September 19, 2025

Glen Dowell is the Samuel C. Johnson Professor in Sustainable Global Enterprise and senior director of MBA and specialized masters programs at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. His research is in the area of corporate sustainability, with a focus on firm environmental performance. Recent projects have investigated the effect of local demographic factors on changes in pollution levels, the role of corporate merger and acquisition in facilitating changes in facility environmental performance, and the relative influence of financial return and disruption on commercial adoption of energy savings initiatives.

Dowell's research has been published in Management Science, Organization Studies, Advances in Strategic Management, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Journal of Management, Industrial and Corporate Change, Journal of Business Ethics, and Administrative Science Quarterly. He is on the editorial board of Strategic Management Journal and represents Cornell on the board of the Alliance for Research in Corporate Sustainability. He also served as division chair for the Organizations and Natural Environment Division at the Academy of Management (2018).

Dowell teaches Strategies for Sustainability across multiple Johnson School programs. He is a faculty affiliate for the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise and is a senior fellow at the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.

Abstract: How much does industry matter…to environmental performance?

A long tradition of work in strategy examines the relative importance of firm and industry factors to observed variation in firm financial performance. We apply this same approach to environmental performance, studying industrial greenhouse gas emissions in both the United States and Canada.  Compared to the results from studies of financial performance, we find that industry effects are generally larger than firm effects when it comes to emissions, although the firm effects we do find are larger than is typically found in studies of profitability. We also find a strong geographic effect, indicating that institutional differences significantly affect emissions. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research on corporate sustainability and for efforts to accelerate carbon mitigation through policy and other measures.

Friday, April 25, 2025

Ruth V. Aguilera (PhD Harvard University) is the Distinguished Darla and Frederick Brodsky Trustee Professor in Global Business at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University in Boston and a Visiting Professor in the Strategy Department at ESADE Business School. Ruth’s research, teaching and advising interests lie at the intersection of international corporate governance, corporate social responsibility/sustainability, and ownership, including family business. She is an Associate Editor at Journal of International Business Studies, was previously an Associate Editor at Academy of Management Review and Organization Science. is a Fellow at the Academy of Management, Academy of International Business and the Strategic Management Society.

Abstract: The Game Before the Vote: The Impact of Socio-Environmental Shareholder Activism

Socio-environmental shareholder activism has gained popularity over the past decade, but we know little about its impact. Activism can represent a threat to firms’ leadership due to the negative public attention it attracts, even though the number of activist proposals approved at annual shareholder meetings is marginal. Building on the Awareness-Motivation-Capability (AMC) perspective, we reveal the complexities of the relationship between socio-environmental shareholder activism and subsequent corporate social performance (CSP). Our findings contribute to existing corporate governance literature and sustainability research by shedding light on how shareholder activism influences firms’ responses in a preemptive way before the formal vote by either reacting to submitted proposals or to the proposal withdrawn.

Friday, March 28, 2025

Charles H. Cho is Professor of Sustainability Accounting and the Erivan K. Haub Chair in Business & Sustainability at the Schulich School of Business, York University. He holds a PhD in Business Administration (Accounting Track),and his research focuses on Social and Environmental Accounting, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Accounting in the Public Interest. His research is published in leading academic journals, and he actively contributes to organizations like CPA Ontario, the Club Canadien de Toronto (francophone business club), the Canadian Academic Accounting Association, the European Accounting Association and is a member of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)'s Global Sustainability Standards Board. As a globally recognized scholar, he frequently delivers keynotes and ranks among the top 2% of cited accounting researchers worldwide. He has also worked for KPMG LLP and other public accounting firms for several years in auditing and taxation.

Abstract: Shared imaginaries of sustainable development: The SDGs, their interconnectedness, and materiality assessment

The world is undergoing dramatic transformations, and there is an urgent need to address emerging societal and environmental problems of significant scale and impact. Explicit, shared visions of the future are necessary to motivate and guide these grand challenges. Thus, we conceptualize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as dialogic zones where stories of efforts to address grand challenges are discussed—and we explore the possible creation of a shared vision of sustainable development and the role of dialogic accounting tools in this process. Through a single case study, we analyze Nestlé’s sustainability report to explore such imaginaries of sustainable development. To establish the imaginaries of stakeholders we use Twitter/X data. We employ a materiality matrix and map interconnectedness across different SDGs to compare individual visions of this company and its stakeholders. Our findings reveal a lack of collective imaginary for addressing grand challenges, as the visions of sustainable development within this company and among its stakeholders do not fully converge. Moreover, the stakeholders diverge in their visions of sustainable development. The creation of a collective imaginary for addressing grand challenges therefore requires a more collaborative approach and the consideration of the multiple voices of all relevant actors. Hence, the SDGs comprise a useful dialogic space where dialogic accounting tools can serve as a stimulus for discussion.

Friday, September 20, 2024

Robert Klassen’s research emphasizes the linkages between operations and sustainability, including such areas as operational risk and social performance in supply chains. Recently, his research is focused on exploring policies, investments and practices within operations that reduce carbon emissions and mitigate the implications of climate change. He has over 60 refereed publications in such journals as Management Science, Journal of Operations Management, Academy of Management Journal, Production and Operations Management, and other leading management journals. 

At Ivey, Klassen has taught the core Operations Management course in the MBA, MSc and EMBA programs, as well as electives in Sustainability, and Technology. He has coauthored two textbooks and has also written over three-dozen cases and simulation exercises in such topics as sustainability, operations strategy, and process analysis. 

Dr. Klassen has served as co-Editor in Chief for the International Journal of Production and Operations Management. He recently completed a three-year term as co-Department Editor for the Sustainable Operations department of Production and Operations Management, and previously served in the same editorial role at the Journal of Operations Management.  He also has served as the Division Chair for the Operations Management division of the Academy of Management.

Abstract: Carbon Disclosure Project Supply Chain Program Membership and Reported Incidents: A Quasi-Experimental Study

William Diebel, Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina

Jury Gualandris, Ivey Business School, Western University

Robert D. Klassen, Ivey Business School, Western University

Firms are increasingly blamed for environmental supply chain incidents revealed in media reports, which harms their reputations and economic returns. Therefore, firms may be increasingly motivated to publicly signal commitment to mitigating environmental harms and risks in their supply chains, such as by gaining membership in the Carbon Disclosure Project Supply Chain Program (CDP SCP). While CDP SCP membership may help to curtail subsequent media reports by successfully engaging suppliers in environmental impact mitigation (engagement mechanism), it could also amplify scrutiny by drawing unwanted attention (spotlight mechanism), prompting salient questions about membership outcomes. What is the relationship between CDP SCP membership and reported environmental supply chain incidents? What are the dominant mechanisms? 

We address these questions using a novel dataset assembled from various archival sources including the CDP SCP, RepRisk, and FactSet. Our quasi-experimental design employs coarsened exact matching and a regression difference-in-differences model to compare outcomes across 124 CDP SCP members and 1,148 control firms, comprising a panel of 12,622 firm-year observations. We find strong and robust support for the net positive effect of CDP SCP membership on reported environmental supply chain incidents. Additional analyses reveal the underlying mechanisms: while CDP SCP membership causes positive changes in environmental performance at the supplier-level of analysis, it also attracts the attention of external stakeholders in ways that have been shown to be detrimental to buyers’ environmental reputation and economic returns.

April 10, 2024: 

Michael Lounsbury is a Professor, the A.F (Chip) Collins Chair, and Chair of the Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Management Department at the University of Alberta School of Business, where he is also the Academic Director of the eHUB entrepreneurship centre. He is also a Professor of Business Strategy & Entrepreneurship (Part-Time) at the Australian National University College of Business and Economics.  In addition to serving on a number of editorial boards, Professor Lounsbury is the series editor of Research in the Sociology of Organizations.  His Ph.D. is in Sociology and Organization Behavior from Northwestern University.

