Scholarship & Thought Leadership

My scholarship explores how people, organizations, and systems make sense of change, particularly in contexts shaped by uncertainty, cultural tension, and competing values.

My research sits at the intersection of social entrepreneurship, organizational culture, and systems change, with a particular interest in how meaning, identity, and collective empathy shape outcomes that strategy alone cannot explain.

David Harkins on Google Scholar
David Harkins on Research Gate
David Harkins on ORCiD

Core research themes

My research is organized around a set of interrelated themes that examine how people and organizations navigate change in complex social systems. Rather than treating change as a technical or managerial problem, this work foregrounds culture, meaning, identity, and human experience as central drivers of transformation.

Across contexts of nonprofits, social enterprises, and mission-driven organizations, these themes explore why well-intended change efforts so often stall, fragment, or produce unintended consequences, and what becomes possible when deeper social and cultural dynamics are brought into view. Specifically, I’m currently interested in the following:

  • Collective empathy and shared meaning in organizations
  • Culture as a mediator of change and innovation
  • Social entrepreneurship as a systems practice, not just venture creation
  • Tensions between structure, agency, and identity in change efforts

Selected Publications & Working Papers

Dissertation:
Exploring the conditions under which collective empathy forms, embeds and sustains in an organization: A grounded theory case study

Talks, Conversations and Invited Presentations

error: This content is protected.
Scroll to Top