The heart of NYU Wagner's programs is our faculty. An amalgam of full-time, clinical/research/visiting, and adjunct professors, they are outstanding teachers, expert researchers and committed practitioners.
The heart of NYU Wagner's programs is our faculty. An amalgam of full-time, clinical/research/visiting, and adjunct professors, they are outstanding teachers, expert researchers and committed practitioners.
The Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service is home to research and policy centers, institutes, and initiatives that focus on solving urban problems and strengthening public policy and public service nationally and around the world.
Ranked #6 in Public Affairs by U.S. News & World Report, the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service educates the future leaders of public, nonprofit, healthcare and private sector organizations addressing the world's critical issues.
Students arrive at NYU with the desire to serve the public. They leave with the skills and experience to bring about change. Combining coursework in management, finance and policy with cutting-edge research and work experience in urban communities, the NYU Wagner education will enable you to transform your personal commitment into public leadership.
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2010
Durham, Sarah Brandraising: How Nonprofits Raise Visibility and Money Through Smart Communications. .
Abstract
Light, Paul C. and and Catherine B. Reynolds Driving Social Change: How to Solve the World's Toughest Problems. Wiley, Dec. 2010.
Amazon Books
Abstract
Has the role of the social entrepreneur been glorified as the primary driver of social breakthrough? Have we neglected the important role that all change agents play? What must be done to create the networks that create so many breakthroughs? How does the breakthrough cycle actually work? How do we strengthen the infrastructure that supports social change organizations in their quest? Driving Social Change is the ultimate introduction to the many steps needed to challenge and replace the prevailing wisdom.
Based on the latest research from author, professor, and Washington Post online columnist Paul C. Light, Driving Social Change confronts head-on the seemingly eternal questions of solving tough, even intractable, social problems. Starting with the definition of social entrepreneurship as a powerful driver of social change, it goes well beyond the concept to a more detailed assessment of the "breakthrough" cycle with several other drivers. Along the way, the book focuses on the need to protect past social breakthroughs from complacency and counterattack.
If our purpose is to change the world, writes Light, we must concentrate on every driver possible, not just the ones we can see. To that end, the book highlights alternative paths to creating social breakthrough and provides actionable advice, exploring:
-Strategies to broaden the definition of social entrepreneurship
-Tactics to build strong social organizations and networks
-Dynamic methods to respond to constant economic and social change
-The journey from initial commitment to a world of justice and opportunity
As much as social entrepreneurship is a wondrous, inspirational act, even more extraordinary is the creation of durable social impact through whatever means necessary. Driving Social Change tells us that we should be less concerned about the tools of agitation and more concerned about the disruption and replacement of the status quo.
Holding old mindsets up to the light of day, this timely book unflinchingly addresses the change process and challenges us to question our beliefs about how it really works.
2008
Light, P.C. The Search for Social Entrepreneurship. Brookings Institution Press.
Abstract
2007
Foldy, E.G., Goldman, L. & Ospina, S. Sensegiving and the Role of Cognitive Shifts In the Work of Leadership. in Leadership Quarterly.
View report
Abstract
Sensegiving -- shaping how people understand themselves, their work, and others engaged in that work -- is critical to the work of organizational leadership. We propose the cognitive shift, a change in how an organizational audience understands an important element of the organization's work, as a desired outcome of the sensegiving process. Organizations try to spur these shifts in two categories: about their issue and about their primary constituency, the population it is designed to serve or mobilize. This approach makes two contributions: It re-directs attention from individual leaders' behaviors and characteristics to the work of leadership, as opposed to the agents through which it is carried out. Second, it operationalizes the intangible process of meaning-making by breaking it down into discrete units that are relatively equivalent and, therefore, comparable, providing a systematic way to analyze and map cognitive leadership processes.
Light, P.C. Reshaping Social Entrepreneurship. Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall, .
View publication
Abstract
Social entrepreneurship has come to be synonymous with the individual visionary - the risk taker who goes against the
tide to start a new organization to create dramatic social change. The problem with focusing so much attention
on the individual entrepreneur is that it neglects to recognize and support thousands of other individuals, groups, and organizations that are crafting solutions to troubles around the globe.
2005
Light, P.C. Searching for Social Entrepreneurs. paper prepared for the annual meetings of the Association for Nonprofit and Voluntary Associations, November 17-19, .
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Abstract
The question for this paper is not whether social entrepreneurs exist, however, but whether the field of social entrepreneurship is too exclusive for its own good. The field has mostly defined social entrepreneurs as individuals who launch entirely new social-purpose nonprofit ventures. In doing so, the field may have excluded large numbers of individuals and entities that are equally deserving of the support, networking, and training now reserved for individuals who meet both the current definitional tests of a social entrepreneur and the ever-growing list of exemplars.
Not only does this definition deny the possibility that the intensity and quantity of social entrepreneurship might vary over time and across individuals and entities, it also substantially reduces the population of entrepreneurs who might form the basis for the kind of evidence-based, large-sample, control-group research needed to determine what truly matters to successful social entrepreneurship.
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