Leadership Letters
The Leadership Letters is a business and social-science Journal dedicated to advancing multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary understanding of leadership.
Editor
Robert M. Yawson
Robert Yawson, Peterson Gayle, Ivy Yawson
Increasingly, the spotlight for global development that will improve the lives of the poor is shifting to the business sector and strategies to influence private sector practices. Organizations - private and public, established and entrepreneurial, designed and emergent, formal and informal, profit and nonprofit - are critical to the well-being of nations and their citizens. They are of crucial importance for producing goods and services, creating value, providing jobs, and achieving social goals. As commerce becomes more global, business leaders realize that to open up new markets and ensure there are consumers for their products, as well as workers able to compete internationally; they must help improve the health, education, and income security of the very poor. Entrepreneurs are also bringing a new energy and innovation to philanthropy through their investments. This requires a different set of skills than those traditionally taught in business schools. Private-sector businesses have a unique role to play in solving social challenges—they have the tools, a stake in improving these markets, and collective access to global capital that greatly exceeds the available pool of foreign aid. And philanthropy can seize this moment and leverage these resources to achieve its goals of improving the situation of the very poor. Using a multi-stakeholder qualitative value elicitation protocol, we consulted with community leaders, business, public sector, social innovators, and academics that practice, study, and teach about innovations to accelerate improvements in the lives of the poor. We explored how successful pedagogical experiments from business schools could be transferred across boundaries to drive public and private sector changes that accelerate social change.
Subjects
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