Photos by Gary Wayne Gilbert
At first glance, it鈥檚 a familiar scene at a business school: teams of students are delivering presentations on well-known companies. But on this spring day in Fulton 310, the teams were not just sizing up the products, markets, or company financials. They were teasing out an increasingly important indicator of corporate performance鈥攖he broader impact each firm is having on society at large.
During one presentation, on Adidas, the five-member team analyzed a swath of indicators including supply chain. Sporting a T-shirt with the Adidas logo, Tyler Coyne 鈥�17 cited a much-publicized campaign by the sportswear manufacturer to make sure its far-flung subcontractors are giving workers 鈥渇air compensation.鈥� The marketing student said, 鈥淲e saw very little evidence that they鈥檙e implementing the plan.鈥� Likewise, Amanda Helfrich 鈥�18 pointed to a lack of transparency, especially with Adidas鈥檚 environmental impact (water efficiency, for instance). 鈥淚t鈥檚 hard to verify their claims on the environment,鈥� said the finance student.
Welcome to Managing for Social Impact and the Public Good, the name of both this course and Boston College鈥檚听. Co-sponsored by the Carroll School of Management and the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, Social Impact has just completed the first year of a two-year pilot. It is a co-concentration for management students (taken in addition to primary concentrations such as Finance and Accounting) and a University-wide interdisciplinary minor.
The course provides students with 鈥渁 critical lens for looking at a company鈥檚 impact on all stakeholders, not just shareholders,鈥� said Carroll School Professor of Information Systems Mary J. Cronin (Information Systems), who co-directs the interdisciplinary program with Morrissey College Professor of Theology Kenneth Himes, O.F.M.
鈥淪ocial Impact鈥� was a catchphrase heard often throughout this past academic year at Boston College.
There was Social Impact the course, which had two sections with a total of 35听students. Information Systems Chair and Professor Robert G. Fichman taught the three-credit course this spring; Cronin did so in the fall.
There was听, which has 25 co-concentrators from the Carroll School and an equal number of minors from听other schools of the University. It includes two required classes: the foundational course as well as a senior research seminar premiering next year for members of the program鈥檚 first graduating class. In addition, dozens of approved electives are pulled from departments ranging from Philosophy and English to Economics and Earth and Environmental Sciences.
There was also the听release of听a book鈥�, edited by Cronin and 亚色影库 School of Social Work鈥檚 Tiziana C. Dearing, who teaches and directs the Center for Social Innovation there. Issued in February, the book presents strategies for social innovation based in part on case studies of companies such as Whirlpool Corporation and nonprofit enterprises such as New York-based Living Cities.
And there was, on听February 28, the symposium.听鈥溾�� brought together more than 100 academics and practitioners, including some contributors to the book, along with Social Impact students. Among the faculty was Marketing Senior Lecturer Bridget Akinc, who contributed the Whirlpool chapter.听.
THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF A BIG MAC
On April 10, four teams in a section of Fichman鈥檚 class delivered their assessments of four companies: Eli Lilly, Nissan, and McDonald鈥檚 as well as Adidas. In a previous written assignment done individually, each student had to dissect a company鈥檚 corporate social responsibility, or CSR, report. These are long documents that companies increasingly use to communicate their social initiatives, partly in response to demands by consumers and activist groups. This time, the assignment (including both the presentation and a 4,500-word paper) was to analyze not just what the companies were saying but also the impact they were having on stakeholders and the environment.
All of the teams pointed to things the companies were doing well in the arena of corporate social responsibility. The Adidas team, for example, noted that the manufacturer persuaded the Turkish government to allow Syrian refugees to work in the country. But a common refrain was that the firms 鈥渃ould go a lot further,鈥� as the Nissan team said of that company鈥檚 efforts to reduce hazardous waste.