MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Should Organizations Link Responsible AI and Corporate Social Responsibility? It's Complicated.

MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) have assembled an international panel of AI experts that includes academics and practitioners to help us gain insights into how responsible artificial intelligence (RAI) is being implemented in organizations worldwide. This month’s question for our panelists: Should an organization tie its RAI efforts to its overall corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts? The results present a mixed picture. While 52% of panelists (11 out of 21) believe that an organization’s RAI and CSR efforts should be linked, 24% do not (5 out of 21 disagree or strongly disagree), and an equal percentage expressed ambivalence (5 out of 21 neither agree nor disagree). Despite the lack of consensus, there are some common characteristics among those who agree that organizations should link their RAI and CSR efforts, as well as some concerns shared among the remaining panelists.

We also conducted a global survey of more than 1,000 executives to inquire about a similar question — the extent to which they believe their organization’s RAI and CSR efforts are actually linked in practice.1 An overwhelming majority of survey respondents — 90% of managers in companies with at least $100 million in annual revenues — reported that their organization’s RAI and CSR efforts are linked, albeit to varying degrees (23% to a great extent, 24% to a moderate extent, 25% to some extent, and 18% to a minor extent). Among RAI Leaders, 73% reported links between the two (strongly agree/agree), compared with only 35% of non-Leaders.

About the Author

Elizabeth Renieris is guest editor for the MIT Sloan Management Review Responsible AI Big Idea program and founding director of the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab. David Kiron is editorial director of MIT Sloan Management Review. Steven D. Mills is a managing director, partner, and chief AI ethics officer at Boston Consulting Group.

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