Michael Lounsbury presented his ongoing research project entitled:  “Wasted? The Rise and Fall of Recycling Coordinators"

Abstract

Professor Lounsbury will present a working paper that builds on his earlier research on the rise of university recycling coordinators in the 1980s and 1990s, tracking how they engaged in various practices that laid a foundation for the creation of new University sustainability managers and programs a decade or two later, but ultimately failed to take advantage of these new opportunities. In fact, the recycling coordinator occupation has largely disappeared over the two past decades. Contributions speak to contemporary efforts to understand the relationship between social movements and organizations, revealing the often black-boxed and mundane nature of insider activist-workers, as well as the literatures on occupations, organizations and institutional change.

March 29, 2024

Caroline Flammer is the A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at Columbia University with joint appointments at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and the Climate School, and a secondary appointment at Columbia Business School. She is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Research Member at the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI). Caroline is an expert in sustainable investing and the recipient of numerous prestigious awards. Her research examines whether and how sustainable finance and impact investing can help finance a more sustainable world. Moreover, her research examines how, and under which conditions, firms can incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations into their activities to enhance their competitiveness while strengthening—instead of undermining—the very system in which they operate and hereby play a critical role in addressing climate change, inequality, global health, and other grand challenges related to society and the natural environment. The Web of Science ranked her among the top-100 Highly Cited Researchers in the economics and business profession in terms of impact over the past 10 years. At Columbia, she serves as the Director of SIPA's Sustainable Investing Research Initiative (SIRI) which aims to foster scholarship, education, and dialogue on system-level investing—the interplay and interdependencies between investment and major challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, poverty, and social inequalities. Among other roles, Caroline serves as the President of the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS), a global multi-disciplinary network of scholars fostering rigorous academic research on corporate sustainability, as a Council Member of the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Global Future Council on the future of responsible investing, and as a Trustee at Domini Impact Investments. She is an Associate Editor for both Management Science and the Strategic Management Journal.

Abstract

The use of private capital to finance biodiversity conservation and restoration is a new practice in sustainable finance. This study sheds light on this new practice. First, we provide a conceptual framework that lays out how biodiversity can be financed by i) pure private capital and ii) blended financing structures. In the latter, private capital is blended with public or philanthropic capital, whose aim is to de-risk private capital investments. The main element underlying both types of financing is the “monetization” of biodiversity, that is, using investments in biodiversity to generate a financial return for private investors. Second, we provide empirical evidence using deal-level data from a leading biodiversity finance institution. We find that projects with higher expected returns tend to be financed by pure private capital. Their scale is smaller, however, and so is their expected biodiversity impact. For larger-scale projects with a more ambitious biodiversity impact, blended finance is the more prevalent form of financing. While these projects have lower expected returns, their risk is also lower. This suggests that the blending—and the corresponding de-risking of private capital—is an important tool for improving the risk-return tradeoff of these projects, thereby increasing their appeal to private investors. Finally, we examine a set of projects that did not make it to the portfolio stage. This analysis suggests that, in order to be financed by private capital, biodiversity projects need to meet a certain threshold in terms of both their financial return and their biodiversity impact. Accordingly, private capital is unlikely to substitute for the implementation of effective public policies in addressing the biodiversity crisis.

October 27, 2023

Since the early 1990s, Professor Andrew A. King has been a leading scholar in the field of sustainable business.  He has developed core theories, measures, methods, and conducted research that has influenced corporate and government policy.  In 2009, he helped found the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability and in 2015 he won the Academy of Management’s Distinguished Scholar Award.  He is proudest of having taught students who now work on social and environmental problems throughout the world.  He holds a BA in Engineering from Brown University, a MSc in Engineering from UC Berkeley, and a PhD in Management from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Abstract:

Is corporate social responsibility, as measured by ESG ratings, beneficial to firm profits and investor returns?  Several prominent publications on the topic claim the answer is “yes.”  But as I will show in my presentation, these claims have no basis.  The studies cannot and should not inform scientific inference.  How should I interpret this discovery?  How can future research be made trustworthy and beneficial?

