A/Prof Dan Laufer has recently joined an international panel of experts to take part in the Corporate and Political Activism Expert Panel run by Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Associate Professor Dan Laufer, Head of the School of Marketing and International Business and an expert in crisis management, has recently joined an international panel of experts to take part in the Corporate and Political Activism Expert Panel run by Drexel University in Philadelphia.

The panellists come from 39 universities, including Oxford, Cornell, Columbia, INSEAD graduate business school, Georgetown, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, and is sponsored by the Institute for Strategic Leadership at Drexel University's LeBow College of Business in the United States.

Dr Laufer was the only representative from an Australasian university.

The panel periodically grades companies that take political stands and rates management on their performance in areas such as transparency, leadership and consistency. The panel aims to provide immediate feedback from leading scholars to companies that become involved in political issues.

By taking a political stand on an issue, a company is assuming a risk that its position could turn into a crisis, says Dr Laufer.

"This type of situation is something I discuss in my courses to executives. A political stand on a controversial topic could potentially alienate customers and employees, and it's important for companies to take this into account."

The panel has already examined high profile multinationals including Apple Computers and Goldman Sachs.

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