Redefining Good Business: Fall 2007





Haas Ranks #2 in CSR, Overall in Wall Street Journal's 2007 Recruiter Poll

The Wall Street JournalThe Haas School of Business jumped to #2, up from #5 last year, in The Wall Street Journal's 2007 ranking of MBA programs published on September 17. Haas was also named the #2 business school in the discipline of corporate social responsibility (CSR) for the second straight year. This marks the strongest showing of the school's full-time Berkeley MBA program in any major, popular ranking.


“Since 2003, we have worked extremely hard to build the Center for Responsible Business and the Haas School's CSR presence and we are very proud of our continued #2 placement in CSR and the school's overall placement in these rankings,” said Kellie McElhaney, adjunct professor and executive director at the Center for Responsible Business.

The Wall Street Journal bases its rankings on a poll of 4,430 corporate recruiters who can rate up to three schools at which they recruit MBA graduates.


"We are absolutely delighted at this vote of confidence from our recruiters," said Dean Tom Campbell. "Our students are among the best in the world, and our career services staff has developed excellent programs to provide the best possible service to students and to recruiters. We are very pleased to see that our efforts resonate with employers."


Recruiters also named Haas the third among most improved schoosl, the fourth best for hiring women, the sixth best school for producing the most creative and innovative leaders, and the sixth best for hiring graduates with strong ethical standards.

Haas also was mentioned in two trend articles that accompanied the ranking. An article on custom executive education programs, titled "Just for You," highlighted the school's Project Executive Program, a partnership between the Center for Executive Development and Statoil, one of the world’s largest sellers of crude oil.

Another article on the new trend of business schools taking programs to the Middle East, titled "Closer to Home," mentioned the Management of Technology Program's partnership with e-TQM College in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, focused on total quality management.


The top five schools in The Journal's ranking include Dartmouth College (Tuck), the University of California, Berkeley (Haas), Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan), and Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper).

See the rankings and additional articles at http://webreprints.djreprints.com/1791621049815.html.

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Haas School Students to Manage New Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) Fund

 The Berkeley MBA LogoManaging a socially responsible investment fund is one of the new learning experiences the Haas School is offering its graduate students for the first time this fall.

The new Haas Socially Responsible Investment (HSRI) Fund came about thanks to a $250,000 gift from Haas School alumnus Charlie Michaels and his wife, Doris. Michaels now serves as the president of Sierra Global Management, an investment management firm in New York City.


The fund will be managed by Berkeley MBA and Master's in Financial Engineering (MFE) students with the advice of an investment advisory committee and a Haas School faculty advisory committee. Its investment philosophy will be to achieve a balance between financial and social or environmental performance.


"To our knowledge this is the first socially responsible investment fund at a leading business school," said Kellie McElhaney, adjunct professor and executive director at the Center for Responsible Business. "We expect this experience to train students for careers in socially responsible investing, but we also hope that our students will take their new-found skills to traditional Wall Street firms and raise awareness about social responsibility issues from inside the companies."


Students will start investing when the fund reaches $500,000, a goal McElhaney expects to reach within a few months. The center's ultimate goal is to raise the fund to $1 million.

The idea for the HSRI Fund was developed by McElhaney and Charlie and Doris Michaels at the Social Performance Metrics Conference, an event on metrics for corporate social responsibility that was held at Haas School in April 2005 with the participation of the London School of Business and Boston University.


"Doris and I are most gratified to seed the HSRI Fund, as it gives students a chance to apply their understanding of corporate social responsibility to real investment decisions," Charlie Michaels said. "The fund, and hence Haas, will also capitalize on the attractive returns coming from investments in companies that are socially responsible and have strong financial characteristics."


"We are tremendously grateful to Charlie and Doris for giving our school this opportunity to do something innovative that adds to our students' experience with investing for both social and financial value," said Haas School Dean Tom Campbell.


To gain some theoretical footing in this kind of investing, students managing the fund will be required to enroll in a new elective on socially responsible investing techniques, being offered by the Haas School for the first time this fall.


The HSRI Fund exposes Berkeley MBA and MFE students with a keen interest in corporate social responsibility or finance to the investing world's complexities, challenges, and rewards - both financial and social. A group of students will be chosen by a special committee to make investment decisions for the HSRI Fund's portfolio, taking on fund manager and portfolio analyst roles. The students will determine detailed socially responsible investment criteria, with a focus on companies using sustainability principles as a core part of their business strategies, practices, and investments.


