Dr. Sharma has been the Dean of the Grossman School of Business since July 1, 2011. During his tenure, he has been responsible for raising over $100 m for the naming of the school as the Grossman School of Business in 2015, 9 new chaired professorships, the doubling of the business school building Kalkin Hall with the addition of Ifshin Hall which was completely privately funded by alumni, launching a new Sustainable Innovation MBA program in 2014 that has been consistently ranked #1 or #2 in the U.S. by The Princeton Review and amongst the top 5 globally by Corporate Knights, a large increase in undergraduate and graduate student scholarships, the creation of a student success center that advises, supports and provides career services for placement success of students. The undergraduate curriculum was revamped in 2013 as a matrix of concentrations and themes that has led to substantial improvements in selectivity, higher academic quality students while substantially increasing enrollments. The school was ranked amongst top 3 in the US and top 9 in the world in the Positive Impact Ratings released at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2020.
Dr. Sharma came to UVM with a unique background in both: academic and the private sectors. Prior to UVM, he was the Dean of the John Molson School of Business (JMSB), Montreal (the largest English language business school in Canada). Prior to JMSB, Dr. Sharma held the prestigious Canada Research Chair in Organizational Sustainability and was Professor of Strategy in the School of Business & Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University. He also founded and served as the first director of the CMA Centre for Responsible Organizations, an interdisciplinary center focusing on research and practice in the areas of organizational sustainability, corporate social responsibility, ethics, environmental management, social issues, and corporate governance.
He has over 16 years of senior management experience with global corporations and more than two decades of senior leadership experience within higher education. He is the Vice-Chancellor of the International Academy of Management—a Global think tank of invited thought leaders and business leaders, serves on the Board of the Global Responsible Leadership Initiative, on the Advisory Board of the College of Business, University of Sharjah, the Advisory Board of the ISCTE Business School, Lisbon-Portugal, amongst other Boards.
A Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Sharma has won several competitive research grants and has expertise in corporate environmental strategy, corporate sustainability, competitive strategy, stakeholder engagement and organizational innovation. His research has been widely published in top management journals including the Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Executive, Academy of Management Discoveries, Strategic Management Journal, and Journal of Marketing, among others. He has written and co-edited 9 books on corporate sustainability. His book written for scholars and practitioners titled Competing for a Sustainable World: Building capacity for Sustainable Innovation published in 2014 was the runner up for the Best Book on Organizations and the Natural Environment Award at the Academy of Management in 2015. His research monograph (co-authored with Pramodita Sharma) Patient Capital: The Role of Family Firms in Sustainable Business was published by the Cambridge University Press in 2019. His latest co-edited book Pioneering Family Firms’ Sustainable Development Strategies was published by Edward Elgar Academic Publishing in March 2021.
He has won several prestigious awards for his research including the Academy of Management ONE Divisions’ Distinguished Scholar Lifetime Achievement Award (2016), Academy of Management SIM Division’s Best Dissertation Award (1996), two Best Paper Awards at the Academy of Management 1997 and 2005, and a Best Paper Award at the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada 2003. He was named the 2018 Fetner Sustainable Enterprise Fellow by the Syracuse University Sustainable Enterprise Partnership of the Whitman School of Management, the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science, the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and the Syracuse University Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems.
In his role of institutional leadership in helping develop a new field of scholarship, he has been invited to participate in a number of international and national research bodies such as the Canadian National Roundtable on the Economy and the Environment (Greening of the Curriculum Committee); the US National Academies (including the National Science Foundation) Taskforce on Environmental, Social and Behavioral Research; the Research Advisory Board of the Oikos Foundation for the Economy and Ecology at University of St. Gallen, Switzerland; and the Corporate Sustainability Advisory Committee at the Houston Advanced Research Centre, among others.
Dr. Sharma has received several awards for his impact on the practice of management and sustainability and building more responsible and sustainable businesses. These include the Corporate Knights Rising Scholar Award, the Aspen Institute Pioneer Award, and inclusion in India Abroad's Power List of prominent Indians contributing to positive impacts on Canadian and global society.
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Latest Articles
Sharma, S. & Sharma, P. (2023). Cyclical Interpretations of Time: Competitive Advantage for Sustainable Family Enterprises. Presented at the STEP Global Project Summit on Family Business, Valencia, Spain, April 27-28, 2023.
Sharma, S. (2019). Innovation for society. In Dess, G. and Hitt, M. (eds.) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and Management. Oxford University Press. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190224851.013.250
Sharma, S. 2019. From Environmental Strategy to Environmental Impact. Academy of Management Discoveries.
https://journals.aom.org/doi/pdf/10.5465/amd.2019.0274
