MIT Sloan faculty are leading the way in developing research and practices that promote sustainable business and society.
Matthew Amengual, Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER)
Professor Amengual’s research is motivated by a desire to understand how institutions can promote economic development that is both socially equitable and environmentally sustainable. To that end, he studies labor and environmental politics, regulatory institutions, and state-society relations in Latin America.
William Aulet, Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, & Strategic Management
William Aulet is a Senior Lecturer and Managing Director in the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
He conceived, developed, and teaches an MIT graduate-level class called “Energy Ventures,” which explores the new brand of entrepreneurship and innovation required to meet the energy challenge. He is also the chairman of the MIT Clean Energy Prize.
Steven Eppinger, Operations Management
Steven Eppingger is the Co-Director of the System Design and Management Program at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His research focuses on improving product design and development practices and the management of complex engineering projects such as development of automobiles, aircraft, capital equipment, software, mechatronics, and telecommunication systems. Eppinger is currently working on an analysis of DfE (or “green design”) methods for better product design.
Charles H. Fine, Operations Management/System Dynamics
Charles Fine is the Chrysler Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management, a Professor of Operations Management and Engineering Systems, the Co-Director of the International Motor Vehicle Program at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and the Director of the new MIT-Tata Center for Frugal Engineering. His research focuses on supply chain strategy and value chain roadmapping, with a particular focus on fast-clockspeed manufacturing industries. Fine’s work has supported design and improvement of supply chain relationships for companies in electronics, automotive, aerospace, communications, and consumer products.
Stephen Graves, Operations Management/System Dynamics
Graves develops and applies operations research models and methods to solve problems in manufacturing and distribution systems and in service operations. His current research is focused on supply chain optimization, strategic inventory positioning in a supply chain, and production and capacity planning for various contexts.
Leigh Hafrey, Managerial Communication
Since 1992, Hafrey has worked in professional ethics, with a focus on ethics and management, teaching courses at Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan and consulting with professional practitioners in the United States and abroad. For more than a decade now, Hafrey has moderated the Aspen Institute’s Seminar in Leadership, Values, and the Good Society, as well as other seminars sponsored by the Institute. He runs the leadership curriculum for the MIT Leaders for Global Operations program.
Yasheng Huang, Global Economics and Management
Yasheng Huang founded and runs the China Lab and the India Lab, which aim to help entrepreneurs in those countries improve their management skills. He is an expert source on international business, political economy, and international management. In collaboration with other scholars, Huang is conducting research on human capital formation in China and India, entrepreneurship, and ethnic and labor-intensive foreign direct investment (FDI).
Henry D Jacoby, Applied Economics
Jacoby is a leader of MIT research and analysis of national climate policies and the structure of the international climate regime. He has been director of the Harvard Environmental Systems Program, director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, associate director of the MIT Energy Laboratory, and chair of the MIT Faculty.
Jason Jay, Organization Studies
Jason Jay is a Lecturer and Director of the MIT Sloan Initiative for Sustainable Business and Society. He teaches courses on sustainable business as part of the Sustainability Certificate, and gets students and alumni engaged in hands–on projects with leading companies and organizations. Jason’s research focuses on cross–sectoral collaboration and hybrid organizations aiming to promote more sustainable business practices.
Simon Johnson, Global Economics and Management
Simon Johnson is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., a co-founder of BaselineScenario.com (a much cited website on the global economy), a member of the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Economic Advisers, and a member of the FDIC’s Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee.
Chris Knittel, Applied Economics
Knittel’s research focuses on industrial organization, environmental economics, and applied econometrics. Knittel is also the Co-Director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at MIT. His research has appeared in The American Economic Review, The Review of Economics and Statistics, The Journal of Industrial Economics, and The Energy Journal. He also is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Productivity, Industrial Organization, and Energy and Environmental Economics groups.
Tom Kochan, Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER)
Tom Kochan focuses on the need to update America’s work and employment policies, institutions, and practices to catch up with a changing workforce and economy. His recent work calls attention to the challenges facing working families in meeting their responsibilities at work, at home, and in their communities.
Don Lessard, Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, & Strategic Management, Global Economics and Management
Don Lessard’s research interests are on global strategic management, and project management, with an emphasis on managing in the face of uncertainty and risk and in the energy sector. He has published extensively on these topics in academic and professional journals, and is co-author of Strategic Management of Large Engineering Projects: Shaping Institutions, Risks, and Governance (MIT Press 2001 with Roger Miller). Don Lessard is also a co-chair of the MIT Energy Initiative’s Energy Education Task Force.
Richard Locke, Global Economics and Management
Richard Locke’s current research is focused on two issues: patterns of entrepreneurship and economic development; and labor standards in global supply chains, particularly in the apparel, electronics, and food industries. Locke has been a consistent champion of action learning and sustainability research and teaching efforts at MIT Sloan. Locke was named a 2005 Faculty Pioneer in Academic Leadership by the Aspen Institute.
Shari Loessberg, Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, & Strategic Management
Shari Loessberg is an experienced entrepreneur in established and emerging markets. She has particular experience in emerging market venture capital fund formation, entrepreneurship in emerging economies, and the evolving issues and standards of corporate governance in the United States and abroad.
Thomas Malone, Information Technology
Tom Malone is the Director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, where he oversees the Climate Colab project. Malone teaches classes on leadership and information technology, and his research focuses on how new organizations can be designed to take advantage of the possibilities provided by information technology.
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
© 2013 MIT SLOAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT