Event Overview
Complex problems exhibit multiple interconnected causes, significant heterogeneity, and unclear solutions. Yet, traditional approaches tend to rely on best practices that often ignore local variation and agency.
In this talk, Professor Maria Minniti (Syracuse University) suggests that self-organizing communities—voluntary grassroots organizations with congruent incentives—should be viewed as distinct organizational forms particularly well suited to address complex problems. Self-organizing communities create superior public value because of their unique access to local knowledge which is mobilized through three critical mechanisms: knowledge exchange between local and global levels, stakeholder alignment around shared values, and local autonomy in implementation. Local knowledge, shaped by specific contexts and experience, enables responses that uniform best practices cannot replicate. Drawing on empirical evidence from wildfire management in California and Brazil's response to the HIV/AIDS crisis, we show that communities participating in broad cross-level coalitions while maintaining autonomy achieve better outcomes than centrally planned interventions.
This research reconceptualizes community-based organizing as entrepreneurial problem-solving, challenging conventional wisdom that uniform alignment across organizational levels produces optimal results.
About the Speaker
Maria Minniti is Professor and Bantle Chair of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy at Syracuse University. She is also Director of the Institute for an Entrepreneurial Society (IES). Minniti holds a PhD in Economics from New York University, and has published extensively in leading entrepreneurship, management and economics journals, including AMJ, SMJ, JOM, ORM, JBV, JEBO, SBEJ, and OBES among others. She has been a visiting professor at LBS, CBS, Humboldt University, Aalto University, and the Max Planck Institute. In 2023, Minniti received the AOM-ENT Mentor Award. She is currently working on the relationship between collective action and institutions.