Social Responsibility

Conventional ways of making strategy are inadequate amid uncertainty and complexity. Today, it requires moral purpose.

Cutting carbon emissions in heavy transport and industrial heat can be done profitably.

Female executives can command bigger pay increases than men by switching jobs.

To meaningfully support Pride, companies need to focus on employees, customers, and the community.

Nudges for less-biased hiring, networking to drive inclusion, and defusing opposition to racial equity initiatives.

The pandemic has upended business. Let’s consider how managers should respond.

The Special Report in MIT SMR‘s Summer 2021 issue looks at how businesses can support a more inclusive workplace culture. Also in this issue: ways to communicate — and disagree — using candor and logic, business’s role in national emergencies, how volunteering helps workers’ skills, and changing the rules to suit turbulent times.

Knowing why racial equity initiatives provoke opposition can help you lead employees through change.

Businesses that pledged to support racial equity in 2020 must maintain their commitments to effecting change.

Supplier diversity initiatives can drive positive change, boost earnings, and build resilience.

“Absorbing by observation” while working remotely, prospering in turbulent times with dynamic rules, and centering ESG in quarterly earnings calls.

The U.S. should provide direct financial assistance to people losing oil, gas, and coal jobs.

Corporate leaders should put environmental, social, and governance issues at the center of the quarterly earnings call.

Employers should be transparent about volunteer programs aimed at helping employees develop skills while helping others.

New research on subtle gender bias highlights the anxiety underpinning biased behavior and suggests ways to defuse it.

Sponsors can play a role in growing and strengthening the pipeline of women leaders in organizations.

An innovation framework for COVID-19, circular business models, and the advantages of a diverse board.

Incumbent manufacturing companies face four key challenges as they shift to circular business models.

Companies can gain cooperative advantage by appointing community development and sustainability advocates to their boards.

Hear from coauthors of the 2021 research report, “Leadership’s Digital Transformation,” about the ways leaders must transform themselves to lead organizations today.