Karnamadakala Rahul Sharma was a Fellow at CPR with the State Capacity Initiative (SCI). He researches and coordinates SCI’s work on bureaucratic norms and culture, administrative reform, and engagements with state governments on capacity building, competencies, and monitoring and evaluation.
His research is shaped by three specific lines of inquiry, articulated at the scale of individuals, organisations, and systems. First, he aims to understand what motivates public sector workers to come to work and perform at their jobs. This work spans questions about administrative reform, individual motivations, and people’s relationships with their work environment. The second substantive area of work is on organisational design for better performance. Specifically, what can organisations do to instil a sense of purpose among those working within them? Can we design public sector organisations with a stronger mission orientation, a higher capacity to learn, and the ability to motivate and develop employee potential? Third, he is working on understanding processes of systemic and transformational change in state capacity for solving complex problems.
Rahul’s work draws on his training in political science, public management, environmental governance and quantitative methods, and his sectoral interests are in natural resources management, energy access and rural development, urban environment, and municipal solid waste. He has served as the Associate Editor for the Journal of Environment and Development and Lead Author for the UNEP Global Environment Outlook for Cities 2021.
Previously, Rahul has ten years of experience in research and consulting work with ICEE at CPR, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the University of Minnesota, and in various independent assignments. He has a PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara, an MPP from the University of Minnesota (Humphrey School of Public Affairs) and was a postgraduate fellow at the School of Forestry and Environment Studies at Yale University.