The Center for Responsible Business will send out an annual call for applications for the HSRI positions to all Berkeley MBA and MFE students. The number of students who participate is expected to increase from six to twelve as the fund grows.

In addition to the learning opportunities this fund provides, the Center expects that the investment data to be gathered by the fund will help advance the methodology and the understanding of how well socially responsible investment funds can perform.

To learn more, visit the Haas SRI Fund webpage.

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Berkeley MBA Jumps to #4 in Beyond Grey Pinstripes Survey

Beyond Grey Pinstripes LogoThe full-time Berkeley MBA Program jumped seven places from #11 in 2005 to #4 in the world in the 2007 Beyond Grey Pinstripes survey, published by the Aspen Institute on October 10. Among US schools, Haas ranked #3.


The Beyond Grey Pinstripes survey aims to capture business schools' abilities to integrate social and environmental management into their teaching and research. The ranking equally weighs four areas of the business school experience.


Haas also ranked well in the following areas: first in course content that explicitly addresses the role of mainstream business in improving social and environmental conditions; fourth in student opportunity to take such courses; and fifth in in faculty research that explores these topics and has been published in one of 94 academic journals selected by Aspen Institute.


The ranking is based on an extensive school questionnaire.


For the full report, go to http://www.beyondgreypinstripes.org.


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New 'Sustainable Solutions' Program Created with $10 Million Dow Gift

With an initial $2 million gift announced last week, the Haas School's Center for Responsible Business will establish a new program aimed at providing students educational and research opportunities in the area of sustainable products and solutions.


The Sustainable Products and Solutions (SPS) Program is being established in partnership with UC Berkeley's College of Chemistry. It is being financed initially with $2 million in seed money from the Dow Chemical Co. Foundation. The foundation intends to provide a total of $10 million over the next five years and to help the program secure additional foundation and corporate sponsors.


The program will focus on sustainability issues involving society, science, engineering, the environment, and finance. Its interdisciplinary nature will enable students to take into account all aspects of a product's life, including those related to finance, environment, production, and its interactions with people.


A steering committee comprised of faculty from disciplines across campus will govern the program and make funding decisions. The Haas School's Kellie McElhaney, executive director of the Center for Responsible Business and program director for the SPS Program, and Sara Beckman, senior lecturer, will serve on the steering committee.


A request for proposals will be issued later this fall seeking research and education ideas, primarily from master-level and doctoral students at UC Berkeley. Funding for the first round of research and education projects will likely be announced in early 2008. Learning opportunities will also reach undergraduate students who assist with graduate student projects.


Projects funded within this program could be as wide-ranging as expanding clean drinking water supplies to exploring how to measure a product supply chain's environmental footprint.


"This program gives us the opportunity to offer seminars, student competitions, research, internships, field projects, and fellowships that will help graduate students bridge research, theory and practice in sustainability," said Kellie McElhaney, executive director of the Center for Responsible Business and program director for the SPS Program.


Tony Kingsbury, on loan from Dow Chemical Co. for two years, will serve as executive-in-residence at the Center for Responsible Business. He said funding the education and research program in sustainability is a first for his company's foundation, which contributes more than $18 million to charities every year. One of his immediate goals will be to help generate additional funding from other foundation and corporate partners.


The Dow Chemical Co. will not be involved in the SPS Program decision-making. All research will be funded by the new program will be the property of UC Berkeley.


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Study on Employee Satisfaction and Long-Run Stock Performance Wins 2007 Moskowitz Prize

Alex EdmansThe 2007 Moskowitz Prize for Socially Responsible Investing has been awarded to a new study demonstrating that companies with high employee satisfaction have historically also demonstrated superior stock performance.


The winning paper – "Does the Stock Market Fully Value Intangibles? Employee Satisfaction and Equity Prices" – by Alex Edmans of the University of Pennsylvania’s The Wharton School explores the relationship between employee satisfaction and long-run stock performance by reviewing a portfolio of stocks selected by Fortune magazine as the “Best Companies to Work For in America” in 1998. The study finds the portfolio earned more than double the market return by the end of 2005, in addition to outperforming industry- and characteristics-matched benchmarks.


These findings have two main implications. First, they suggest that employee satisfaction improves corporate performance rather than representing inefficiently excessive compensation. Second, they imply that the stock market does not fully value intangibles, even when they are made visible by a publicly available survey. Full text of the 2007 winning paper is available online at Social Science Network.


