope of government versus developing government that works in egalitarian and effective ways) that make it impossible to apply the conservative philanthropic strategies?

4) If you had $100 million as a philanthropist interested in sparking social change,

would you invest it in “moving a public policy agenda” using the strategies described by Covington or in the liberal pragmatic strategy?

Wednesday, November 7 18. Conventional Wisdom (II): Changing the Professional Ideology of Policing Case: The Spread of Community Policing

Case Questions: 1) Why did police departments all look pretty much the same, despite high decentraliza-

tion and autonomy, by 1970? 2) In the 1980s, police reformers had very different notions of how to reinvent policing.

What is the difference between the problem-oriented, broken-windows, and commu-nity-centered versions described in the readings?

3) Which strategy is most likely to result in substantial valuable social change? What is

the value proposition? 4) Which strategy (if any) were/are police departments most likely to adopt?

5) What are the tools and strategies available to move the field from traditional to com-munity policing?

Required Readings: Mark H. Moore and George L. Kelling, "The Evolving Strategy of Policing", Perspec-tives on Policing, November(2), (Cambridge: Program in Criminal Justice Policy, 1988), pp. 1 - 15.


Roehl, Janice A. and Calvin C. Johnson, et al , National Evaluation of the COPS Program - Title I of the 1994 Crime Act [August 2000, NCJ 183643], (Rockville: National Insti-tute of Justice © 2000), "COPS and the Nature of Policing [excerpts]", Cover Page, Table of Contents, pp. 179-199, 234-237, Tables 6-4 through 6-19. (available on course web page).

Archon Fung. Selections from Chapter 2, “Down to the Neighborhoods” in Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy (Princeton, 2004): 44-56; 63-68 (read sec-tions 2.4-2.8; 2.10-2.11). DiMaggio, Paul, and Walter W. Powell. “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomor-phism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields.” American Sociological Re-view 48 (1983): 147-60. (available on course web page) Mark H. Moore, Learning While Doing Reading Questions: 1) What do you think of the claim that organizations pursue “legitimacy” more avidly

than performance, and that the way they gain legitimacy is to operate pretty much like everyone else does? If this were true, what would it mean for the efficiency of private sector organizations in searching for and finding improved methods of producing par-ticular goods and services?

2) Suppose that organizations gain legitimacy partly through real performance, and part-

ly by imitating other organizations in the field. Suppose farther that some organiza-tions were better able to monitor performance than others. If organizations cannot monitor performance very well, or choose not to, what would that imply for the de-gree to which they focused on either performance or imitation as a way of gaining le-gitimacy? What would that mean for the long run performance of the organizations that had difficulty measuring performance?

3) One important way that the Federal Government often seeks to stimulate innovation

and change in particular social sectors is through some combination of financing so-cial research and development on one hand, and providing financial incentives to or-ganizations that embrace favored new processes. If you were giving advice to the Secretary of Education about how to design the “Race to the Top Initiative” to im-prove schooling, or to the Director of the White House Office of Social Entrepreneur-ship about how to help bring promising ideas in the public sector to scale, what would you say? Does the federal government have much leverage here? What can it do to maximize its leverage?

Monday, November 12

[ No Class — Veteran’s Day] Wednesday, November 14 19. Using the State Power to Change Society and Politics I: The Law as Social Lever


Cases: Roe v. Wade 410 US 113 (1973) http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0113_ZS.html

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 558 US 50 (2010) [Note: The text of the Supreme Court opinions is not assigned as reading] http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZS.html (Additional supporting documentation is available on the course web page)

Required Readings: Gerald Rosenberg. “Introduction” and Chapter 6 “Transforming Women’s Lives? The Courts and Abortion” in The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991): 1-8; 175-201. Archon Fung. “Making Rights Real: Roe’s Impact on Abortion Access.” Politics and So-ciety 21.4 (1993): 465-504. (available on course web page) New York Times blog debate: “How Corporate Money Will Reshape Politics” (January 21, 2010), URL: http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/how-corporate-money-will-reshape-politics/ Reading Questions: 1) What are the reasons to think that abortion access would have been widely available

in the 1970s and 1980s even if the Court had not rendered an affirmative decision for a woman’s right to choose in Roe v. Wade?

2) In his article, Mark Tushnet offers three arguments against social change through le-

gal/constitutional rights. One of these is that legalization of reform is political debili-tating. What is this argument? Is he right in the case of Roe? Why or why not?

3) Gerald Rosenberg argues that the Court is less attractive than many think as a vehicle

for social change. Why does he think this? Do you agree?

4) Will last year’s Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC result in substan-tial and lasting social change? If so, what’s wrong with Rosenberg’s and Tushnet’s arguments?


Monday, November 19 20. Using State Power to Scale Social Change II: Re-Structuring Government in Kerala, India

Case: Patrick Heller and T.M. Thomas Isaac, “The Peoples’ Campaign for Democratic Decentralization” in Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright eds, Deepening Democracy: In novations in Empowered Participatory Governance (London: Verso Press, 200x): 77-110. Case Questions: 1) What are the aims of the architects of the People’s Campaign? What kind of social

change would they like to see?

2) What is the public value that they seek?

3) What resources and capabilities can they draw upon?

4) What are the important institutional design elements of the People’s Campaign for Democratic Decentralization?

5) T.M. Thomas Isaac had a “big bang” theory of design. Instead of making sure that

there was local democratic capacity before devolving control of resources, he thought that resources should be devolved first, and then capacity will come. What do you think of the big bang proposition?

6) Is this kind of local participatory planning a good strategy for development? Why or

why not? 7) Is this kind of local participatory planning good for equality and social inclusion [for

women, for low status individuals in scheduled castes/tribes]? Why or why not?

