New Directions Network

This workshop was birthed with an interest in problematics that relate to the interplay between what is considered “public” or “prosocial” interests and what is considered “private” or “personal” considerations, as well as the overlapping, dynamic, and contested boundaries between these concepts. We are witnessing significant turmoil across the globe, alongside increasing concentrations of wealth, a broad emphasis on market-driven, privatized solutions to public problems, and a growing acceptance of how institutions and organizations structure differential access to public goods based upon racial identity, place of origin, gender, sexuality, ability, and other intersectional identities. While prosocial organizations, philanthropic institutions, social movements, and altruistic individuals have long been seen as crucial pieces of an infrastructure through which private action expands the public good, recent scholarship (as well as recent scandals) call into question the health and integrity of these assumptions.

Questions concerning “who governs and for whose benefit?” dominate much of our discourse in the 21st century. How does the way in which people, organizations, and institutions are selected and governed influence to whom they are accountable and to whom they offer benefit (Bearfield 2009; Benjamin 2013; Barman 2016; McGinnis Johnson 2016; Reich 2018)? For example, what happens when an NGO gains authority on one scale in ways that weaken its authority on another scale (Balboa 2018, Oelberger, Lecy, and Shachter 2020)? How do people who are marginalized in society successfully wield power through social movements (Freelon, McIlwain, and Clark 2018), and how are social movements shaped by their funding, sometimes even decades after the donations (Francis 2019)? Who are mission-driven organizations claiming to represent, to whom are they accountable, and from whom do they get their legitimacy (Goss, Barnes and Rose 2019; Leitzinger 2019;Mair, Mayer & Lutz 2015; Stone and Ostrower 2009)?

Populations in the same place and time are not all governed the same way (Gaynor and Wilson 2020). The institutionalization of public and private responsibilities simultaneously influence and are influenced by the racialization of the population (Brown 2013; Paschel 2018). The subjects of these regimes contest the power structures imposed upon them and reimagine systems of governance, despite often being made invisible (Benjamin 2019; Watkins-Hayes 2019). How do different racial, ethnic, and indigenous communities experience and affect the public and private systems that govern them (Fodder 2014)? How have the logics of public and private responsibility developed alongside and in response to racialization, immigration, and colonization (de Graauw et al. 2013; Masghati 2020; Morey 2021)? Moreover, how have public leaders racialized a subclass in service of creating the “public interest” for others (Alkadry and Blessett 2010)? How do the decisions and delegation of private responsibility affect who is doing the governing and how communities experience state power (Rodriguez-Muñiz 2017)?

Labor groups have always played a major role in the creation, maintenance, and resistance to institutions that perpetuate and ameliorate systems of oppression. The robust quality of institutions, organizations, and movements engaged in mission-driven work and labor struggles require examining the relationships between healthy and sustainable organizations, a healthy and engaged workforce, and positive outcomes for marginalized people and communities. In what ways do people deeply devoted to mission-driven work experience personal sacrifices as a result of this devotion (Bunderson & Thompson 2009; Dempsey & Sanders 2010; Hu & Hirsch 2017; Oelberger 2024)? How have recent shifts in labor organizing altered the opportunities for institutional change? How does the understanding that “the personal is political” show up in how we center marginalized voices at the forefront of social change organizations? How do the origins of the civil service system mask inequalities built into hiring practices (Portillo, Bearfield, and Humphrey 2020)? How do employees embody, mask, or challenge tensions between personal needs and prosocial aims through professionalized routines and actions (Kallman 2020)? And how does individual burnout reverberate to have negative impacts on the health and integrity of the cause at hand?

Technology has become a ubiquitous component of modern organizing, with a diverse array of inputs (McIlwain 2019) and consequences (Benjamin 2019; Nothias & Cheruiyot 2019). Furthermore, assumptions exist at the institutional level that have normalized managerialism and measurement in nonprofit and governmental work, as well as mandated them through regulations and requirements. Oftentimes, organizations that are sufficiently professionalized to accept philanthropic, corporate, or government funds seldom hold the range of expertise necessary to do the most effective work. How have these processes influenced the routines and actions of people, organizations, and institutions in civil society in ways that impact who benefits from mission-driven work (Dunning 2018; Ebrahim 2019; Oelberger 2018)? For example, what organizational trade-offs emerge between increasingly sophisticated management versus attention to strengthening civil society through advocacy and civic engagement (Skocpol 2003, Benjamin 2008)? And how does professionalization affect the articulation of accountabilities and the ways in which governance structures privilege certain accountability claims over others (Ebrahim, Battilana, & Mair 2014; Gugerty and Karlan 2018)?