Advancing stakeholder research, education, and practice to benefit business and society.
An increasing number of CEOs recognize that long-term shareholder value is best achieved by cultivating mutually beneficial relationships with customers, employees, investors, society, and other “stakeholders.” Implementing this perspective in practice remains difficult. Obstacles include pressure to deliver short-term financial results, conflicting stakeholder interests, and misaligned incentives. The Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management (Y-SIM) was created to close this gap.
Mission
Established in 2022 at the Yale School of Management, Y-SIM’s mission is to prepare leaders to use stakeholder engagement as a catalyst for creating long-term firm value.
We believe company performance begins with stakeholder performance—how well an organization understands, creates, and sustains value for the people and systems it depends on.
Grounded insights
Y-SIM has conducted more than 200 interviews with CEOs and board chairs of leading global companies, including Amazon, IBM, Walmart, Mars, PepsiCo, Starbucks, and Unilever. These interviews are vital to informing Y-SIM’s work and have led to a robust pipeline of case studies, which are made freely available.
From theory to practice to adoption
Y-SIM moves systematically from research to real-world impact by:
- Capturing leadership insights through CEO interviews and case studies
- Distilling patterns and principles through rigorous analysis
- Developing frameworks and tools through company collaboration
- Educating the next generation of leaders to drive stakeholder performance
Our Teams
Our Approach
- Conduct research on the challenges CEOs face and strategies they find effective in generating long-term shareholder value through a stakeholder approach.
- Develop case studies that document emerging management practices.
- Integrate learning into education for MBA students, executives, and entrepreneurs.
- Convene faculty, students, and leaders to advance our learning.
All intellectual capital developed by the program is made freely available.
Collaborators
Our work is strengthened through collaborations with scholars from Yale and renowned institutions like Columbia, Wharton, and Oxford, as well as 32 other business schools within the Global Network for Advanced Management (GNAM).
To further amplify our impact and drive real-world adoption, we partner with professional networks like the Arthur Page Society, consulting firms such as SYPartners and co:collective, and leadership development organizations like the Responsible Innovation Labs, which focuses on startup founders.