SIM Awards

Overview

During the SIM Division Business Meeting 2022 the following SIMians were acknowledged for their contributions to the SIM Division and their scholarly achievements. Congratulations!

2022 Sumner Marcus Award

Harry Van Buren III

University of Tennessee, Chattanooga

2022 William C. Frederick Doctoral Dissertation Award

Sponsored by the Palumbo-Donahue School of Business at Duquesne University

Leandro Nardi

HEC Paris

For a dissertation completed at Insper Institute of Education and Research:

"The rise of impact-oriented strategies: Value creation and socio-environmental firm-level goals"

2022 Best Paper Award

Sponsored by Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University

Adrian Gombert

Wittenberg Zentrum für Global Ethik

"Deliberation without romance (nor cynicism): The role of corporations in deliberative democracy"

2022 Best Business Ethics Paper Award

Sponsored by Journal of Business Ethics

Leonie Decrinis

Copenhagen Business School

"Means versus ends in business ethics: A behavioral trade-off between compliance and achievement of corporate ethics programs"

2022 Best Student Paper Award

Lambert Zixin Li and Sarah Soule

Stanford University

"Corporate activism and organizational authenticity"

2022 Best Book Award

Andrew Hoffman

University of Michigan

"Management as a calling: Leading business, serving society"

2022 SIM-ONE Outreach Award

Mark R. DesJardine

Dartmouth College

Rodolphe Durand

HEC Paris

For their outreach efforts related to a publication in the Strategic Management Journal:

"Disentangling the effects of hedge fund activism on firm financial and social performance"

Sumner Marcus Award

Harry Van Buren III

University of Tennessee, Chattanooga

A Few Words from Harry Van Buren III:

Receiving the 2022 Sumner Marcus Award from the Social Issues in Management division was (and is) a tremendous honor, made all the more special because it happened at the first in-person Academy of Management meeting since 2019. One of the most amazing things about being a doctoral student in the mid-1990s was meeting the founders of the field, folks like Steve Brenner, Jerry Cavanagh, Max Clarkson, Ed Epstein, Tom Jones, James Post, and Sandra Waddock – all of whom (among so many others who have been leaders in our field) have received the award. Looking at the group of scholars who have received the award previously, I’m honored and incredibly humbled.

SIM has been my academic home for more than a quarter-century. It’s where I learned how to be a scholar and a citizen in the field that I believe has made so many contributions to management thought and practice. SIM has always been the place in the Academy of Management where people can ask challenging questions about business and the ways in which business can contribute to human flourishing. But it has always been a caring community, welcoming new scholars and supporting more-established scholars in ways that few other academic organizations do. I’m immensely grateful to everyone who has helped me in some way, and I hope to be able in some small way to return the favor to others.

It’s hard to write a reflection like this because there are so many people to thank; indeed, the list of people to thank would include a substantial portion of the folks who have been on the SIM program since 1996! While the list is long, there are some people who I have to call out by name:

My doctoral-program professors at the University of Pittsburgh: Brad Agle, Barry Mitnick, and Donna Wood. When I was interviewing for doctoral programs, Donna told me that she would help me not just through my doctoral program, but through tenure. Twenty-six years later, Donna is still mentoring me, and Barry’s and Brad’s influence on my thinking has been profound.

Jeanne Logsdon, whose friendship, mentoring, and guidance not only got me through tenure at the University of New Mexico, but through the SIM and International Association for Business & Society leadership tracks as well.

Shawn Berman; receiving the award the year after you did was really meaningful. (A special thanks for writing such an excellent reflection last year that helped me get past my writer’s block for this one.)

Ed Freeman, whose counsel and support has meant so much to me.

Dawn Elm and Katherina Pattit, my dear friends and former colleagues at the University of St. Thomas. Receiving the award from Katherina is something I’ll always remember fondly.

