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© Anita McGahan
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Tune in with Professor Anita McGahan as she speaks with leading thinkers to understand and reinvent corporate social responsibility in service of the public good. Presented by Pi Squared, a project of the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University, this series explores new ways for companies, NGOs, and even government itself to collaborate and drive meaningful change.
76 Episodes
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Professor Sukhun Kang was motivated to turn from a promising career as a computer scientist toward studying the biopharmaceutical industry after his family member was diagnosed with a rare cancer. Why don’t we have enough drugs for devastating diseases such as the one that afflicted his relative, and why can’t we make those that we do have more widely available? Sukhun’s research shows that the costs of administering programs designed to make cancer drugs available more widely to late-stage patients have prevented their uptake. Companies instead tend to rush into drug development and distribution when there’s a big market and a relatively well-known mechanism of disease, even when there’s a lot of competition. Diagnosing diseases that afflict relatively fewer patients attracts few resources because the prospects for profitable treatments are narrow. The result: We may not even know what medicines are needed.
Professor Diana Jue-Rajasingh has devoted her entire career to understanding why great products designed for low-income settings in places like her Alma Mater, MIT, are not adopted. As co-founder of a distribution and marketing company called Essmart Global, she learned that distribution infrastructure and consumer education are essential – but not enough to assure uptake. As a scholar, she found that local resistance arises from long-term exposure to practices that typically keep investment capital in the hands of expats who push tech products into “moral markets” that satisfy their own interests but don’t reflect what’s happening on the ground. A long-term connection between product designers, distributors, local retailers, field advocates and low-income consumers is key to overcoming this resistance. It’s a lot of work, but ultimately it’s critically important for overcoming global problems.
Professor Mark Desjardine is concerned about our generation’s obligations to preserve the environment for future generations – and the implications of them for corporations. What is sustainability, really? And how do companies deal with tradeoffs between short- and long-term value-creating goals? Mark’s answer to this question in part rests on insights about how advocates of different types can help managers to appreciate fully the ways in which their organizations can move toward solutions to pressing climate challenges.
Professor Andrew King devotes himself to the challenge of replicating the results of important empirical studies in the fields of ESG investing, sustainable finance, and corporate social responsibility. After discovering a raft of anomalies, he is now advocating for what he calls a “living conversation” in the journals on our findings. We need to publish more comments, more questions, and more methodological inquiries in a dialogue over important findings to assure their robustness and overcome the politicization of our work.
Catherine D’Amato is an internationally renowned leader in the food-security movement. Serving as CEO of the Greater Boston Food Bank for three decades, she invented and reinvented a model through which the GBFB advocates for 190 smaller, community-based partners with suppliers, distributors, technologists, and – remarkably – governments. Consistently ranked as among the most important leaders in Boston, she describes the critical relationship between empathy for local neighbors and advocacy at scale for resources.
Brennan Lake has pioneered the Data For Good movement since 2018 as Vice President of Social Impact & Enterprise Partnerships at Cuebiq. In a sector in which privacy concerns and data-sharing are notoriously intractable, he and his colleagues have found a way forward through an emphasis on mission, messaging, measures, and monetization.
Professor Peter Klein of Baylor University highlights the importance of long-standing relationships and trust in the kinds of collaborations that drive innovation in both the public and private sectors. To address major challenges such as the climate crisis, he argues that governments must establish large-scale guardrails that allow innovators to break down problems in ways that foster collaboration and build trust. Much easier said than done, he concedes!
Professor Kate Odziemkowska of the University of Toronto has found in her research that social-change advocates are partnering with companies to help them innovate. In a far-reaching conversation with Anita, she describes trends in advocacy that go way beyond what Anita ever imagined as an undergraduate marching in advocacy rallies.
Professor Myles Shaver of the University of Minnesota works with students from different disciplines to turn their focus from changing the world to understanding each other. By changing themselves, these students are changing the world.
Professor Nicolai Foss of the Copenhagen Business School and Anita have sometimes found themselves on opposite sides of debates about climate change and public policy, but today they concentrate on defining a shared agenda for making progress on the most important issues of our time.
Professor Yiannis Ioannou of the London Business School teaches about how the sustainability challenge disrupts even successful large companies. What will it take to make progress? Changing both corporate cultures and the financial system to ensure they reward sustainable impact.
Dan Cowen, Senior Consultant at InNova and the Build from Within Alliance, works with city leaders to foster local entrepreneurship. Dan is inspired by their deep enthusiasm to solve problems, seek understanding, and be effective.
Professor Tima Bansal of the Ivey Business School discusses the imperative for systems change, emphasizing that it requires both governments and companies to develop the skills necessary to collaborate on critical solutions over both short- and long-term horizons.
Professor Rudy Durand of HEC Paris, a pioneer in Corporate Social Responsibility, believes the focus is shifting toward a new approach to social impact. What matters now is corporate purpose. He emphasizes that creating a constructive social impact can no longer be seen as a secondary agenda.
Professor Shirley Tang of Bocconi University, a global citizen with experience in China’s oil & gas industry as well as academia, studies the paradoxes and dilemmas of transparency. For example, she analyzes the opportunities these complexities create for companies to avoid accountability.
Henri Hammond-Paul, Sante Fe’s Director of Community Health and Public Safety, explains how government actors often hesitate to rely on the promises of companies to accomplish important innovations. How can this be overcome? Through dialogue, trust, and a commitment to putting in the time.
Professor Daphne Baldassari of the University of Southern California shares her research on the Oscars So White and #MeToo movements in the film industry. How do we overcome persistently unequal outcomes despite significant efforts for change? Daphne and Anita discuss profound solutions to this pressing issue.
Professor and GIDMO Founder Tunji Adegbesan discusses the challenges that GIDMO faced in providing educational materials to hundreds of thousands of teenagers in Africa before, during, and after the pandemic. Through strategic pivots, he and the GIDMO team are now partnering with large companies that integrate GIDMO’s gaming software into their products, thereby enhancing educational outcomes along the way.
Professor Raja Roy of the Stevens Institute of Technology, an expert on NASA's achievements, joins Anita to discuss the Space Shuttle, the world’s first reusable spacecraft. NASA successfully orchestrated the involvement of multiple companies working on different elements of the design, knowing that they would both compete and collaborate. How did this government agency pull this off?
Professor Jasjit Singh of INSEAD argues that the skillsets taught in MBA programs are often too narrow and lack the ambition needed for today’s challenges. He emphasizes the importance of encouraging students to bring their full brainpower to the pressing issues in the world and to collaborate with corporations and key government actors to drive meaningful change. In other words, “Be bigger than your job."
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