Faculty & Research
Professor Kash Rangan has focused his research on the role of business in helping to improve the lives of the nearly 3 billion people who live on less than $2 a day…this is Social Enterprise.
Knowledge generation is the engine that powers the School's social enterprise programs and activities and ensures the sustainability of social enterprise as a field of study at HBS and other graduate schools. The School's contributions to the field, armed with its broader conception of social enterprise, have inspired new avenues of exploration, expanded the frontiers of field-based research in the arena, and stimulated the adaptation of management theories and frameworks across sectors.
More than 75 HBS faculty members engage in social enterprise research projects and course development that encompass topics within two broadly defined and interrelated intellectual domains:
- Management and leadership of mission-driven organizations within the context of nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, and for-profit social enterprises
- Business leadership in a multi-sector context, including corporate responsibility, social marketing, and business approaches to the base of the pyramid
Since the founding of the Social Enterprise Initiative, this research has generated a wealth of published work on topics related to social enterprise, including more than 400 cases and teaching notes, more than 100 articles and book chapters, and several books. This knowledge generation, in turn, has fueled the development of several MBA courses and Executive Education programs on topics related to social enterprise.
