A Strengthened Care Economy is the Future of Gender Equality in Canada
Sarah Kaplan writes with Susan Prentice for The Future Economy about care as a crucial infrastructure for economic prosperity.
How companies can smash the lavender ceiling for LGBTQ workers
Across the world, LGBTQ+ communities are confronting a growing tsunami of hostility – laws targeting their identities, escalating social ostracism, and rhetoric that feels ripped straight from darker chapters of history. But there’s another battlefront, quieter yet no less fierce: the sleek, hushed boardrooms of corporate power. In Canada, as in much of the world, […]
Inspiring Inclusive Innovation
Rotman professor, Sarah Kaplan, champions inclusive product and service innovation—for social good and competitive advantage
How to achieve the promise of corporate purpose
Sarah Kaplan writes for Forbes that increasingly, innovation is being recognized as central to the pursuit of purpose and corresponding efforts to address diverse stakeholder interests
How Comply-or-Explain Disclosure Regulation Can Improve Corporate Governance and Gender Equality
Sarah Kaplan and co-authors write for the Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog about how to make comply-or-explain regulation effective.
How many LGBTQ+ corporate directors does Canada have? We investigated
Sarah Kaplan and Jane Griffith discuss in the Globe and Mail their study showing the lack of LGBTQ+ board directors Pride Month is a time to celebrate the many steps taken toward achieving LGBTQ+ inclusion, while at the same time considering the numerous barriers to economic, health and social well-being that the community still faces. […]
‘Flipping the Script’ to Harness Gender Diversity
Sarah Kaplan speaks with the team at Harvard Business School about using diversity to design better products, services and policies.
Accelerating progress towards gender equity in health and science
Sarah Kaplan and coauthors discuss how to address barriers to gender equity: access to resources, sponsorship and cultural change.
How to achieve the promise of corporate purpose
Sarah Kaplan writes for Rotman Management Magazine that pursuing corporate purpose can’t just be in the words but must be in the deeds.
A call for 365 days of action against gender-based violence
Sarah Kaplan and Beverley Essue write for Healthy Debate that attention to addressing and preventing GBV should be 365 days of the year.
AI bias must move to accountability to address inequity
Sarah Kaplan writes with Carmina Ravanera in Policy Options that policies should require AI to assess equity impacts and risks, and demand transparency about design and data disparitie
Remote Work and Inequality: Lessons for Leaders
Carmina Ravanera, Kim de Laat and Sarah Kaplan write for Rotman Management Magazine on inequality and remote work.
5 myths about Gender Analytics
Sarah Kaplan & Lechin Lu are interviewed about Gender Analytics as a tool for product, service and policy innovation.
Make remote work a plus instead of a penalty for gender equality
Sarah Kaplan writes with Kim deLaat and Carmina Ravanera on flexible work for Policy Options.
When it comes to inequality, remote work is a double-edged sword — especially for women
Sarah Kaplan and coauthors discuss the future of work in the Toronto Star.
The Future of Work: Will Remote Work Help or Hinder the Pursuit of Equality?
Sarah Kaplan and coauthors publish new report on the future of work and flexible/remote work.
Taking care of the care workers
Sarah Kaplan writes in Policy Options with co-authors on how the work of caring for our children, older adults and those with disabilities has always been undervalued. Yet the social benefits are enormous.
Care Work in the Recovery Economy: Towards a Caring Economy
Sarah Kaplan co-authors major new report on the caring economy and its central role in recovery from COVID-19.
The Institute for Gender and the Economy: How Narrowing the Wage Gap Benefits Everyone
Sarah Kaplan and her work at GATE are featured by Badcredit.org
The best books about stakeholder capitalism
Sarah Kaplan describes for Shepherd 5 great books about stakeholder capitalism that you should read.
An Equity Lens on Artificial Intelligence
Sarah Kaplan co-authors report on assuring artificial intelligence doesn’t create or reify discrimination.
An Equity Lens on Artificial Intelligence
Carmina Ravanera and Sarah Kaplan write about why it is important to take an equity lens on this increasingly ubiquitous technology.
360º Governance: Leadership Guidelines for a World in Crisis
Sarah Kaplan and Peter Dey write in the Rotman Management Magazine about governance in the 21st century.
