Ravi K. Mehrotra, founder of a global shipping firm, has given BU a gift to endow a namesake institute studying how business contributes to society, and how it can do better. Photo courtesy of the Foresight Group

University News

New Questrom School of Business Institute to Explore the Role of Business in Society

The Ravi K. Mehrotra Institute is being funded in large part by a UK businessman with interest in “exploring the intersections of business, markets, and society” 

In an era when many young people doubt the benefits of capitalism in a society, Boston University’s Questrom School of Business will launch an institute to specifically study the role that business plays—both real and ideal—in advancing and solving real-world issues.

The Ravi K. Mehrotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society (IBMS) “will help others understand and appreciate the role business and markets do, can, and should play in creating lasting prosperity, advancing societal goals, and solving global challenges,” its mission statement reads.

Robert A. Brown, BU president emeritus, and Susan Fournier, the dean of Questrom, secured the gift last year that will endow the institute from Ravi Mehrotra, the founder and executive chairman of the Foresight Group. Between previously raised donations to the institute, plus the latest gift from Mehrotra (the largest of the donations), the institute has raised a total of $51 million, according to Fournier.

Foresight is a London- and Dubai-based global shipping, drilling, and private equity firm with a commitment to environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG). Its investment arm weighs companies’ comportment with United Nations sustainability goals on climate change and other environmental concerns, in addition to financial considerations. It also runs a foundation to train underprivileged students to work both in merchant marines and on drilling rigs.

“Questrom School of Business is among the world’s top-ranking [schools] for business administration and management programs,” Mehrotra tells BU Today. Questrom makes the ideal home for the institute, he says, because of “the innovative curriculum, distinguished faculty, the diverse and global perspective it offers to students, and above all, its strategic location in Boston, the world’s most innovative finance, legal, and technology hub.”

Kenneth Freeman, BU president ad interim and dean emeritus of Questrom, says the gift fits both the University’s mission and the benefactor’s goal: “The focus of the new Institute on understanding the important role of business in our society embraces the vision and spirit of its benefactor, Ravi Mehrotra, and builds on his philosophy that knowledge is powerful. We are pleased and honored that the Mehrotra Institute will become a vitally important part of Boston University’s research and teaching mission.”

Besides helping business and academia, Mehrotra says, the institute will promote public understanding of market dynamics and economics. “An institute dedicated to exploring the intersections of business, markets, and society plays a pivotal role in bridging gaps in understanding and collaboration between these crucial domains,” Mehrotra says, “fostering a more informed, ethical, and sustainable approach to commerce and economics.”

“This will be the signature institute for Questrom School of Business,” says Fournier, who is also the business school’s Allen Questrom Professor, and the mission of the school aligns strategically with the mission of IBMS.

“It deals fundamentally with forces that allow business to be powerful and have an effect and a powerful influence,” she says.

The new institute will join other research institutes at Questrom that cover a range of topics, from digital business to business ethics to human resources policy. 

The IBMS’s activities will be three-fold, according to Fournier. “There’s an educational mission; a pedagogical, conversational, dialogue mission; and there’s a research mission. It’s very broad-sweeping,” she says. “People are very quick to equate capitalism and profit as bad, and to put business under a microscope that denies its ability to have an impact on society’s problems. Some of what we want to be doing is to have more informed conversations about capitalism, its alternatives, the history of business. This contributes to society as a whole, because people have lost the ability to listen to multiple sides and learn.”

Fournier says it’s like when a meeting is held at a square table. “We come in, we sit on our side, we leave from the same side, we don’t hear what anybody else says. We want to make it a round table.”

Those institute conversations will deal with specific, real-world issues, she says, such as “what’s happening in the energy markets, why aren’t they working, why has Hertz just posted a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars on EVs.”

Fournier says the initial research at the new institute will touch on hot topics such as regulatory impact on healthcare innovation, the promise and perils of implementing and measuring ESG, competition and antitrust, and improving the performance of government bodies through business practices.

But its work won’t be confined to research, she says.

“We don’t want to just be academics talking to academics and publishing in academic journals, because that audience is very small,” Fournier says. “We want to have an impact and to help people better advance the role business can have.” 

Non-research activities will include:

• A series of public conversations—Can Capitalism Survive?—among academics, businesspeople, and public officials that will produce publication book chapters to be used in business classes.
• Creating a business sentiment index (BSI) that will use large language model technology to gauge how the public feels about business. “It’s research, but it’s also going to be a platform [with which] we can attract other researchers who want to analyze the data,” Fournier says. The institute will regularly report the BSI, as the University of Michigan reports its consumer sentiment index.
• A crowdsourcing platform for global conversations about contentious business topics, using data mining to distill the discussions’ insights.
• Redesigning, based on research, foundational Questrom undergraduate courses.
• A fellowship program drawing scholars from other higher ed institutions and industry leaders to serve as executives in residence.

Fournier says the IBMS will launch with 10 to 12 affiliated faculty, drawn from Questrom’s current professoriate, and two interim codirectors, Nalin Kulatilaka, a Questrom professor of finance, and Marcel Rindisbacher, senior associate dean of faculty and research and a professor of finance. Once up and running, the institute aims to hire at least four more professors, she says. Money from the 2015 gift from Allen Questrom (Questrom’64, Hon.’15) and his wife, Kelli Questrom (Hon.’15), which renamed the school, will help pay for new IBMS faculty.

In addition to Mehrotra, the dean says, three other donors, who wish to remain anonymous, have contributed to the IBMS. 

Mehrotra started his career as an engineer with the Shipping Corporation of India and rose to managing director of its international joint ventures before founding Foresight in 1984. He chairs the European India Chamber of Commerce at the European Union in Brussels. The late Queen Elizabeth II named him an Honorary Commander of the British Empire, a chivalric order recognizing contributions to charitable work and public service, in 2006.

Nodding to the “necessary and often polarized” public discussions about capitalism’s strengths and defects, the institute’s mission statement pledges education programs for students, business leaders, and members of the public to “better understand the role of evidence-based research that explores the complex interplay of the tensions that influence business in realizing its role.” The goal is “to break down ideological walls and elevate the discourse about the role of business in society.”

“The time is right for this,” Fournier says. “The problem on which this is grounded—about what is business and what does it do—to inform that, and to advance the role of business for the good that it can do, couldn’t be more engaging and powerful. 

“Funding follows enthusiasm, and this idea has struck a resonant chord with a lot of people.”