The Heller School for Social Policy and Management
Relational Coordination Collaborative

Resilient Communities Innovation Lab

Relational mapping of a community challenge

In a world facing wicked social challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice, and climate change, leaders must be better equipped to navigate complexities. Addressing complex social challenges requires the collaboration of multiple and simultaneous relationships among business, government, nonprofits and community. New and deep understandings of these intersections also call for holistic and integrative forms of knowledge developed through research, practice and direct experience. Further, the quality of these connections - including the presence or absence of shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect - impacts their ability to engage successfully in multi-level systems change.

This learning community, co-hosted by Suffolk University's Sawyer Business School, will bring together scholars and change leaders from around the world to advance teaching, research, and practice and build relational capacity for multilevel systems change.  Our work will be informed by relational coordination, social capital, administrative and organizational theories.  We will connect members from government, business, and nonprofit sectors to apply models of change, related tools, and empirical research to improve a wide range of organizational and community outcomes. 

Purpose

Building Relational Capacity for Resilient Communities is committed to producing and disseminating research and related tools on the theory, practice, and teaching of relational practices and approaches that support high performance through:

  • Convening.  Meet throughout the year in virtual and in-person formats (RCC Roundtable, RC Cafes, etc.) to share ideas and insights and to develop theory, practice, and teaching as it relates to building relational capacity for resilience.
  • Community.  Cultivate a community that supports an interdisciplinary approach to building resilience to address complex social challenges.  

Partners

We welcome students, faculty, researchers and practitioners to join this learning community as a convener, subject matter expert, or partner in understanding and addressing the wicked problems that face communities and organizations.   Our partners are interested in:
  • Studying and sharing how high-quality relationships and communication within and across organizations impact a wide range of outcomes, including worker well-being, quality, and efficiency, and learning and innovation, among others.
  • Applying the Relational Model of Change and related tools within and across organizations to address wicked challenges and improve outcomes.
  • Building a supportive community with other change leaders and scholars to share insights from research and practice and gain a better understanding of how the quality of relationships and communication impacts interdependent work and which processes, policies and practices support these relationships. 

Join This Innovation Lab

manage  your member account to join this innovation lab

Innovation Lab Leaders

Lauren Hajjar

Associate Professor, Suffolk University

Lauren Hajjar, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Public Service and Healthcare Administration at Suffolk University's Sawyer Business School. She holds degrees in Psychology (BA), Public Administration (MPA), and Social Policy (MS and PhD). Her research focuses on intra and inter organizational collaboration, mindfulness and resilience. Results of her research offer practical guidance for public and nonprofit leaders, assisting them to implement structures, processes and relational practices to enhance resilience and achieve performance outcomes.  Lauren’s recent projects have been supported by the U.S. Department of Justice, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Nellie Mae Education Foundation, and the Sawyer Business School. She also serves as a Senior Advisor at the CNA Institute for Public Research and is a Co-Founder of the Resilient Communities Innovation Lab. Previously, she directed research at the Relational Coordination Collaborative and was an NIH Research Fellow. Lauren has a decade of experience in the nonprofit sector, providing services to adults with disabilities and behavioral health challenges.

Brenda J. Bond-Fortier

Sawyer Business School, Suffolk University

Brenda J. Bond-Fortier, PhD is Professor of Public Administration at Suffolk University.  Brenda’s work focuses on the structures, processes and functions that influence organizational change and culture, collaboration, and the implementation of public and social policies. Her book, Organizational Change in an Urban Police Department: Innovating to Reform (2020), analyzes organizational change and community relationships as part of an organizational transformation. Having studied and consulted with communities and governments across the US, Brenda is a recognized scholar, research partner and media contributor.  

Brenda consults for 21CP Solutions, Inc. where she conducts reviews and advises higher education leaders on campus public safety. Brenda served as an expert for the US Department of Justice, and previously worked at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government Program in Criminal Justice Policy & Management. As a practitioner, Brenda was Research Advisor for a regional police chiefs’ association, and Director of Research and Development for a Massachusetts police department. Brenda received a PhD and MA in Social Policy from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, a Master of Arts in Community Social Psychology and a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from University of Massachusetts Lowell.  

Ninna Meier

Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University

Ninna Meier, PhD, is an associate professor of Organizational Sociology at Aalborg University, and a qualitative researcher who studies organising, change and leadership and management in public organisations. She has conducted research in public sector healthcare organisations since 2009, where she has studied clinical managerial work, coherency across boundaries, the role of space, materiality and relational aspects of work and leadership.

Through her collaboration with Sue Dopson at Oxford University, she has developed a framework for operationalising and studying the important role of context and its relationship to actions and change:

 

Since 2019, she has been affiliated as a senior researcher at the Center for Clinical Research at Amager-Hvidovre Hospital, where she works on clinical decision-making and patient safety from an interdisciplinary approach. Moreover, with Kasper Trolle Elmholdt, she currently works on the use of AI technology in emergency medicine services.

