This book provides a combination of case studies and current action research describing how businesses and civil society organizations are working to alleviate poverty in local and global communities. It intends to provide conceptual and research rationales for why management education and management institutions must address the issue of poverty. The book responds to one of the major findings from the research of the PRME Working Group on Poverty that the topic of poverty still lacks a strong business case for management educators and program/institutional administrators. The distinctive features of this book are that it: (1) includes examples of small and medium-sized (SME) businesses; (2) deals with the issue of poverty as a human rights violation; (3) explores the issue of absolute versus relative poverty; (4) deals with leadership challenges in organizations committed to poverty alleviation; and (5) discusses the issues in terms of management education’s responsibility for setting new management, research institutional and intellectual agendas. The first of two books to be produced by the PRME Working Group on Poverty, Socially Responsive Organizations and The Challenge of Poverty aims to provide both researchers and practitioners with the most wide-ranging coverage yet published on how business can be a positive force in alleviating poverty and how management education needs to adapt to this increasingly crucial prerogative.
