ClassInfo

"Leading across boundaries" means bringing together diverse groups of people from organizations in multiple sectors to work out sustainable programs to help solve important public problems. The practice of these leaders is integrative; that is, they help organizations integrate people, processes, structures, and resources in semi-permanent ways. They move back and forth across boundaries and build communication channels and linking pathways. For example, a human services professional who wants to transform her county's approach to homelessness will need to understand how to bring together disparate groups - from business owners, to religious congregations, to government agencies, to nonprofits, to grassroots groups involving homeless people - if she is to help her community develop system-wide solutions to homelessness. She will need to understand the ways that boundaries between these groups contribute to the problem and how to reshape these boundaries in ways that foster shared commitment to moving beyond the status quo. She will need to understand the unique contributions that different sectors, organizations, cultures, and communities can make to developing sustainable solutions. She will need to understand how to use her own formal and informal authority as well as draw on the authority of others.

This course is a comprehensive overview and examination of the increasingly mixed public, nonprofit and for-profit arrangements involved in providing public services. In particular, the course examines the management challenges and strategies involved in the development and implementation of these cross-sector initiatives. As such, the course will not only provide students with conceptual frameworks to understand contracting, partnerships and collaborations but will discuss and investigate particular leadership competencies and important characteristics of successful partnership strategies. Therefore, the course provides a mix of tools to help analyze aspects of these multi-organizational arrangements, and opportunities to apply concepts and tools to real cases and the students' own experiences.