Whilst the 21st century has witnessed unprecedented change in the developed world’s public services a greater challenge faces the developing world given the extent of the ‘messy’ problems confronting them. Here we examine the use of social innovation to tackle a multiplicity of problems including gender inequality, poor standards of healthcare, rural poverty and, leadership development in Bangladesh. This supports Ayob, Teasdale and Fagan’s (2016) call for exploring the potential benefits of social innovation in the developing world.
The case studied here is a social business, the Grameen Caledonian College of Nursing (GCCN), a collaboration between Grameen Health Care Trust (GHCT) and Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) to address the shortage of well trained nurses in Bangladesh and give young women opportunities to develop and escape rural poverty (see Parfitt and Nahar, 2016). ThE aim of the college ‘is to provide an environment where young disadvantaged women from rural areas…not only become registered nurse midwives but also be equipped as leaders and change agents for the future’ (Parfitt and Nahar, 2016: 2). It is the latter leadership development aspect that we are investigating here. The key research question being does the education provided at GCCN equip its graduates with the appropriate skills set to adopt leadership roles and affect change in one of the world’s poorest countries, especially in its current relatively unstable state (BBC News 21/09/16).
The study uses a multi-method approach. Firstly, to enable international comparison 200 GCCN graduates were surveyed using an internationally validated questionnaire on the psychological resilience of nurses developed by Brunetto et al (2016). This paper focuses particularly on responses to questions on authentic leadership (see Ilies, Morgeson and Nahrang, 2005) and psychological capital as we argue, whilst acknowledging these are contested concepts, that positive scores here may indicate individual capacity to sustain being leadership role models, rather than risk burn-out, (Laschinger, Wong and Grau, 2013) given the current challenging circumstances. Secondly, to gain deeper insight key informants were interviewed.
The findings of this paper provide insight into a unique social innovation experiment where developing and developed countries collaborate to challenge ‘messy’ problems. It is hoped that the lessons learned from GCCN and this study will not only help GCCN flourish as it moves into a financially sustainable state, but will provide wider guidance for similar projects across the developing world tackling health and wider infrastructure issues.
References
Ayob, N., Teasdale, S. and Fagan, K. (2016) How Social Innovation ‘Came to Be’: Tracing the Evolution of a Contested Concept. Journal of Social Policy 45:4 (635-653)
BBC News (2016) Bangladesh country profile 21st September (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12650940 accessed 15/10/16)
Ilies, R., Morgeson, F., and Nahrgang, J. (2005) Authentic leadership and eudaemonic well-being: Understanding leader-follower outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly 16 [373-394]
Laschinger, H., Wong, C. and Grau, A. (2012) Authentic leadership, empowerment and burnout: a comparison in new graduates and experienced nurses. Journal of Nursing Management 21 [541-552]
Parfitt, B. and Nahar, N. (2016) Nursing Education in Bangladesh: a social business model. International Nursing Review 63: 2 [285-291]
B3 - Organizational Change and the Future of Work in the Public Sector