The purpose of a corporation is not simply to make money
Sarah Kaplan and Peter Dey write for the Globe and Mail that Corporate boards cannot afford to be laggards in a changing governance landscape. As boards of directors reconvene in person and emerge from their virtual boardrooms, they will be well-advised to review and update the purpose of the corporation to reflect the realities […]
Teaching Complex Management Challenges
Sarah Kaplan is interviewed about her Aspen award-winning course, The 360º Corporation.
Who cares about childcare?
Kate Bezanson and Sarah Kaplan write in The Hill Times that investing in childcare will pay substantial social and economic dividends.
Where are the directors in a world in crisis?
Peter Dey and Sarah Kaplan write for the Globe and Mail about the new competencies required for boards of directors in the 21st century.
What’s at stake when women leave the workforce during COVID-19?
Sarah Kaplan is interviewed by TVO on the impact on the power gap of COVID-related career interruptions.
How to Build Back Better: A Conversation
Sarah Kaplan spoke with Soo Min Toh and Ken Corts in Rotman Management Magazine about creating a more inclusive economy from the ashes of the pandemic.
How the caring economy can revive us
Sarah Kaplan writes for the cover story in Corporate Knights about why we can’t recover without a thriving care economy
Sometimes, They Just Can’t Handle the Truth
Research2Reality interviews Sarah Kaplan: This researcher knows, in the pursuit of gender equality, there are rarely easy and straightforward answers. Nevertheless, she persists.
Financial recovery goes hand in hand with social responsibility
Sarah Kaplan and Rod Lohin write for The Toronto Star about how company health is not just financial.
Two Ways to Stand Against Racism and Sexism at Work
Laura Morgan Roberts and Sarah Kaplan write for Bloomberg Opinion that real allyship doesn’t come cheap. It is astounding to see so many companies taking stands against racism. But mea culpas will ring hollow if they are not followed by real action. Progress to date has been slow and inconsistent. In 2002, 12 Fortune 500 […]
Canada’s economic stability hinges on an equitable recovery for women
In Policy Options, Sarah Kaplan and Carmina Ravanera discuss how racialized women have been hurt by the pandemic, and investments in childcare and an expanded EI would help counteract inequity.
How To ‘Build Back Better’ after COVID-19
Sarah Kaplan explains how, in the midst of the pandemic, companies need to redesign, reorient, and realign.
Why Social Responsibility Produces More Resilient Organizations
Sarah Kaplan writes for Sloan Management Review that companies have more staying power when management decisions consider a diverse range of interests.
Are we letting this crisis go to waste?
In this editorial in The Hill Times, Sarah Kaplan writes that we can use this crisis to create our own rebirth. This article appeared in The Hill Times on August 17, 2020. The full piece is available here. We are in the midst of one of the greatest health and economic crises in more than […]
Deck Chairs On The Titanic: The Impoverished B-School Response To A Changing World
Sarah Kaplan writes for Poets & Quants that business schools are not adapting to new social realities. Our society is in crisis: even before the Covid-19 pandemic, racism was already unleashed around the world, rising seas were already flooding communities, pollution was choking cities, the AI revolution was creating major dislocations as jobs are replaced […]
Care services are the key to pandemic recovery for women
Sarah Kaplan writes with Maya Roy that without support for care services, a slowed economic recovery is inevitable.
A conversation with Sarah Kaplan on COVID’s greater impact on women — and how we can rebuild equitably
Sarah Kaplan spoke with the 30% Club and Women of Influence about building back better from COVID.
Where is the “T” in LGBTQ+ inclusion?
Sarah Kaplan and Jade Pichette of Pride at Work write about the journey towards inclusion for transgender people in the economy.
The Work Ahead: Business Confronts the COVID-19 Challenge
Sarah Kaplan appears in an Atlantic Live event to discuss COVID, inequality, and building back better.
What it means for businesses to ‘build back better’ after COVID-19
The health and economic crisis has prompted pro-employee changes at some companies. Sarah Kaplan argues in Fast Company that they should keep them and do even more.
Gender Diversity and Inclusion in Medicine: Lessons from Management
Sonia Kang and Sarah Kaplan write in Rotman Management Magazine about behavioral interventions to increase diversity and inclusion.
The upside of trade-offs
“strategy+business” features The 360˚ Corporation: about how leaders can turn stakeholder scrutiny to their advantage
Pandemic should force corporate boards to think beyond the bottom line
Peter Dey and Sarah Kaplan write that maybe this crisis is, when it comes to corporate governance, a blessing in disguise.