“Many studies have shown that social investors can earn competitive returns. But this is one of the first studies to suggest that there could be a performance benefit to owning companies with certain positive characteristics,” said Lloyd Kurtz, Moskowitz Prize administrator and senior portfolio manager at Nelson Capital Management, an investment advisory affiliate of Wells Fargo.


Awarded by the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business, in cooperation with the Social Investment Forum, the Prize promotes the concept, practice, and growth of socially responsible investing.


With more than 30 papers under consideration from prominent researchers all over the world, this was the toughest field the judging panel has seen in the history of the Prize.


“Edmans paper was well written and well researched, and the judges felt that the paper was a wonderful addition to the socially responsible research body of knowledge,” added Brian Bruce, Professor and Director of the Finance Institute at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business, and chair of the Moskowitz Prize judging committee.


Honorable mention was also awarded to Allen Goss of Ryerson University’s Ted Rodgers School of Management in Canada for his paper “Corporate Responsibility and Financial Distress”. Goss’ study finds that the level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a firm, proxied by KLD scores, is a significant determinant of distress, which suggests there is extra informational value in the metrics used by CSR advocates.


The sponsors of the Moskowitz Prize are: Calvert Group, First Affirmative Financial Network, Nelson Capital Management, Rockefeller and Co., and Trillium Asset Management.


For more information, visit the Moskowitz Research Program.


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Center Launches New MBA Fellowship with LifeScan Inc.

Partnering with LifeScan Inc., the Center for Responsible Business recently launched a new fellowship opportunity for Haas students to play an integral role helping to develop key CSR initiatives for a global leader in the health care industry. LifeScan is a Johnson & Johnson company dedicated to improving the quality of life for people with diabetes.


Working in the company’s Community Relations Group, the year-long fellowship program is open to two second-year MBA students with a passion for CSR and an interest in healthcare. Fellows will work on a variety of CSR-related projects and will have the opportunity to interact and present ideas to senior-level management throughout the year. Students may also be offered the opportunity to work with the Community Relations Group as a paid intern during the summer before the program begins.


“This fellowship truly embodies our Center's experiential education focus,” said Kellie McElhaney, executive director of the Center for Responsible Business. “There is no better way to teach corporate responsibility than to actually have our students go out and do it, along with learning the theory and frameworks in our classrooms.”


LifeScan has committed to fund the program for the next three years, and the students will receive fellowship funding for their work.


The program is open to full-time Haas MBAs and applications from interested first-year MBAs are due at the end of January. Finalists will be invited to interview with LifeScan Senior Management and will be notified of acceptance into the program by mid-March.


For more information, visit the LifeScan Fellowship Program.


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The Fight for Mike: Update on the Illness of Mike Homer, Haas Alum and Center Founder & Advisory Board Chair

Mike HomerIt is with very heavy hearts that we share the tragic news of our Center’s Founding Funder, Mike Homer, who at just 49 was recently diagnosed with the rare, degenerative Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease.


Mike is a 1981 Haas alum. He gave his initial gift to Haas to launch an initiative in the area of CSR for two reasons: One, because he had been successful and believed in giving back; and two, because he wanted students today to realize that they did not need to follow his path of being successful first and contributing to society second. He wanted our Haas students to see that they could do both together: be successful in business and contribute greatly to society.


Mike Homer has been our biggest supporter, advisor, confidante, friend, and benefactor. His vision, insight, belief and commitment have made all that you will read of our exciting new programs, funds, and successes possible.


We send along to you a recent article on Mike, “The fight of his life”, from the San Francisco Business Times.


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MORE NEWS & UPCOMING EVENTS


1st Annual Berkeley Finance Conference: Balancing Risk and Return Through Innovation

The Berkeley Finance Club will hold the Haas School's first-ever finance conference on November 9. The inaugural Berkeley Finance Conference, which will be held on campus, will focus on "Balancing Risk and Return Through Innovation."


Panel discussions include: Investment Management – Where Are the Returns?; The Future of Private Equity; Corporate Finance Roundtable; Emerging Trends in Investment Banking; Valuation of Non-traditional Assets and Technologies in The Cleantech Sector; and The Business Case for Corporate Social Responsibility.


For more information, or to register for the event, visit http://www.haasfinanceconference.org.


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Branding Hope through Corporate Social Responsibility

Berkeley Executive Session on branding and corporate social responsibility featuring Jennifer Aaker, Xerox Distinguished Professorship in Knowledge, and Kellie McElhaney, John C. Whitehead Distinguished Faculty Fellow in Corporate Responsibility, both of the Haas School of Business.


