Amazon’s decision this month to raise the minimum wage it pays to staff sent a shockwave through rival retailers. It also galvanised the small team at an ambitious non-profit organisation based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Good Jobs Institute was set up last year to help companies flourish by creating better jobs. It is the brainchild of Zeynep Ton, a self-confessed supply chain obsessive. As a doctoral student at Harvard Business School, she examined inventory problems at, among others, Borders, the now-defunct bookstore chain. She realised many low-margin retailers were locked in a vicious cycle, in which staff were often the victims.

“When you think that people are a cost, you create a whole organisation performance management system around minimising that cost,” says Prof Ton, speaking in her office at MIT Sloan School of Management.