Deeply Responsible Business: A Global History of Values-Driven Leadership
26 Apr 2024
12:30 -14:00
Times are shown in local time.
Open to: All
Castle Teaching Room (Cambridge Judge Business School)
Trumpington St
Cambridge
CB2 1AG
United Kingdom
Join our Strategy and International Business seminar
Speaker: Professor Geoffrey Jones, Harvard Business School
About the seminar topic
In this talk, Geoffrey Jones will present his main conclusions from his recently published book, Deeply Responsible Business. For decades, even as environmental and social challenges have intensified, chief executives have been told that their only responsibility is to the bottom line. In contrast, this research looks at business leaders who saw profit not as an end in and of itself, but as a means to make the world a more flourishing place. The book makes a sharp distinction between deep responsibility, which can deliver radical social and ecological responses, and corporate social responsibility, which is often little more than window dressing.
Through in-depth studies of business leaders and their companies, Jones profiles business leaders over time and from around the world who combined profits with social purpose to confront inequality, inner-city blight, and ecological degradation, while navigating restrictive laws and authoritarian regimes. These deeply responsible leaders were motivated by bedrock values and sometimes – but not always – driven by faith. Jones explores why such deeply responsible business leaders never became the norm, and asks whether this is now changing.
Speaker bio
Geoffrey Jones is the Isidor Straus Professor of Business History at the Harvard Business School. He taught at Cambridge University before moving to the Harvard Business School in 2000. Professor Jones researches the history of globalisation and global business, the ecological and social responsibility of business, and the business history of emerging markets. among his more recent books are Beauty Imagines: A History of the Global Beauty Industry (Oxford University Press, 2010), Profits and Sustainability: A History of Green Entrepreneurship (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Deeply Responsible Business (Harvard University Press, 2023).
Professor Jones is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.
Register
No registration required. If you have any questions about this seminar, please email Luke Slater.