The session will take place Friday, November 16, from 8:30-10:30 AM, in the Wells Fargo Room at the Haas School. This session is part of the 2007-08 Berkeley Executive Sessions sponsored by the Haas School's Center for Executive Development. All sessions are complimentary and open to the public.


For more information, visit the Center for Executive Development.


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3rd Annual Haas Diversity in Business Conference

The third annual Haas Diversity in Business Conference, which focuses on diversity in innovation, will be held on Friday, November 16, at International House on the UC Berkeley campus. Fred Reid, the CEO of Virgin America, will be the keynote speaker.


For more information on the Haas Diversity in Business Conference, visit http://diversity.haas.berkeley.edu.


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Inaugral International Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Dublin, Ireland - Sponsored by Ernst & Young

With corporate social responsibility (CSR) becoming integral to business strategies throughout Ireland, Ernst & Young is hosting a unique full-day conference to explore the benefits of this rewarding area. The conference has been devised for business people looking to structure a relevant and effective CSR strategy to their business and takes place in Dublin, Ireland on November 28th, 2007.

For more information, visit www.eoy.ie/csrconference.

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Integrating Social Impact Measurement into Your Business Plan

Sponsored by the Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) and part of the Lester Center's Entrepreneurial Best Practice Series, this event will be held on Monday, November 26 from 6:30-8:30 PM in Room C230 at the Haas School of Business.


The session will provide practical insights into measuring and reporting social returns for early stage ventures. The series' intent is to include various perspectives both from funders (e.g., VC, foundations) and social enterprises on the ground that are measuring and tracking their social impact, and will take a look at what models and frameworks are being used in the industry, and guidelines on how to integrate these concepts into a business model.


For more information, contact Jeff Kang at (jeff_kang@haas.berkeley.edu) or Joel Ramirez at (joel_ramirez@haas.berkeley.edu), or visit www.gsvc.org..


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2008 Global Social Venture Competition: Call for Entrants

The Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) is seeking promising social entrepreneurs to enter our 2008 Competition. If you are an entrepreneur (or budding entrepreneur!) with a financially sustainable venture that addresses a social or environmental problem, we encourage you to apply. Winning plans in the past have ranged from global health to microfinance, from cleantech to education, from fair trade to community development, from business concepts to operating companies, and have included for-profit and non-profit models. Executive Summaries are due January 16. Full details are available at 2008 Call for Entrants.


For more information, www.gsvc.org.


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Haas Alumni in the News

Many Haas alumni are leading corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts at a diverse array of companies, as well as integrating CSR strategies into traditional brand, marketing, strategy, and finance roles. Check out some of the Center Alumni who have recently made the news:

Kristin Groos Richmond and Kirsten Tobey Saenz, both Haas 2006 MBAs and co-founders of Revolution Foods, featured in "Five Under 35" budding entrepreneurs article in the September issue of Sustainable Industries Journal for their sustainable business start-ups.


Zach Gentry and Josh Mooney, both Haas 2005 MBAs and co-founders of Adura Technology, featured in "Five Under 35" budding entrepreneurs article in the September issue of Sustainable Industries Journal for their sustainable business start-ups.

More information on Haas alumni in the CSR world is available: http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/responsiblebusiness/Alumni.html

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Center in the News

November 2, 2007 - Financial Times
Berkeley students get sustainable funding

October 31, 2007 - San Francisco Chronicle
Cal given $10 million by Dow Chemical to work on sustainability

September 28, 2007 - Sustainable Industries Journal
Executive strategy: On business and democracy
By Kevin Sweeney, Center Lecturer


September 28, 2007 - Financial Times
Haas to launch socially responsible fund

September 26, 2007 - The Daily Californian
A Student-Run Fund With a Conscience

September 18, 2007 - The Wall Street Journal
Haas Takes New Tack on Investing


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Support the Center's Mission: Become a Corporate Partner


Center Corporate Partners - A select group of companies who provide financial support to the Center, helping to further our mission by creating opportunities for education and innovative scholarship at the Haas School. With their support, the Center's Corporate Partners receive a series of benefits, including various, unique partnership-building opportunities.

If you are interested in becoming a Corporate Partner, please contact the Center’s Director, Katharine Brewer, at kbrewer@haas.berkeley.edu or 510-642-5581.

Individual Partners - You may also make an individual gift to support the Center's mission to educate all of our stakeholders on the roles and responsibilities of business in society. Visit our Give to Cal website now to lend your support!

For more information on supporting the Center, click here.


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