Haas School of Business student wins 2005 Best MBA Paper

The Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College and Net Impact have presented the 2005 Best MBA Paper Award to Douglas Young, who this fall will enter his second year of MBA study at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

Mr. Young’s paper, titled “Corporate Social Responsibility: Strategic Recommendations for U.S. Banks,” examines the implications of legislation to mandate non-financial reporting in the banking and financial services industry. In the paper he also advocates for banks to create a strategic approach to corporate social responsibility and provides a detailed theoretical proposal for a bank with a leadership position within the industry.

At Haas, Mr. Young has focused his studies on global finance and corporate social responsibility. He also helped initiate a student-led speaker series focused on microfinance and was an organizer of the Global Social Venture Competition.

Following his first year of MBA study, Mr. Young this summer worked as a part-time intern for the Rockefeller Foundation with its Program Venture Investment Fund (“ProVenEx”). During a concurrent summer internship with the Haas Center for Responsible Business, he conducted an impact study of the organization’s experiential learning projects for the previous three years.

Mr. Young’s paper provides a blueprint for U.S. banks interested in becoming leaders in corporate responsibility. In the paper, Young cautions the banking community to be responsive to activist concerns and recommends greater transparency about non-financial criteria that goes into strategic decision-making.

He advocates that the banking industry consider “minor regulation” that would create some SEC reporting standards to help socially responsible investors make more informed decisions. Young warns in his paper that unless the banking and financial services industry adopts voluntary reporting measures, the U.S. Congress may be “pressured to create a legislation solution, spawning an unwanted stepchild to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.” He notes that “accountants forfeited the opportunity to influence the regulation” and suggests the banking industry should position itself more proactively.

He also recommends that it is “essential for CSR strategy to be aligned with a company’s market strategy.”  Otherwise, he writes, the company is only engaging in philanthropy and is "at the mercy of company management’s benevolence.”

Mr. Young also explores the merits of a U.S.-based bank committing to economic development in Latin America through funding microfinance initiatives (MFIs). The region, he writes, is considered to be “one of the more advanced microfinance regions and has already made the transition from small non-profits to larger MFIs."

Mr. Young is a Baltimore native who is also a Certified Public Accountant. Before entering graduate school he worked for three years as a senior manager with Ernst & Young Capital Markets Group in Santiago, Chile. He is a graduate of Loyola College in Baltimore where he earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree.

The MBA Paper Award

The annual competition for the "Best MBA Paper in Corporate Citizenship" is conducted by The Center and Net Impact, a network of business students committed to using the power of business to create a better world. This annual contest, in existence since 1993, is open to all graduate students pursuing a Masters in Business Administration for a paper that explores how companies relate to stakeholders through business practices ranging from social engagement to environmental policies to issues of equity within the workplace. The contest is intended to encourage students and faculty to understand the practices, challenges and opportunities of corporate citizenship as well as the exploration of corporate citizenship in the business school curriculum. The winning paper receives a $2,000 award, and $750 is awarded to the faculty sponsor.

» View the 2005 Best MBA Paper