Faculty

Emilio J. Castilla has received the 2017 Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize, awarded to the most outstanding MIT Sloan Management Review article on planned change and organizational development published in the period from fall 2015 through summer 2016. Castilla’s winning paper is entitled “Achieving Meritocracy in the Workplace.” The prize was established in 1984 by MIT Sloan faculty in honor of Professor Richard Beckhard, a faculty member for over two decades, who was a founder and an architect of the field of organizational development. The MIT Sloan judges thought Castilla’s article was “well aligned with the thinking of Richard Beckhard, who knew that organizational change was often more complicated than it seemed … Castilla’s call for continuous monitoring and evaluation of the outcomes is very much in line with what Dick would have recommended.” The award was announced in an MIT Sloan Management Review blog post and in the fall 2017 issue.

MIT Sloan Professor Roberto Rigobon and two MIT researchers – Florian Berg and Julian Koelbel – have won two awards from the Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance and Investment (GRASFI): the 2020 GRASFI Best Paper Prize and the 2020 GRASFI Best Paper Prize on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) Standards. Their dual-winning paper is entitled “Aggregate Confusion: The Divergence of ESG Ratings.”
Videos of the award presentations (September 2020), including the authors discussing their winning paper, are at: 2020 GRASFI Best Paper Prize and 2020 GRASFI Best Paper Prize on ESG Standards.

Roberto Rigobon and Arathi Mehrotra (Managerial Communication) were named co-winners of the Sloan School Teacher of the Year at the MIT Sloan Excellence in Teaching Awards. Each year, students nominate instructors for these teaching awards and the final recipients are chosen based on the quantity and quality of their nominations.
 

The MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative’s Aggregate Confusion Project won the Institutional Investor’s 2022 Allocators’ Choice Award for Partnership of the Year.

The MIT award winners are:
Jason Jay (team leader; director of the Sustainability Initiative; senior lecturer);
Florian Berg (project co-founder; research scientist);
Julian Koelbel (project co-founder; research affiliate);
and Roberto Rigobon (Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management and Professor of Applied Economics).

In addition to the MIT team, the initiative includes the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board, Qontigo, MFS Investment Management, AQR Capital Management, and Asset Management One. The project works to reduce the level of noise in ESG (environmental, social, and governance) measurement by improving data available to managers and allocators.  More information about the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative’s Aggregate Confusion Project is online here.

Robert B. McKersie is the recipient of the 2008 Cushing/Gavin Award from the Boston Labor Guild. The Guild is a community labor management organization affiliated with the Archdiocese of Boston. Each year it honors an individual who has made outstanding contributions as a neutral to our labor management community.

MIT Sloan Professor Robert C. Merton, along with Myron Scholes, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1997 for a new method to determine the value of derivatives.  In collaboration with the late Fischer Black, they developed a pioneering formula for the valuation of stock options. The Black-Scholes-Merton options pricing model is a tenet of modern finance. Merton received his PhD in economics from MIT in 1970.

Ed Roberts and Jim Utterback have both been elected Fellows of the Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), which provides an annual international platform for academics, industry professionals, and government representatives to exchange new knowledge in the management of engineering and technology. Roberts and Utterback received two of the 11 PICMET Fellow Awards given this year to recognize outstanding contributions to the development and growth of this discipline.  

The many nominees were evaluated in technology management research, education, and other aspects of technology management leadership by a global panel of judges assessing worldwide impact on technology management and innovation. Roberts and Utterback, who have been MIT faculty members since 1961 and 1979 respectively, were both cited as “influential scholars throughout the world” in these fields.

 

Ed Roberts, founder and chair of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, has received the Deshpande Symposium Founders Award, which recognizes an individual with “extraordinary achievements” who is known for leadership activities, service, and/or contributions to advancing the field of entrepreneurship in higher education. The Deshpande Symposium for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Higher Education was co-founded by the Deshpande Foundation and UMass Lowell in 2012 and annually convenes academics, policy planners, and practitioners to discuss best practices in integrating entrepreneurship throughout college and university communities.

This is only the second time the award has been given during the past six years. See this Trust Center article for further details about Roberts’ receiving this honor and a link to the full press release.

Ross Watts has been inducted into the Australian Accounting Hall of Fame, which honors and celebrates outstanding academic and practitioner contributions to the advancement of accounting in Australia. Watts is the first expatriate inductee.

S.P. Kothari has been recognized with an honorary doctorate from the University of Cyprus, which notes his “rich scientific and intellectual work” and his collaboration with their Faculty of Economics and Management.