Don’t Abolish Business Schools. Make Them Accountable for Impact as well as Value

In response to a recent essay in The New York Times, Wharton Vice Dean Witold Henisz argues that business schools should prepare managers to evaluate both value creation and broader social and environmental impacts.

Excerpt:"Business schools should be judged by whether they help future managers understand how firms create value across financial, human, social, and natural capitals — and how employees, customers, investors, regulators, and communities respond when they do not."

...I am not arguing that doing good always pays. Some environmental and social investments strengthen performance. Others involve real tradeoffs, pay off only over long horizons, or leave costs with people who have little power to demand compensation. Some problems cannot be solved by voluntary corporate action at all.

...I am arguing that conventional business education treats effects on workers, communities, and the environment as side issues or policy questions when they increasingly drive the bottom line especially over the long-term and at the system-level."