Faculty Research

Faculty associated with the PACS Center engage in diverse research. Members with related research projects include: 

Stephen Barley

Stephen R. Barley is the Charles M. Pigott Professor of Management Science and Engineering, the Co- Director of the Center for Work, Technology and Organization at Stanford's School of Engineering, and the Co-Director of the Stanford/General Motors Collaborative Research Laboratory. He was the founding editor of the Stanford Social Innovation Review and has a deep interest in labor issues and social problems. Barley was editor of the Administrative Science Quarterly from 1993 to 1997. He has served on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal and the Journal of Management Studies and Organization Science. Barley has been the recipient of the Academy of Management's New Concept Award. He was a member of the Board of Senior Scholars of the National Center for the Educational Quality of the Workforce and co-chaired the National Research Council and the National Academy of Science's committee on the changing occupational structure in the United States. The committee's report, The Changing Nature of Work, was published in 1999.

Barley has written extensively on the impact of new technologies on work, the organization of technical work, and organizational culture. He edited a volume on technical work entitled Between Craft and Science: Technical Work in the United States published in 1997 by the Cornell University Press. In collaboration with Gideon Kunda of Tel Aviv University, Barley has recently published a book on contingent work among engineers and software developers, entitled Gurus, Hired Guns and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in the Knowledge Economy, with the Princeton University Press. Barley teaches courses on the management of R&D, the organizational implications of technological change, organizational behavior, social network analysis and ethnographic field methods. He has served as a consultant to organizations in a variety of industries including publishing, banking, computers, electronics and aerospace.

Larry Diamond

Larry Diamond is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, affiliated Professor of Political Science and Sociology, and Coordinator of the Democracy Program at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. He is a specialist on democratic development and on U.S. foreign policy affecting democracy abroad.

Diamond's research examines comparative trends in the quality and stability of democracy in developing countries and post-communist states, and public opinion in new democracies. Much of his research, writing, and policy analysis over the past two decades has focused on the relationship between democracy, governance, and development in poor countries, particularly in Africa. Diamond works closely with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and is co-editor of the Journal of Democracy, published by NED. Through the NED-affiliated World Movement for Democracy, he works with civil society organizations in a number of developing countries and helps to coordinate a global Network of Democracy Research Institutes.

Douglas McAdam

Doug McAdam is Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, Program Director of Urban Studies, and the former Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is the author or co-author of eight books and more than 60 articles in the area of political sociology, with a special emphasis on the study of social movements and revolutions. Among his best known works are Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970, a new edition of which was published in 1999 (University of Chicago Press), Freedom Summer (1988, Oxford University Press), which was awarded the 1990 C. Wright Mills Award as well as being a finalist for the American Sociological Association's best book prize for 1991 and Dynamics of Contention (2001, Cambridge University Press) with Sid Tarrow and Charles Tilly. He was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003.

McAdam's current research projects include an ambitious follow-up study of the long term "civic effects" of youth service; a study of variation in neighborhood collective action in Chicago between 1965-2005; and research on the role of prior racial conflict in explaining the location of arson attacks on churches in the United States between 1995-2001.

Milbrey McLaughlin

Milbrey McLaughlin is the David Jacks Professor of Education and Public Policy, Director of the Center for Research on the Context of Teaching, and Founding Director of the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities. She studies K-12 education policy in the United States, as well as the broader issue of the ways in which community-school collaboration can support youth development.

McLaughlin's research focuses on the ways in which school teaching is shaped by issues such as organizational policy and social-cultural conditions of the schools, districts, and communities. She is involved with local efforts to engage whole communities in developing new strategies and capacity to promote youth development and learning.

Debra Meyerson

Debra Meyerson is the Co-Director of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, Associate Professor of Education, and affiliated Professor of Organizational Behavior. Her research focuses on conditions and change strategies that foster constructive and equitable gender and race relations in organizations, grass roots change strategies, and conditions that enable distributed leadership.