November 8, 2019

Sankar Sen is the Lawrence and Carol Zicklin Chair of Corporate Integrity and Governance, and Professor of Marketing at Baruch College. His research lies in the areas of consumer decision making and sustainability/corporate social responsibility. His research is widely cited (over 21,000 Google Scholar citations) and has appeared in leading scholarly journals, including the: Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Economic Theory, Management Science, Journal of Business Ethics. Sankar has also written a book based on his research: The Stakeholder Route to Maximizing Business and Social Value, published by Cambridge University Press in 2011.
Sankar is an Associate Editor at the Journal of Consumer Research and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Academy of Marketing Science Review, and Corporate Reputation Review.

During his visit, Sankar will present some of his current research projects focused on: “The Rhetoric of Marketplace Morality: A Consumer Perspective.”

Abstract:

When marketers communicate, they speak increasingly in not just commercial voices but moral ones as well.  Company engagement in CSR/sustainability is at an unprecedented high, and more and more firms are speaking out about their CSR efforts. Yet, we know relatively little about the efficacy - in terms of positive consumer responses - of different CSR communication formats. This talk focuses on three different investigations of consumers reactions to CSR communication that, together, call into question the efficacy of certain conventional and pervasive communication formats, such as humor, storytelling, and multiple appeals, in producing positive, pro-company responses from consumers. The findings thus far point to the uniqueness of marketer communication in the moral domain and underscore the challenges companies face in communicating successfully about their CSR/sustainability initiatives.

October 16, 2019

Srini’s research examines the intertwined nature of consumption and entrepreneurship in subsistence marketplaces where more than a billion poverty-stricken entrepreneurs run micro-enterprises to meet basic consumption needs. In a parallel stream of research, he examines how social enterprises entering into contexts of poverty negotiate institutional differences to bring about positive social change. His work has already appeared in Top-Tier journals such as the Journal of Product Innovation Management and the Journal of Business Ethics.

Srini will present a work-in-progress entitled: “Negotiated Agency in the Face of Consumption Constraints: A Study of Women Entrepreneurs in Subsistence Contexts.”

Abstract

Millions of women entrepreneurs in subsistence contexts face consumption constraints while being embedded in strong patriarchal social institutions. In these contexts, the place for women is considered to be within the house as homemakers and not in the market as entrepreneurs. Yet, these women are able to overcome gender-based institutional barriers and engage with the marketplace as entrepreneurs, as a way to overcome consumption constraints. We conducted a longitudinal qualitative study of women entrepreneurs in low-income neighborhoods of Chennai, India, to understand a) what motivates women to overcome gender-based institutional barriers to entrepreneurial action? and b) how they overcome the ‘iron cage’ of institutional norms to initiate and sustain entrepreneurial action? Our findings help us theorize the process of negotiated agency and elaborate on the microprocesses that underlie its enactment. Substantively, we demonstrate how consumption constraints in poverty trigger entrepreneurial agency among low-income women. We build on our findings to offer welfare enhancing policy recommendations.

April 12th, 2019.

Edward Freeman is the Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration and Academic Director of the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics at the Darden School of Business. He also serves as the current Co-Editor of the Journal of Business Ethics. Edward is the author or editor of over thirty volumes and one hundred and fifty articles in the areas of stakeholder management, business strategy and business ethics with over 80,0000 Google Scholar citations.  His work has appeared in leading scholarly journals, including The Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Annals, Management Science, Organization Science, Journal of Management Studies, Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics, Business & Society. Edward is perhaps best known for his award-winning book: Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach where he traced the origins of the stakeholder idea and suggested that businesses build their strategy around their relationships with key stakeholders.

During his visit, Edward will give a talk entitled: “The New Story of Business: The Role of Business Schools.”

Abstract

Post Global Financial Crisis we have seen an explosion of calls for the reform of business and capitalism.  This talk will present a set of principles that are common to these calls for reform, and that can yield a more responsible vision of business and capitalism. Purpose, Ethics, Stakeholders, Sustainability are front and center of this new story.  Business schools have an important role to play in the development of the new story, however, the forces for change in business schools need to be accelerated.