Another important theme in Ninna’s research focuses on the significance of relationships for complex organisational change processes and the ways in which different methods can be used to support such processes (see Hajjar, Gittell, Meier, & Gunn 2024 or Meier & Ingerslev 2023). Ninna has also conducted longitudional, ethnographic comparative research into how organisational coherence can be developed across geography, organization, profession, and disciplines, particularly exploring the leadership and coordination practices needed to maintain such structures and relationships over time. With Janne Seemann, Ninna has expanded this work in a project investigating integrative mechanisms in cross-sectoral patient pathways.

Lastly, Ninna publishes on and teaches academic writing as a craft. With Charlotte Wegener and Caitlin McMullin she carries out several PhD courses on academic writing each year (A Writer’s Life + Writing the PhD Dissertation: Structure, Quality and Contribution). Ninna has also given workshops and seminars, e.g. at The Ethnography Atelier https://www.ethnographyatelier.org/workshops and through her affiliation at the Interdisciplinary Research in Health Sciences research group (IRIHS) at Oxford University. With Trish Greenhalgh, Gemma Hughes, and Chrysanthi Papoutsi she has written about the particular challenges that interdisciplinary early career researchers may face when they write across social science and medicine – specifically what can be done to develop and support an interdisciplinary academic environment (Meier, Greenhalgh, Hughes & Papoutsi 2024).

Carlos Rufin

Carlos Rufin

Sawyer Business School, Suffolk University

Carlos Rufín is Professor of Public Service and International Business at Suffolk University’s Sawyer Business School. His research examines infrastructure networks and markets, Public-Private Partnerships, regulatory affairs, renewable energy, access to basic services, and sustainable urbanization. He has also worked on these topics as a consultant to the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development, among many organizations. In addition to full-time teaching at Suffolk University and previously at Babson College, he is the President of the Institute for International Urban Development, and has been a visiting scholar and guest lecturer at many  universities around the world. He is the author of two books and numerous articles in major international journals. Dr. Rufín has a PhD in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, as well as an M.A. degree in Economics from Columbia University and a BA in Economics from Princeton University.

Carsten Hornstrup, RCC Board Member

Carsten Hornstrup

CEO, Joint Action Analytics

Carsten Hornstrup is CEO at Joint Action, a Scandinavian based consultancy and action research company, specialized in building strategies and advise leaders on building coordinated processes around very complex welfare challenges. He holds a MSc in Political Science and a PhD on building capacity for change. Together with his colleagues in Joint Action, he works with welfare organizations in Scandinavia and the US. He is a member of the Relational Coordination Collaborative Advisory Board. His primary research interest is how leaders at all levels can support stronger and more coordinated welfare services.

Resources

RC Cafe:  Building relational capacity for resilient communities. Relational Coordination Collaborative, May 11, 3-4:00 ET

Publications

Bond-Fortier, B. J., & Gebo, E. (2025). Exploring the relational model of change as a facilitator of interorganizational change processes. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 00218863251314887.

Gebo, E. & Bond, B. J. (2022). Improving interorganizational collaborations: An application in a violence reduction context. The Social Science Journal, 59(2), 318-329.

Gebo, E. & Bond, B. J. (2022). Advancing interorganizational crime and violence reduction goals through a relational change intervention. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 33(5): 455-479.

Hajjar, L., Cook, B.S., Domlyn, A., Ray, K.A., Laird, D. & Wandersman, A. (2020).  Readiness and relationships are crucial for coalitions and collaboratives: Concepts and evaluation tools.  In Evaluating Community Coalitions and Collaboratives: New Directions for Evaluation.  165: 103-122.

Hajjar, L., Gittell, J. H., Stephens, J. P., Meier, N., & Cutcher Gershenfeld, J. (2025). Seeing the whole together through relational mapping: A method for engaging in complex systems change. The American Review of Public Administration, 55(4), 333-349.

Conference Proceedings

Gittell, J. H., Sutcliffe, K. M., Vogus, T. J., Ali, H. N., Bhardwaj, A., Dillon, E., Faraj, S., Hajjar, L., Kragen, B., Malas, K., Yang, J., Deng, S., Martinez, M., Pertsch, S. & Weger, L. (2022). Relationships and resilience in the COVID-19 pandemic. In Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings (Vol. 2022, No. 1).

Teaching Case

Hajjar, L., Gittell, J.H., Meier, N., Gunn, B. (2022). Breaking down silos to build collaborative systems.  Eds. C. Carlson, J.C. Gershenfeld, M. Kriegsman, Heller School Social Impact Case Collection.  Brandeis University Press.

In the News  

Building resilient communities - one conversation at a time.  Suffolk University News, March 13, 2023.  Professor Lauren Hajjar been assisting the 22nd Judicial Circuit Court in St. Louis as it tries to enhance communication and coordination within and across providers.