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Alnoor Ebrahim

Alnoor Ebrahim

Professor of Management
Professor, Tisch College, Tisch
Thomas Schmidheiny Professor in International Business

Contact Information

Research/Areas of Interest

Social impact measurement
Accountability of corporations, nonprofits, and social enterprises
Governance of corporations and international NGOs
Corporate governance of artificial intelligence firms
Leadership & strategy for social change
Managing NGOs and social enterprises

Education

  • PhD, Environmental Planning & Management, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, United States
  • MS, Civil/Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, United States
  • BSc, Civil/Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States

Biography

Alnoor Ebrahim is the Thomas Schmidheiny Professor of International Business at The Fletcher School, and the Tisch College of Civic Life, at Tufts University. His research addresses several core dilemmas of social impact and accountability facing businesses, nonprofit organizations, and public agencies. Additionally, he studies board-level governance of artificial intelligence (AI) firms and how firms balance profit with purpose. He teaches courses on leadership and strategy, and in executive education programs at The Fletcher School and Harvard University.

A scholar of social change, Ebrahim applies his academic research to real-world contexts. He is a research affiliate of the Institute for Business in the Global Context and the Center for International Law & Governance. He serves on the editorial advisory boards of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the California Management Review, and the Journal of Muslim Philanthropy and Civil Society, as well as the advisory board of the World Bank's Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA).

He co-chairs three Fletcher Executive Education programs: the Envision Leadership program with the Asian Development Bank, in which he worked with 140 senior leaders in the ADB on internal change management; the Global Diplomacy Institute, a strategic retreat for mid-to-senior career diplomats to build their skills of engagement with business and civil society in a rapidly changing world order; and GE Vernova, a next generation leadership accelerator for GE's high potential young leaders.

Ebrahim previously served on an advisory board to IRIS+ at the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), and a working group established by the G7 to create global guidelines on social impact measurement; on Acumen's Lean Data advisory council; and on the board of Imago Global Grassroots. He has worked with the NGO Leaders Forum, an annual gathering of CEOs of large humanitarian development organizations. His research on accountability mechanisms within the World Bank led to a Congressional testimony on improving the bank's information disclosure policy.

He is the author of the book, "Measuring Social Change: Performance and Accountability in a Complex World" (Stanford University Press, 2019), which has received awards from the Financial Times and Impact & Sustainable Finance Faculty Consortium, as well as The Alliance for Nonprofit Management. He is also author of the award-winning "NGOs and Organizational Change: Discourse, Reporting, and Learning" (Cambridge University Press) and is co-editor of "Global Accountabilities: Participation, Pluralism, and Public Ethics" (Cambridge University Press).

Selected Publications

Stroehle, J., Gümüşay, A. A., Edinger-Schons, L. M., Vogel, A., Ebrahim, A., Rasche, A., . . . van den Terrell, E. (2026). A Critical Examination of Corporate Environmental and Social Impact Measurement and Valuation. Journal of Management Inquiry, 35(1), 3-18. doi:10.1177/10564926251330815

Ebrahim, A., & Benjamin, L. (2024). The Many Faces of Nonprofit Accountability. In D. O. Renz, W. A. Brown, & F. O. Andersson (Eds.), The Jossey-Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management (pp. 69-94). John Wiley & Sons.

Benjamin, L. M., Ebrahim, A., & Gugerty, M. K. (2023). Nonprofit Organizations and the Evaluation of Social Impact: A Research Program to Advance Theory and Practice. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 52(1_suppl), 313-352. doi:10.1177/08997640221123590

Ebrahim, A., Brown, L. D., & Batliwala, S. (2022). Governance for global integration: Designing structure and authority in international advocacy NGOs. World Development, 160. doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.106063

Ebrahim, A. (2020). Midiendo el cambio social Desempeño y rendición de cuentas en un mundo complejo. Deusto.

Ebrahim, A. (2019). Measuring Social Change: Performance and Accountability in a Complex World. Stanford University Press. Retrieved from https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=27990

Ebrahim, A., Brown, L. D., & Batliwala, S. (2017). Global Integration without Ownership: Designing Organizational and Governance Structures in International NGOs: Working Paper.

Ebrahim, A., Adams, T., & Dichter, S. (2016). The Power of Lean Data. Stanford Social Innovation Review, (Winter), 36-41. Retrieved from http://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_power_of_lean_data

Ebrahim, A., Battilana, J., & Mair, J. (2014). The governance of social enterprises: Mission drift and accountability challenges in hybrid organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior, 34, 81-100. doi:10.1016/j.riob.2014.09.001

Ebrahim, A., & Rangan, V. K. (2014). What impact? Aframework for measuring the scale and scope of social performance. California Management Review, 56(3), 118-141. doi:10.1525/cmr.2014.56.3.118