The Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize

The Winners:

John A. Pearce II
Professor, Villanova University

Jonathan P. Doh
Assistant professor, Villanova University

Authors of:
The High Impact of Collaborative Social Initiatives

This year’s winning article serves as a guide for corporations seeking to improve the value of their corporate social responsibility initiatives. An increasing number of companies face pressure to contribute to social causes while also honoring their duty to shareholders to maintain profits. The authors show that the best way to benefit from responsibility initiatives and maintain the company’s core mission is to join what they call “collaborative social initiatives.”

CSIs are partnerships between corporations and nonprofit organizations. Individually, neither is capable of addressing a growing number of social and environmental problems. However, each can contribute valuable resources including services, material and knowledge. Combined, they are far superior to traditional cash contributions.

The authors suggest five principles to selecting and evaluating CSIs: (1) identify a stubborn challenge and address it long term; (2) leverage core capabilities toward solving a problem; (3) contribute specialized services to a large-scale, cooperative effort; (4) consider government support for an initiative; and (5) have a sense of the total benefits. By adhering to these principles, corporations can maintain ongoing commitments to carefully chosen initiatives that can have a tangible impact on social problems without compromising the basic need to earn a fair return for its owners.

The esteemed panel of judges found the article particularly appropriate to the legacy of the Beckhard Prize. Professor John Van Maanan commented that the paper “is a welcome and timely article fully in keeping with Dick Beckhard’s notion that the health of business organizations depends on the health of the larger environment in which they operate. Pearce and Doh argue convincingly that a social initiative undertaken by a corporate actor is less a charitable act than a necessary one.” Professor Emeritus Edgar Schein added, “While still alive, Dick Beckhard took great interest in the need for organizations to be socially responsible. It is fitting therefore, to give this prize to a paper that is highly innovative in its approach to that crucial topic.”

This year’s panel included three distinguished members of the MIT Sloan School of Management Faculty: Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus Edgar H. Schein, Erwin H. Schell Professor of Organization Studies John Van Maanan, and Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of International Management D. Eleanor Westney.

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