There are more than 30 members of Wharton's faculty involved in social impact research. They represent a wide variety of disciplines, with research interests ranging from the role of business in social development to social wealth creation via entrepreneurial philanthropy. Here is a partial list:

Legal Studies & Business Ethics

Janice R. Bellace

Samuel A. Blank Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics; Professor of Management; Deputy Provost, University of Pennsylvania

Research Areas: International human rights; freedom of association; American and European labor and employment law; labor law in Western Europe; European equal employment law; American equal employment law
Current Projects: The social utility of international human rights standards as applied to employment; Age discrimination legislation in Europe and the United States and their application in refusal to hire cases.

Thomas Donaldson

Mark O. Winkelman Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics

Research Areas: Business ethics; leadership; risk management; corporate compliance
Current Projects: Cash management practices at non-profit organizations

Thomas W. Dunfee

Joseph Kolodny Professor of Social Responsibility in Business; Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics, Chairperson, Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department

Research Areas: Social contracts; social responsibility of business; ethics
Current Projects: Current research focus is on (1) corporate social initiatives, and (2) global business ethics.

Nien-hê Hsieh

Assistant Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics

Research Areas: Ethics; distributive justice; managerial authority; theories of value and choice
Current Projects: The justified exercise of managerial authority; incommensurable values and justified choice; multinational corporations and the ethics of assistance
Courses: International Business Ethics; Core Course in Business Ethics

William Laufer

Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics, Director of the Carol and Lawrence Zicklin Center for Business Ethics

Research Areas: Corporate criminal law; corporate ethics; law and psychology; criminology Current Projects: Exploring a theoretical foundation for corporate criminal law; Core Course in Business Ethics

Ann E. Mayer

Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics

Research Areas: Middle Eastern law; international human rights law; human rights and globalization; women’s international human rights; law and international business; comparative constitutional law
Current Projects: Problems of human rights universality; human rights and globalization; recent developments affecting human rights and constitutionalism in the Middle East.

Philip M. Nichols

Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics

Research Areas: International trade and investment; emerging economies
Current Projects: Developing materials for the use of corporate codes in controlling corruption; developing business-lead initiatives to combat corruption.

Eric W. Orts

Guardsmark Professor; Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics and Management

Research Areas: Corporate and securities law; corporate governance; environmental law & policy
Current Projects: A social theory of the business enterprise; informational regulation of the environment in the digital age
Courses: Environmental Management, Law & Policy

Alan Strudler

Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics; Director, Wharton Ethics Program

Research Areas: Ethics; moral issues in securities law; corporate responsibility; moral reasoning in different cultures
Current Projects: Deception; law and ethics of insider trading; Confucian perspectives on rights

Business & Public Policy

Elizabeth E. Bailey

John C. Hower Professor of Business and Public Policy

Research Areas: Economic deregulation; contestability theory; strategic management of economic, environmental, and international regulation; corporate governance and social responsibility
Current Projects: The airline industry structure in the aftermath of deregulation; on links between CEO succession and executive performance.

Howard Pack

Professor of Business and Public Policy, Economics, and Management

Research Areas: Industrial development; productivity; industrial policy; competitiveness; foreign aid; technology transfer; recent Asian growth
Current Projects: Evaluation of the impact of government economic intervention in selected Asian countries. Productivity in African manufacturing.
Courses: Nations, Politics & Markets; International Industry Development Strategy

Janet Rothenberg Pack

Research Areas: Fiscal federalism and intergovernmental relations; political economy of economic policy; urban and regional economic development; foreign aid; privatization
Current Projects: Private governments in urban America - a study of the increasing role of the private sector in providing services traditionally the responsibility of local governments. Changes in Urban Development: Differences among regions and across decades.
Courses: Urban Public Policy & Private Development; Cost-benefit Analysis

Howard Kunreuther

Cecilia Yen Koo Professor; Professor of Decision Sciences and Business and Public Policy; Co-Director, Risk Management and Decision Processes Center

Research Areas: Decision processes; insurance; low-probability events and decision making; managerial economics; operations management; regulation; risk assessment
Current Projects: Current research projects are associated with ways that society can deal more effectively with problems of managing catastrophic risks. A facility siting credo has been developed which sets guidelines for improving the siting of noxious facilities. Also concerned with how insurance can be utilized to deal with natural hazards and environmental risk more effectively through a better understanding of the concepts of insurability.

