MIT Sloan faculty are leading the way in developing research and practices that promote sustainable business and society.
Bob McKersie, Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER)
McKersie is an expert source on industrial and labor relations with a focus on bargaining. He researches strategies being pursued by different industries to bring about more effective organizational changes.
Harvey Michaels, MIT Energy Efficiency Strategy Project
Harvey Michaels teaches energy efficiency with focus on strategy innovation, and directs the MIT Energy Efficiency Strategy Project, which includes business/policy studies of utility, community, and smart grid–enabled efficiency deployment models. He is affiliated with the MIT Programs in Environmental Policy and Planning, as well as Housing, Communities, and Economic Development. Harvey also participates in the MIT Energy Initiative and the Campus Energy Task Force.
Fiona Murray, Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, & Strategic Management
Fiona Murray’s research interests focus on science commercialization, the organization of scientific research, and the role of science in national competitiveness. Her recent engagements have focused on innovation processes that span the public and private sectors. She is particularly interested in emerging organizational arrangements for effective commercialization of science, including public-private partnerships, not-for profits, venture philanthropy, and university-initiated seed funding.
Wanda J. Orlikowski, Information Technology
Orlikowski actively investigates the dynamic relationship between information technologies and organizations, with particular emphasis on structures, cultures, work practices, and change. She has examined the use of groupware technologies in organizations, as well as the social and technological aspects of working virtually.
John Parsons, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy
John Parsons is a financial economist working in the area of financial risk management, corporate finance and valuation. He has applied these tools to a wide array of different industries, and has extensive experience in the energy industry and on environmental problems. Parsons is the Executive Director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research and the Faculty Director of the Finance Track for the MBA program.
Nelson Repenning, Operations Management/System Dynamics
Nelson’s work focuses on understanding the factors that contribute to the successful implementation, execution, and improvement of business processes. Repenning has received several awards for his work, including best paper recognition from both the California Management Review and the Journal of Product Innovation Management.
Roberto Rigobon, Applied Economics
Rigobon’s areas of research are international economics, monetary economics, and development economics. In international economics, he focuses on the causes of balance-of-payments crises, financial crises, and the propagation of them across countries—the phenomenon that has been identified in the literature as “contagion.” He has developed econometric techniques to determine the existence of contagion and the extent of it. He teaches courses on the macroeconomics of sustainability and entrepreneurship.
Anjali Sastry, Operations Management/System Dynamics
Sastry investigates organizational and managerial effectiveness in practical domains where the challenges are complex and the needs pressing. Her expertise lies in three areas: system dynamics—particularly applied to organizational change and evolution, global health, and action learning.
Otto Scharmer, Organization Studies
Scharmer is the founding chair of ELIAS (Emerging Leaders for Innovation Across Sectors), an initiative focused on developing profound system innovations for a more sustainable world. He is also the founding chair of the Presencing Institute, a research initiative on developing and advancing social technologies for leading innovation and change.
Peter Senge, Organization Studies
Peter Senge studies decentralizing the role of leadership in organizations so as to enhance the ability of employees to work productively toward common goals, and the managerial and institutional changes needed to build more sustainable enterprises—those businesses that foster social and natural as well as economic well-being.
Jeff Shames, Finance
Jeff Shames teaches classes in Finance and Leadership. Shames is a member of the board of trustees of the X Prize Foundation; of City Year, a national service organization; and of Wesleyan University; and is the chairman of the board of the Berklee College of Music.
Susan Silbey, Sociology and Anthropology
Susan Silbey is Leon and Anne Goldberg Professor of Sociology and Head of the Anthropology Department as well as an Affiliated faculty in Sloan. Her research focuses on the management of environmental, health and safety hazards in workplaces, with special emphasis on the ways in which organizations achieve, or fail to achieve, compliance with legal regulations. She co–teaches the interdisciplinary undergraduate course, Energy Decisions, Markets and Policy; The Social Science of Energy, as well as the graduate courses in research methods and fieldwork.
John Sterman, Operations Management/System Dynamics
John Sterman’s research includes systems thinking and organizational learning, computer simulation of corporate strategy and public policy issues, and environmental sustainability. He has projects underway on communicating about climate change to policy makers and the public, and on creating markets for alternative fuel vehicles.
Zeynep Ton, Operations Management
Ton is currently examining how organizations can design and manage their operations in a way that satisfies employees, customers, and investors simultaneously. Her earlier research focused on the critical role of store operations in retail supply chains.
Henry Birdseye Weil, Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, & Strategic Management
Henry Weil’s research delves into the effects of management policies, technological developments, industry structure, and regulation on corporate competitiveness and market behavior.
Karen Zheng, Operations Management
Zheng’s research focuses on studying behavioral and information aspects of supply chains. She is also interested in sustainability issues within operations management, specifically how consumers’ and other external stakeholders’ increasing concerns over health and the environment can affect supply chain strategies.
For more information about MIT Sloan’s Sustainability Initiative, contact
Jason Jay, Director of the Initiative for Sustainable Business & Society
Tel: (617) 253-0594 , E-mail: jjay@mit.edu
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