Required Reading: Heller, Patrick, KN Harilal, and Shubum Chaudhuri. “Building Local Democracy: Evalu-ating the Impact of Decentralization in Kerala, India.” World Development 35.4 (2007): 626-48. (available on course web page) Reading Questions: 1) Do you accept the evidence that the Peoples’ Campaign has created large and valu-

able social change?

2) More participatory forms of decision-making are often thought to be less efficient and effective. What are the arguments for the decentralization strategy of the Peoples’ Campaign being more effective than top-down forms of decision-making? Do you accept these reasons or reject them?

DPI312 (GSE A130): Sparking Social Change, Fall 2012, Syllabus Page 30 Wednesday, November 21

[No Class — Thanksgiving Break]

Monday, November 26 21. Social and Political Movements I: Aligning Culture, Morality and Law in Bogota, Co-lombia

Case: Antanas Mockus: The Prohibition of Fireworks in Bogota Case Questions:

1) What is the most compelling example in the case of a cultural initiative that resulted

in behavioral change?

2) How much of the Mockus administration’s drunk driving strategy relied upon legal measures and how much on cultural ones?

3) Is there public value in the practice of shooting off fireworks?

4) In contemplating the fireworks ban, what are the legitimate interests of fireworks

vendors and how should Mockus address them?

5) Should those who violate the fireworks prohibition be punished? How?

6) How should Mockus respond to residents who feel that lighting fireworks is a critical part of their Christmas tradition?

Required Reading:

Mockus, Antanas. “Co-Existence as Harmonization of Law, Morality and Culture.” Pros-pects 32.1 (2002): 19-37. (available on course web page)

Reading Questions:

1) Mockus argues that there are three systems that regulate individual behavior, and that they are not always in sync: law, morality, and culture. Think of an act that is legal, but not culturally nor morally approved. Think of an act that is culturally validated, but illegal and immoral. Think of an act that is legal and culturally validated, but im-moral.

2) Do you think, by and large, that people refrain from doing things that are wrong be-

cause of legal sanction, moral approbation, or cultural disapproval? 3) Do you do refrain from doing things that are wrong mostly for moral, legal, or cul-

tural reasons?


4) Think of a social change that produced public value that relied mostly on cultural

transformation, rather than political, policy, or economic change.

Wednesday, November 28 22. Social and Political Movements II: Popular Ideology, Norms, Incentives, & Deliberation

Case: Female Genital Cutting in West Africa (HKS Multimedia case produced by Patri-cia Garcia-Rios) https://knet.hks.harvard.edu/collab/slate/sp/tostan/Case%20Materials/1.%20Introduction.aspx

Case Questions:

Required Reading: Gerry Mackie. “Ending Footbinding and Infibulation: A Conventional Account” in American Sociological Review Vol. 61, No. 6 (Dec. 1996): 999-1017. (available on course web page)

Reading Questions:

1) Are the practices of foot binding and Female Genital Cutting bad? Why or why not?

2) Why do people engage in foot binding and Female Genital Cutting?

3) Think of different strategies to end female genital cutting: law, individual education, norm change. What would these different strategies look like?

4) Mackie’s argues that foot binding and Female Genital Cutting can be modeled as a

“ranked equilibria” coordination problem (p. 1006). If he’s right, what are the pros-pects for success of legal vs. educational vs. social norm strategies of changing the practice of foot binding or FGC? Why?

Monday, December 3 23. Social and Political Movements III: The Power of Social Media and Viral Engagement

Case: Planned Parenthood’s Campaign Against the Susan G Komen Foundation

Required Reading: Archon Fung and Jennifer Shkabatur: Viral Engagement: Fast, Broad, and Cheap, but Good for Democracy?

DPI312 (GSE A130): Sparking Social Change, Fall 2012, Syllabus Page 32 Wednesday, December 5 24. Final Class: Criteria for an Excellent Social Change Plan

End


Overview: Class and Assignment Schedule

Part I: Becoming a Social Change Agent 1. Fri. 9/7: Introduction, Survey, Ideas (Written Survey) 2. Mon. 9/10: Aruna Roy 3. Wed. 9/12: Broadmoor 4. Mon. 9/17: Yunus I 5. Wed. 9/19: Jean Ekins 6. Mon. 9/24 : Reflections on Me as a Social Change Agent [Graded Written Assignment Due: Monday, Sept. 24th]

Part II: Developing a Strong “Public Value Proposition”

7. Wed. 9/26: Exercise in Creativity: Alcohol in the Arctic 8. Mon. 10/1: Exercise in Creativity: Alcohol in the Arctic II [Ungraded Written Assignment Due: Monday, October 1] 9. Wed. 10/3: Public Value and the Strategic Triangle [Columbus Day: No Class] 10. Wed. 10/10: LISC 11. Mon. 10/15: Harlem Children’s Zone

[Graded Written Assignment Due: October 17th] Part III: Scaling Ideas for Social Change

12. Wed. 10/17: Scaling Ideas for Social Change 13. Mon. 10/22: Other Peoples Garbage 14. Wed. 10/24: Good Guide 15. Mon. 10/29: Unions and Kmart 16. Wed. 10/31: Yunus (II) 17. Mon. 11/5: Philanthropy 18. Wed. 11/7: Policing

[Veterans Day: No Class] 19. Wed. 11/14: Roe v. Wade 20. Mon. 11/19: Kerala [Thanksgiving Vacation: No Class] 21. Mon. 11/26: Mockus 22. Wed. 11/28: Female Genital Cutting 23. Mon. 12/3: Social Media, Planned Parenthood 24. Mon. 12/5: Wrap-Up

[Required, Graded Final Paper Due: December 14th]