MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Cooperative Advantage: Rethinking the Company's Purpose

Pursuing a people-centered cooperative advantage can garner meaningful benefits for employees, customers, and community.

As companies reopen and recalibrate during these turbulent times, it’s worth asking whether they should resume business as usual or whether their true purpose should instead be reconceptualized. Indeed, capitalism itself is being challenged due to inequities in employment, health care, and education that the pandemic has only emphasized as the model’s limitations have been exposed. COVID-19 has ravaged the well-being of employees and communities and brought renewed attention to the racial injustice experienced by African Americans, much of which is structural and systemic.1 Loyal employees who have been committed to their employers for many years are being unceremoniously let go. The leisure and hospitality sector, for example, has experienced massive layoffs at an unprecedented pace.

About the Author

Leon C. Prieto (@leoncprieto) is an associate professor of management at Clayton State University and an associate research fellow at the Cambridge Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. Simone T.A. Phipps (@drsimonephipps) is an associate professor of management at Middle Georgia State University and an associate research fellow at the Cambridge Judge Business School. They are the authors of African American Management History: Insights on Gaining a Cooperative Advantage (Emerald Publishing, 2019).

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