The Academy of Management is one of the most respected academic organizations focused on research in management and leadership topics. Its annual meeting — to be held in Philadelphia this summer — is organized around the theme Doing Well by Doing Good. From their website:

There are many ways to evaluate how well a firm is doing. Many of these are concerned (out of necessity) with the bottom line, focusing on stock prices and financial returns. But developments in other areas, such as the Balanced Scorecard, make it clear that there are multiple ways in which success can be gauged. Furthermore, any measure of success or performance must suffer from some degree of criterion deficiency, so that there are other indicators of performance that could be just as useful.

One such indication of performance is the extent to which a firm improves the lives of its members and its stakeholders. Some have referred to this as Social Entrepreneurship but, whatever the name used, it represents the recognition that there is more to corporate success than the financial bottom line. More importantly, there is no reason to believe that a firm which spends it energies trying to improve the world around it, will necessarily suffer for those efforts. In fact, there is evidence that firms which “do good” are often the same firms that “do well”. Furthermore, many of the “best practices” our colleagues from all parts of the Academy have suggested can lead to both financial success and social success. Thus there would seem to be micro, macro and international research topics that are consistent with these ideas.