It’s 2020 and the world is on fire — it’s time for business to propose radical climate change solutions
Sarah Kaplan writes for the Toronto Star that companies need to act more urgently to pursue social justice. Australia’s apocalyptic bush fires make the dystopian future of “Mad Max” look tame. The World Economic Forum recently reported that it will take another 100 years to achieve gender equality at the current pace of progress. Garbage […]
Why the ‘business case’ for diversity isn’t working
Sarah Kaplan writes for Fast Company that the business case leads only to incremental, not transformational change
The immortal – and false – myth of the workplace Queen Bee
Isabel Fernandez-Mateo and Sarah Kaplan debunk the myth of the “Queen Bee” in The Conversation.
The Business Roundtable has repudiated shareholder primacy; where does Canada stand?
Sarah Kaplan writes for The Globe and Mail that corporate Canada may be slipping behind on social responsibility. This is a reprint of the Globe and Mail editorial on September 16, 2019. The full version is viewable here. Recently, the Business Roundtable – a lobbying group made up of the chief executives of more than […]
How corporations are stepping up to tackle crises when governments won’t
Sarah Kaplan writes for The Conversation that corporations can be part of the system of checks and balances for social good.
Are companies right to abandon the shareholder-first mantra?
Sarah Kaplan is invited by the Financial Times to explain why the Business Roundtable announcement is a good first step for change. Are companies right to abandon the shareholder-first mantra? Yes — Balancing interests will spur companies to be more innovative The Business Roundtable, an association of leading US chief executives, last week announced plans […]
Mansplaining: New solutions to a tiresome old problem
In The Conversation (and Fast Company), Kaplan looks to organizational solutions to a dynamic that silences women’s views and blocks their advancement. “Note, as Solnit does, that “mansplaining is not a universal flaw of the male gender, just the intersection between overconfidence and cluelessness where some portion of that gender gets stuck.” But the mansplaining […]
Taking stakeholders, rather than Milton Friedman, seriously: Beyond “shared value” approaches for corporate social responsibility
My Stanford Press blog post on The 360º Corporation. “For decades, we have mythologized Milton Friedman’s 1970 dictate that corporations have a primary responsibility to deliver financial returns to their shareholders. But, the winds are shifting. Former Unilever CEO Paul Polman is calling for “heroic chief executive officers” to achieve sustainable development goals such as […]
When Care Work and Paid Work Collide
While people in the Western world often assume that extended families in developing countries are oppressive to women who marry into them, family support can actually enable women to take on paying jobs outside the home.
Why the ‘business case’ for hiring more women isn’t working
Sarah Kaplan and Nancy Wilson write for the Globe and Mail that the “business case” won’t motivate transformation.
Beyond Policy: How Gendered Interactions on the Ground Shape Development
Viewing social and economic development as a series of interpersonal interactions can help us understand why development outcomes sometimes diverge from policy goals, and how gendered interactions shape social and economic development.
A brief process for more enlightened brainstorming
Sarah Kaplan writes for Quartz: Everybody wants to generate breakthrough ideas. Few people know how to do it.
Reconsidering Gender Diversity in Economic Development
Building truly inclusive economies requires that leaders broaden their understanding of gender and the many different ways gender identity can affect inclusion.
Holding Up the Sky: Achieving Women’s Empowerment Requires Working with Women and Men
Involving men in women’s economic development projects can lead to higher impact for women and changes in gender norms.
The Mantra of Meritocracy
Our ongoing obsession with the myth of meritocracy is now spreading to education systems in developing economies with pernicious effects.
What’s Right with Kansas
Sarah Kaplan reviews No Place Like Home: Lessons from Activism in LGBT Kansas by C. J. Janovy which offers up progressive lessons from a red state.
Learning Doesn’t Mean a Livelihood
Though girls may be actively encouraged to get educated, family responsibilities and cultural expectations can hold them back from the working world.
Overtime & Underpaid
Laudable efforts to harness the economic potential of women are being hampered: There are only so many hours in the day, and women are already busy tending to their homes and communities. For NGOs, it’s time their programs and efforts become more accessible to group they propose to serve.
Listen to Local Women
While many NGOs strive to provide women with economic empowerment, women themselves find more value in gaining social networks and building confidence.
Briefing: Early Childhood Education and Care
Sarah Kaplan and colleagues outline a creative new plan for increasing childcare availability.