In her more recent projects, Meyerson is investigating the role of philanthropic institutions in promoting and diffusing local initiatives aimed at promoting gender and racial equity in organizations; preparation for educational leadership; the rationale, politics, and consequences of scaling in the charter school field; and the blurring of work-life boundaries through the use of communication technologies.

Anne Firth Murray

Anne Firth Murray is Consulting Professor in Human Biology at Stanford University. From 1978 to the end of 1987, Murray directed the environment and international population programs of the Hewlett Foundation in California. She is the Founding President of The Global Fund for Women, which provides funds internationally to seed, strengthen, and link groups committed to women's well being. Her current research interests revolve around alternative forms of philanthropy and international women's health and human rights issues.

Ms. Murray serves on several boards and councils of non-profit organizations, including the African Women’s Development Fund, Commonweal, GRACE (a group working on HIV/AIDS in East Africa), Hesperian Foundation, and UNNITI (a women's foundation in India). She is the recipient of many awards and honors for her work on women’s health and philanthropy, and in 2005 she was nominated as one of a group of 1,000 women for the Nobel Peace Prize. Her book, Paradigm Found: Leading and Managing for Positive Action, was published by New World Library, California, in May 2006. Her next book, From Outrage to Courage: Critical Issues in International Women’s Health, will be published in 2007.

Leonard Ortolano

Leonard Ortolano is the UPS Foundation Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and former Peter E. Haas Director of the Haas Center for Public Service. He specializes in water resources and environmental planning. Ortolano's research focuses on the implementation of environmental policies and programs in the United States as well as in developing countries. He currently studies environmental planning and policy in China, the effectiveness of programs in delivering water supply and wastewater disposal services to disadvantaged communities, strategies and tactics of environmental non-governmental organizations in developing countries, and the diffusion of technologies for environmental protection.

Ortolano's professional interest in civil society stems from the importance of NGOs in the delivery of water supply and sanitation services to the very poor and the work of NGOs in the process of forming and implementing environmental policies. He is also interested in how funding from philanthropic organizations influences the agendas of NGOs.

Walter W. Powell

Walter W. Powell is Co-Director of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society; Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology, Organizational Behavior, Management Science and Engineering, and Communication; and Director of the Scandinavian Consortium on Organizational Research at Stanford. His research interests include economic sociology, particularly the role of networks; organization theory, most notably institutional influences; and studies of the impact of organizational form.

His current work related to the PACS Center's mission includes research on the allocation of R&D effort by bio-pharmaceutical companies to life-saving medicines vs. life-style drugs; a project supported by the Center for Social Innovation on the circulation and translation of management practices throughout the San Francisco Bay Area nonprofit community; and research on the relationship between public and proprietary science and its ramifications for the social role of universities.

Rob Reich

Rob Reich is an Associate Professor of Political Science, Ethics in Society, and, by courtesy, Education, at Stanford University. His main interests are in contemporary liberal theory, and he is working on two projects: the first on the ideals of equality and adequacy as applied to education policy and reform and the second about topics in ethics, public policy, and philanthropy. He is the author of Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in American Education (University of Chicago Press, 2002) and co-author of Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation and What We Can Do About It (Brookings Institution Press, 2005).

Reich has received fellowships from the Spencer Foundation and the Stanford Humanities Center. In 2004-05, he was a Laurance Rockefeller Visiting Fellow at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He is the recipient of several teaching awards, including the Walter J. Gores Award, Stanford University's highest award for teaching. Before attending graduate school, Reich was a sixth grade teacher at Rusk Elementary School in Houston, Texas.

Bruce Sievers

Bruce Sievers is a Senior Fellow of the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Consulting Director of the Skirball Foundation, Visiting Scholar at the Haas Center for Public Service, and former Director of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund. He additionally serves on the Advisory Board for the Stanford Social Innovation Review and writes a regular column for Alliance magazine.

Sievers consults with Stanford faculty, students, and staff on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. He teaches an undergraduate course on civil society and the nonprofit sector. He is also currently writing a book, tentatively titled Between Public and Private: Philanthropy, Civil Society, and the Fate of the Commons.