Leadership Stories: Organizational Responses to Evolving Social Needs

RCLA has partnered with the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington to produce these Electronic Hallway resources. The Leadership Stories and associated Usage Notes are an especially good fit with courses on leadership, nonprofit and public management, strategic planning, community organizing, and social movements.

Leadership Stories: Organizational Responses to Evolving Social Needs

These Leadership Stories focus on existing organizations that have decided to focus around new or significantly expanded purpose. There are qualities of these groups that set them apart from start-up organizations. Studies of organizations at different points in their life cycle reveal that the very systems that have helped to make an organization strong can keep it from being more nimble or adaptable, even when that is their appropriate course of action.

Teaching these Leadership Stories offers an opportunity to examine these organizations by reviewing how they overcome those organizational and structural constraints and respond to a pressing and evolving need.

Usage Note

Organizational Responses to Evolving Social Needs: Usage Note

Leadership Stories

• Creating a Regional Transportation Authority in Detroit by Connecting City and Suburban Interests: A Different Kind of Stew
• Creating Supportive Housing for People Living with HIV/AIDS: Local Lessons, National Strategies: A Place to Call Home
• From Services to Activism: How Latino Day Laborers and Domestic Workers are Advocating for Themselves: Creating "Co-Authors of Justice"
• Justice for Janitors: How Immigrants are Organizing for Worker Rights: Your Hands Make Them Rich
• Preventing Homelessness and Creating Lasting Solutions through Housing Development, Service Provision and Advocacy: Staying the Course for a Cause