March 20th, 2019

Aparna Labroo is Professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Aparna Labroo research investigates how people can be nudged into taking actions beneficial to them and society in the long run. Her research has appeared in leading scholarly journals such as The Journal of Marketing, The Journal of Consumer Research, The Journal of Consumer Psychology, The Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Her research has also been featured in the New York Times, Time, MSN, Forbes, Financial Times, Business Week, Scientific American, and other leading media outlets. Aparna has served as an Associate Editor Member for Journal of Consumer Research and serves on the editorial board of several journals, including the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

During her visit, Aparna will present an ongoing research project entitled: “Frame Healthy Foods as Filling to Reduce Unhealthy Choices among the Poor.”

Abstract

The poor are known to seek unhealthy foods. A widespread belief is they do so because they value their future less, are present-focused, and favor immediate gratification, including the indulgence offered by unhealthy foods. Food assistance, often considered free money devoid of the pain of paying, is believed to further license indulgence. We challenge this view to posit these consumers are food-insecure, and when making unhealthy choices, they seek filling, not indulgent, foods. Food-assistance cards increase unhealthy choice, not by licensing indulgence, but by further reminding users of their food insecurity. Four experiments support our position—low-income consumers are more likely to choose filling-healthy foods over indulgent ones, especially when using food assistance cards, and food-insecurity underlies these choices. In a field study, we then show merely labeling a healthy-food as filling increases its choice among the homeless poor. In a second field demonstration, coding 5,211 purchases of low-income shoppers, we find interventions framing healthy foods as filling increase healthy purchases four-fold. We discuss importance of this new theoretical perspective for understanding true over presumed motivations of poor consumers.

January 25th, 2019

Stuart Hart is currently Professor of Management, Steven Grossman Endowed Chair in Sustainable Business at the Grossman School of Business (UVM). Stuart’s research focuses on Sustainable Enterprise and the Base of the Pyramid. His has published over 70 papers and authored or edited several books, with over 35,000 Google Scholar citations. His work has appeared in leading scholarly journals, including The Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, and Management Science as well as leading practitioner journals, such as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Academy of Management Executive.

Stu Hart presented one of his ongoing research project entitled:  “Aspirations and Quests: Bringing Corporate Purpose to the Bottom Line”

Abstract

Creating the means to provide for the needs and aspirations of 7 billion people (soon to be 9 billion or more) in ways that respect nature and regenerate natural capital is one of the biggest challenges facing mankind for the foreseeable future. The harsh reality is that many of today’s incumbent firms—especially those in resource- and waste-intensive industries-- will not survive this challenge. If you think the Great Recession was wrenching in the last decade, just wait for the Great Extinction in the next one. The companies that succeed in making it to the future will be those that focus their resources and creative energies on transforming themselves to solve the pressing social and environmental problems we face. Stated succinctly, the time is now to move beyond “sustainability” as a set of separate company initiatives and programs to one of core purpose and strategy. The current situation calls for nothing less than dedicating corporations’ formidable resources to addressing world challenges and building the capabilities, strategies, and partnership ecosystems necessary to making it happen. Our exploratory research on such Transformational Sustainability reveals that a strong sense of purpose does indeed appear to be important when it comes to navigating the treacherous waters ahead. However, a societally-relevant purpose or mission statement is insufficient to the task of focusing company attention on the actual, on-the-ground challenges that the company seeks to address. For this, additional layers of specificity appear to be required, starting with what we refer to as Aspirations & Quests. Clear connection between purpose, aspirations, and rewards/incentives also appears to be key. This presentation will report the preliminary findings from our exploratory research on Transformational Sustainability and propose a set of research questions and propositions as a basis for future research.

October 26th, 2018

Bill Wales is currently the Standish Chair and Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University at Albany-SUNY.  Bill’s research principally explores organizational strategic orientations, strategy-making processes, and behavior. Bill is an Editor of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice and on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Business Venturing; Journal of Management Studies; and Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal.

During his visit, he gave a talk about “Publishing in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice; and on Well Established Constructs (i.e., Entrepreneurial Orientation)."