By Trisha Varma and Ravi Sreedharan
India is one of the fastest growing economies of the world, yet the fruits of this growth and development are not as equitably distributed as we would hope for. Our performance and position on several global development indices continue to falter and pose a threat to our aspirations of becoming a global frontrunner.
The social sector exists to uniquely solve these problems of sustained social change. While it would seem that scaling the social sector is required to address the magnitude of problems India faces, the sector itself has been quite divided on the question of scaling. On the one hand, scaling is seen as a concept encouraged by the for-profit sector that could be detrimental to the agile, hyperlocal ethos of how Social Purpose Organisations (SPO) operate. On the other hand, scaling by itself is not seen as the solution to the problem. Organisations that address a single issue (though social issues are interrelated) or do charity work tend to scale faster but, arguably, do not bring about sustained social change.
This predicament is reflected in the current state of the Indian social sector today, which remains notably undersized. One of the largest SPOs in India, Akshaya Patra, boasts of an operating budget of $73 million. However, this pales in comparison to United Way, one of the largest SPOs in the United States, that has a total income of a staggering $5.2 billion – making Akshaya Patra just 1/70th of its size. At an aggregated level, these impact the total contribution of the products and services generated by the social sector – this stands at 2% for India in 2021 while it is 5.6% for the US in 2022.
However, increasingly, the social sector seems to have come together behind an approach to scaling that makes sense – scaling the mission not the organisation. SPOs are finding solutions to some of the most pressing challenges facing society today, issues to do with foundational literacy, delivering primary health care to remote areas, and more. The bigger challenge today is to boost successful interventions so that other SPOs and governments can adapt and use them to achieve the larger mission. When put that way, nearly three-quarters (74%) of the SPOs interviewed in a recent study agreed that scaling was extremely important. Scaling the mission drives greater collaboration and partnerships, uses advocacy to promote successful efforts, and thus ensures sustainability of efforts.
One of the largest and most pressing challenges to scaling the mission is that of the lack of management of organisations, with SPOs lacking the know-how and resources to achieve scale. At the same time, organisations are seeing the exponential impact that management practices have on scaling the mission.
Across large scale studies of the social sector, it has emerged that the fundamentals of an organisation, more than just a great program design or execution, are key to delivering high impact. It was seen over a five-year period that organisations that invested in organisational development grew twice as fast as organisations that did not. Overall institutional growth and development, and specifically, factors such as talent management, leadership development, funding, and technology are seen as critical to scaling the mission. However, these factors are severe challenges for SPOs, that they believe they do not have adequate knowhow and resources to address.
These challenges are due in no small part to the lack of a definitive discipline on the management of organisations in the social sector. While there exists some disparate work, there is no comprehensive theory and practice of leadership and management in the social sector. Development Management, or simply put, Management for Social Change needs to recognise the unique needs of the social sector and set itself apart from traditional management. By emphasizing collaboration not competition, looking beyond just business metrics to values of inclusiveness, equity, justice and dignity, and creating an open architecture, Development Management must align management principles with the requirements of societal and developmental perspectives.
There are a multitude of precedents where Higher Education Institution (HEIs) have played a catalytic role in the creation of a new discipline or the resurgence of an existing one. HEIs have the power to fire and shape the imagination of society and its aspirations for hitherto less-known professions in the country. In India, iconic institutions such as IITs, IIMs, the National Law College, NID, NIFT, and Ashoka University have done the same for the fields and professions of engineering, business management, law, design, fashion, and the liberal arts. Business schools in the 1950s in the US played a catalytic role in creating more qualified managers for the workforce, that resulted in the growth, resilience and success of private sector organisations.
This is a lacuna that needs to be filled in the Indian HEI space i.e., the conception of a high-quality HEI to create the discipline and profession of management for the social sector, that will lead to resilient, successful SPOs that scale their mission for sustainable impact and enable India to solve for its most pressing social challenges.
Ravi Sreedharan is founder and president, Indian School of Development Management and Trisha Varma is director, Global knowledge Hub, ISDM. Views are personal.