Professor Toffel is the Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management, Faculty Chair of the Harvard Business School Business and Environment Initiative, and is course head of and teaches the Technology & Operations Management core MBA course.

Toffel's research examines companies' management of environmental affairs and occupational safety, identifying which types of management programs and regulations improve environmental and safety performance. His work ranges from academic articles based on econometric analyses of large datasets to case studies of individual companies. His research on occupational health and safety has been profiled by the head of U.S. OSHA and featured in the national press including US News & World Report, and Scientific American.

His research has been published in top scholarly journals including Science, Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Organization Science, and in mainstream outlets including The Atlantic Monthly and Newsweek/DailyBeast.