SCANCOR at the Weatherhead Center
SCANCOR at the Weatherhead Center, launched in the fall of 2016, explores the role of formal organizations, including corporations, non-governmental organizations, and professional associations, in the creation of international social, environmental, economic, and political conventions. The project is host to a visiting scholars program that welcomes faculty who use the tools of organizational science to work on international topics.
This project is a partnership between Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research (SCANCOR), a membership-supported nonprofit sponsored by leading universities and business schools in Scandinavia.
SCANCOR at the Weatherhead Center brings visitors to Harvard for up to one year to work on international projects based in organizational research. The partnership provides visitors with office space, basic administrative services, and a formal affiliation. Visitors are supported by their own sabbatical funds, research grants, and leave fellowships.
While at Harvard, visitors connect with scholars from across the campus, and around Boston, through the Economic Sociology Seminar, and workshops organized at Harvard by the Weatherhead Center, Sociology Department, Government Department, the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, the Kennedy School, the Business School, and by MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
The partnership between SCANCOR and the Weatherhead Center is intended to bring an organizational lens to the study of international norms and conventions. We expect many visitors to undertake truly global projects using the tools of organizational social science. Projects may include the study of:
- the role of corporations in producing new business norms in areas such as civil rights and the environment
- how new public policy ideas spread through multinationals
- how social movements change corporate behavior around the world
- how states, elections, international institutions, and social movements affect firms and are affected by them
- the creation of soft law between corporations, NGOs, INGOs, and IGOs
- how NGOs and corporations shape national regulations and political systems
- how corporate management norms shape public-sector management practices
In addition to providing space and resources to visitors, the project sponsors speakers and conferences on topics of interest to both project visitors and the Weatherhead Center’s Harvard affiliates.
Administration
The codirector for the 2026–2027 academic year is Jocelyn Viterna. Diana Ocampo Belloso is the project coordinator.
Jocelyn Viterna
jviterna@wjh.harvard.edu
Diana Ocampo Belloso
dianaocampobelloso@wcfia.harvard.edu
All Programs & Projects
The Weatherhead Center hosts formal programs that link faculty and affiliates working in similar research areas. Projects at the Weatherhead Center are discrete activities that connect interdisciplinary scholars, practitioners, and students working in a specific research area. Projects may include student internships, multiyear research activities, and more.
The Canada Program, made possible by the William Lyon Mackenzie King Endowment, presents rich intellectual opportunities for Canadian studies at Harvard: graduate and undergraduate courses offered by distinguished visiting Canadianist scholars across the social sciences and professional schools, dissertation research grants for Harvard graduate students, thesis research and travel funding for Harvard undergraduates, funding for Harvard faculty-hosted Canadian studies specialists, a vibrant seminar series of esteemed Canadianist guest speakers, and an annual faculty conference.
The Program on US-Japan Relations was founded in response to Japan's rise as a leading global power. We seek to advance knowledge of US-Japan relations and contemporary Japanese economy, politics, society, and culture from comparative, global, and transnational perspectives. Every academic year, we host approximately sixteen postdoctoral fellows, visiting scholars, and practitioner associates to conduct research on campus. We sponsor a weekly hybrid seminar series, biweekly associate workshops, Japanese Politics Online Seminar Series (JPOSS), an annual Distinguished Visitor program, conferences on Harvard campus and in Tokyo, and other events.
SCANCOR at the Weatherhead Center explores the role of formal organizations—including corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and professional associations—in the creation of international social, environmental, economic, and political conventions. Our project is a partnership between the Weatherhead Center and the Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research (SCANCOR), a membership-supported nonprofit sponsored by leading universities and business schools in Scandinavia. We welcome visiting scholars to Harvard for up to one year to use the tools of organizational science to work on international topics. While at Harvard, visitors connect with scholars from across the campus, and around Boston, through various seminars and workshops.
The Sustainability Transparency Accountability Research (STAR) Lab brings together a group of scholars at Harvard University and beyond conducting research on new business initiatives aimed at improving accountability and sustainability as well as generating positive social and environmental impacts. Among these initiatives are programs addressing issues in global supply chains and the impacts of multinational businesses in developing countries, climate change and environmental sustainability, discrimination and human rights, and more. New research is critical for the design and evaluation of these initiatives and for understanding their impacts on business, social, and environmental outcomes. We support collaborations among Harvard scholars and build partnerships between the group and a diverse set of companies, with headquarters and operations in many different countries.
The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies is dedicated to increasing our knowledge of the culture, history, and institutions of the world's major regions and countries. To accomplish this goal, we sponsor the Academy Scholars Program, which identifies and supports outstanding scholars at the start of their academic careers whose work combines excellence in a social science discipline with a command of the language and knowledge or expertise of countries or regions outside of the United States or Canada. Their scholarship spans traditional disciplinary divisions and elucidates comparative, transnational, or domestic issues, past or present. Academy Scholars are appointed for a two-year, in-residence, postdoctoral fellowship. They are mentored by the Harvard Academy Senior Scholars, a cohort of faculty members who are committed to supporting the Academy Scholars as they work to achieve their potential.
Learn more about The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies >
The Weatherhead Scholars Program offers visiting faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and experienced practitioners the opportunity to spend up to one year at Harvard conducting comparative international research. During their time in residence, affiliates participate in the weekly Scholars’ seminar and contribute to the Center’s many intellectual activities. They may also audit courses and engage with the undergraduate and graduate student communities.