Joel Waldfogel

Professor of Business and Public Policy; Chairperson, Business and Public Policy Department

Research Areas: Industrial organization; law and economics; public economics; economics of media industries
Current Projects: Distributional effects in product markets; local media markets: race, localism, and political participation; intellectual property piracy; information intermediaries and competition in online markets.

Matthew White

Class of 1965 Wharton Term Assistant Professor of Business and Public Policy

Research Areas: Applied econometrics; microeconomics; market regulation and organization
Current Projects: Analysis of electricity deregulation, market designs, and demand behavior; Empirical models of price discrimination and consumer choice

Justin Wolfers

Assistant Professor of Business and Public Policy

Research Areas: Labor economics; macroeconomics; social policy; behavioral finance; political economy
Current Projects: Research on determinants of inflation expectations, Causes and consequences of unemployment, Uses and limitations of prediction markets, Economic derivatives, Financial markets.

Management, Entrepreneurship & Leadership

Witold Henisz

Associate Professor of Management

Research Areas: The impact of political hazards on international investment strategies; international non-market strategy; international investment in cellular telephony and electricity generation; the political economy of policy change
Current Projects: The location, magnitude and evolution of international investments in cellular telephony and electricity generation; survival by multinational subsidaries in high risk and rapidly evolving political environments; the determinants of privitization, trade liberalization and policy volatility.
Courses: Geopolitics

Stephen J. Kobrin

William H. Wurster Professor of Multinational Management

Research Areas: International political economy; globalization; global strategy, impact of the information revolution
Current Projects: Liberalization of FDI policy in developing countries; globalization, multinationals and human rights, global governance.

Paul R. Kleindorfer

Anheuser-Busch Professor Emeritus of Management Science at Wharton; Professor Emeritus of Operations and Information Management

Research Areas: Pricing and capacity policies for capital-intensive industries; governmental regulation; risk management and environmental policy
Current Projects: Risk management for the energy sector; the economics of postal and delivery services; environmental strategy; catastrophe insurance and mitigation.

Ian C. MacMillan

The Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Professor of Management, Director, Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center

Research Areas: Organizational competence; new venture management; entrepreneurship; strategic management
Current Projects: Societal wealth enterprising; technology strategy, rapid growth firms
Classes Offered: Entrepreneurship & Social Wealth Creation

Gerald A. McDermott

Assistant Professor of Management

Research Areas: Institutions; networks; governance; emerging markets
Current Projects: Focused on problems of institutional and organizational learning in the formation of meso-level, public-private governance institutions in emerging market and post-socialist economies, particularly regarding alliances, network assets, and restructuring. Currently extending analytical framework to examine the impact of domestic financial and industrial institutions on foreign investment strategies in high value-added sectors in Latin America and East-Central Europe.

Michael Useem

William and Jacalyn Egan Professor of Management, Director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management

Research Areas: Leadership, decision making, and governance; corporate change and restructuring
Current Projects: Decision making in leadership; leadership development; company leadership in a globalizing equity market; leading organizational change and restructuring; leadership during periods of challenge, stress, and uncertainty; lateral and upward leadership.
Courses: Core course, Managing People at Work

Keith Weigelt

Rebecca and Morris Marks Professor, Professor of Management

Research Areas: Microfinance; eastern thought; Game theory; compensation; experimental economics; economics of sports; corporate strategy
Courses: Field Application Projects (e.g. United Nations Global Compact, FINCA), Microfinance

Finance

Robert Inman

Richard King Mellon Professor of Finance; Professor of Finance and Economics, Business and Public Policy, Law and Economics (Law School), Real Estate Vice Dean and Director, Doctoral Programs Senior Fellow, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics

Research Areas: Public finance; political economy; urban fiscal policy
Current Projects: Economic federalism in the United States, Europe, Russia, and South Africa. Efficient and equitable financing of public services in urban economies.

Alex Edmans

Assistant Professor of Finance

Research Areas: Corporate governance and executive compensation; socially responsible investing; information asymmetry and investment decisions; behavioral finance.
Current Projects: Employee satisfaction and stock returns; the role of large shareholders in corporate governance; the effect of stock prices on firm decisions; optimal executive compensation schemes.