Business School Honored for Social Enterprise Activities

December 09, 1999

SEARCH THE GAZETTE

HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

By Jim Aisner and Anne Kavanagh
Special to the Gazette

From left: Pamela Flaherty, senior vice president, Citigroup; Steve Nelson, accepting the award; Judith Samuelson, executive director, the Aspen Institute's Initiative for Social Innovation through Business; and Jonathan Lash, president, World Resources Institute.

Harvard Business School (HBS) is a leader among U.S. business schools in fostering social awareness, incorporating social concerns into coursework and projects, and supporting student activities and faculty research that influence classroom materials and corporate decision-making. So says a report issued by the World Resources Institute, of Washington, D.C., and the Initiative for Social Innovation through Business, a Manhattan-based program of the Aspen Institute. Titled "Beyond Grey Pinstripes: Preparing MBAs for Social and Environmental Stewardship," the study praised the Business School, along with nine other business schools, for "cutting-edge programs incorporating societal-business issues."

Steve Nelson, MBA ’88, executive director of the HBS Initiative on Social Enterprise, recently accepted an award honoring the School’s efforts at a ceremony hosted by Citigroup in New York. "This is a tribute to the broad range of activities at Harvard Business School focusing on nonprofit organizations and other private social-purpose enterprises," Nelson said. "The Initiative’s research, course development, and publications have had a significant impact on many of our students, not to mention educational institutions far beyond this campus."

Harvard Business School’s commitment to responding to business’s role in dealing with social issues puts it in very select company, according to the study. "Less than 20 percent of business schools are training M.B.A.’s to manage the social and environmental challenges facing business," said the report, which surveyed programs at 313 schools.

Since its creation in 1993, the HBS Initiative on Social Enterprise, supported by the John C. Whitehead (MBA ’47) Fund for Not-for-Profit Management as well as other resources, has engaged in extensive research and course development focusing on four intellectual and practice domains. These domains include the creation, strategy, and management of social enterprises; the governance of social nonprofit organizations; corporate involvement in the social sector; and social capital markets.

Springing from these efforts are more than 150 cases and a number of working papers, articles, and books; M.B.A. courses such as Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector, Business Leadership in the Social Sector, and Effective Leadership of Social Enterprise; and two Executive Education programs for nonprofit executives and board chairs.

Outside the classroom, the Initiative’s work has enriched M.B.A. student activities through clubs, internships, and fellowships. The Social Enterprise Club, for example, offers an array of events, including guest speakers, career days, and networking gatherings. The club has experienced a recent surge in student interest, according to co-president Marc Sternberg, MBA ’00. "People are excited about applying technology – and their entrepreneurial spirits – to nonprofit work," he says. Another group, the Volunteer Consulting Club, sponsors teams of students offering pro bono consulting to Boston-based organizations. This year 200 students are working with 40 organizations on such projects as developing an Internet strategy for a magazine by and for teenage girls. "HBS students care about making a difference," says co-president Meredith Moss, MBA ’00. "Sharing our skills with a sector of society that needs them the most is very rewarding."

"We conceive of social enterprise as an integral part of the HBS programs and central to the School’s vision statement of ‘developing outstanding business leaders who will contribute to the well-being of society,’ " says HBS professor James Austin, faculty chair of the Initiative and author of the forthcoming book The Collaboration Challenge: How Nonprofits and Businesses Succeed through Strategic Alliances. "Our graduates – 81 percent of whom are involved with nonprofits – play important leadership roles as social entrepreneurs, social enterprise managers, corporate social innovators, nonprofit board members, and social venture philanthropists. It is essential that the School prepare them to excel in these capacities."