Complex social problems are beyond the capacity of any single organization – or sector -- to solve. Their sheer intractability suggests that we need new ways of both understanding the problems themselves and imagining solutions. This comparative case-based course – the course will consist of a series of inquiries into actual cases and elicitation of concrete practical lessons from those cases -- looks at different ways of structuring, managing, and leading collaborations between public, private, nonprofit, faith-based, and social movement actors to make a positive, large, and lasting impact on intractable and pressing global challenges: gender inequity, food and livelihood insecurity, structural poverty, climate change and adaptation, inter-generational inequity, inequitable access to health care, predatory capitalism and economic inequality. Learners will master tools and approaches for power, institutional, and hegemonic analysis; learners will acquire knowledge about the actions needed to bring together odd bedfellows, organizations that do not normally work together and face deep institutional and cultural constraints to doing so. The course will challenge learners to build a sophisticated understanding regarding how structural social change actually happens…vs. how we may wish it happens. Students will leave the course armed with broad strategies, approaches, tactics, and historical, comparative knowledge about what has worked, in what contexts and the understanding that when it comes to shifting power relations in sustained ways the next challenge demands creative thinking, not application of past “best practice.”

NOTE: Students who have already taken MBAG8511, “Leading Across Borders II,” will find some duplication of content and learning objectives and should contact the professor prior to registering for the course.