Michael Yaziji
Regulation and activist coalitions now shape more corporate outcomes than many of the competitive moves around which strategy frameworks are built. The forces that decide whether a factory gets built or a product reaches a shelf often sit outside the market. Leaders who only know how to compete lose ground to those who can read and shape the political environment around the business.
Michael Yaziji, Professor of Strategy and Leadership at IMD, helps companies turn political and stakeholder risk into a source of competitive advantage.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Michael Yaziji
- He wrote the standard reference on NGO–corporate relations. NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration (Cambridge University Press) carried cover endorsements from the chairmen of Nestlé, Unilever, Shell, and PepsiCo.
- He holds doctorates in both analytic philosophy (University of California) and management strategy (INSEAD), a combination that brings serious ethical reasoning into his work on AI governance and corporate ownership design.
- His leadership work draws on the world’s largest survey tying psychological drivers and psychological safety to organisational performance, giving him empirical depth most speakers in the field do not have.
- He co-directs IMD’s Stakeholder Management for Boards programme and has trained boards and executive teams at Microsoft, Shell, PepsiCo, Ericsson, and Maersk.
- He thinks ahead of the consensus: his 2008 Harvard Business Review piece on the structural flaws of shareholder capitalism predated the mainstream stakeholder capitalism debate by close to a decade.
Biography highlights
- Professor of Strategy and Leadership at IMD, Lausanne
- Co-Director of IMD’s Stakeholder Management for Boards programme
- Author of NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration (Cambridge University Press), endorsed at publication by the chairmen of Nestlé, Unilever, Shell, and PepsiCo
- Two doctorates: analytic philosophy (University of California) and management strategy (INSEAD)
- Published in Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review
- Gold Award, 2024 Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice Awards (Excellence in Executive Education) for IMD’s Sprint programme with Bayer
Biography
Regulation and activist coalitions now shape more corporate outcomes than many of the competitive moves around which strategy frameworks are built. This nonmarket terrain is what Michael Yaziji has spent two decades mapping. He argues that political dynamics and stakeholder pressure are core variables of corporate strategy and should be treated as such by senior leaders.
His training is unusual: a doctorate in analytic philosophy from the University of California, and a second in management and strategy from INSEAD. Both disciplines show up in the work. Yaziji treats ethical reasoning and institutional theory as practical tools, applied to live executive questions like AI governance and corporate ownership design.
At the centre of his published work is NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration (Cambridge University Press, 2009), co-authored with Villanova’s Jonathan Doh. The book carried cover endorsements from the chairmen of Nestlé, Unilever, Shell, and PepsiCo. It remains a standard reference for executives dealing with activist NGOs and contested social licence.
His current research extends this work to artificial intelligence: who sets the rules, and who carries the cost of weak governance. He co-directs IMD’s Stakeholder Management for Boards programme. An executive education programme he co-led for the pharmaceutical group Bayer trained more than 12,000 leaders across ten months and won Gold at the 2024 Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice Awards.
Key speaking topics
- Nonmarket strategy and political risk
- NGO and stakeholder engagement
- Stakeholder management for boards
- AI governance and corporate strategy
- Corporate ethics and ownership design
- Psychological safety and organisational performance
- Sustainability and competitive advantage
Ideal for
- Boards and chairs facing scrutiny on ESG and political risk
- C-suites in regulated or politically exposed industries (energy, pharma, financial services, extractives, technology platforms)
- Chief sustainability officers and corporate affairs heads building integrated nonmarket strategy
- Executive teams designing AI governance and stakeholder policy in large organisations
Audience outcomes
- A working method that turns regulation and NGO pressure into variables leaders can shape
- Sharper thinking on how AI governance creates strategic risk and opportunity for their organisation
- Confidence in reading share ownership and stakeholder governance shifts as strategic variables
- A more direct vocabulary for talking to investors and regulators about the company’s social licence