All of my co-authors, particularly Tansuree Jain, Jay Joseph, Tricia Olsen, Kathy Rehbein, Judith Schrempf-Stirling, and Michelle Westermann-Behaylo – folks who are not just tremendous scholars, but great friends as well.

And Michelle Greenwood, who for 17 years has been my closest collaborator and academic friend.

I could not have done anything in my career without the love and support of my wife, Donna Ray, and our two children, Max and Tessa Van Buren. No spouse or children of a SIM program chair will ever forget the piles of paper scattered around the house when it was time to make program decisions! This award is dedicated to them.

Finally, I’d also like to dedicate my award to two people who are no longer with us but whose kindness and graciousness have been models for me: Ann Buchholtz and Jeff Lenn. Ann and Jeff were special scholars, but even more special people. They represent the best of what SIM is and what I hope to emulate in the years to come.

2022 William C. Frederick Doctoral Dissertation Award

Sponsored by the Palumbo-Donahue School of Business at Duquesne University

Leandro Nardi

HEC Paris

For a dissertation completed at Insper Institute of Education and Research:

"The rise of impact-oriented strategies: Value creation and socio-environmental firm-level goals"

A Few Words from Leandro Nardi:

I study strategies that help organizations reconcile economic value creation with a positive social impact, and my doctoral dissertation laid the foundation for my identity as a researcher. In four independent chapters, my dissertation investigates various questions at the intersection of business and social impact. For example, I study how pre-existing access to resources may explain microcredit beneficiaries’ ability to effectively benefit from microloans, the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) uniqueness in explaining market returns to CSR investments, as well as the economic incentives underlying firms’ decisions to invest in substantive, as opposed to merely symbolic, CSR. I am deeply honored to receive this year’s William C. Frederick SIM Doctoral Dissertation Award, a recognition that gives me hope and strength to continue on my journey as a researcher.

I am sincerely grateful to so many people who supported me along the way. In particular, I thank my Ph.D. committee––my supervisors, Sergio Lazzarini and Sandro Cabral, for their incredible dedication and commitment, and Todd Zenger, for his guidance and support. I feel immensely privileged to have had such brilliant scholars as my mentors during my journey in the doctoral program. I also thank Danny Claro, Luiz Brito, and Sergio Firpo, for the helpful comments and suggestions offered as dissertation evaluators; and the William C. Frederick award committee members, for recognizing my work. Additionally, my sincere gratitude also goes to the Insper Institute of Education and Research and the David Eccles School of Business, extraordinary institutions where I met and learned from so many amazing people. Lastly, I thank the Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), for funding my doctoral studies, and my family, especially my wife Dani, for the unconditional support I received along the way.

Award Committee Report by Lea Stadtler, Grenoble Ecole de Management:

The 2022 William C. Frederick Social Issues in Management (SIM) Doctoral Dissertation Award, sponsored by The Palumbo-Donahue School of Business at Duquesne University, was awarded to Leandro Nardi (HEC Paris – S&O Institute) for exemplary dissertation work titled ‘The Rise of Impact-Oriented Strategies: Value Creation and Socio-Environmental Firm-Level Goals.’ This dissertation, completed at the Insper Institute of Education and Research, is commendable for its rich and high-quality research on advancing our understanding of the multidimensional challenges involved in the creation and execution of impact-oriented strategies. This dissertation masters existing arguments and underlying assumptions in strategic management and revisits their applicability in the context of societal impact. Specifically, by leveraging a variety of methodologies and unique datasets, this dissertation outlines how the assembling of effective and economically sustainable impact-oriented action requires thorough attention to both, the beneficiaries’ conditions and needs and the economic incentives at work.

The committee also included Gabriela Gutierrez-Huerter O (King’s College London), Kate Odziemkowska (University of Toronto), and Greg Molecke (University of Exeter).

The other finalists were:

"The business case for diversity backfires: Detrimental effects of organizations’ instrumental diversity rhetoric for underrepresented group members’ sense of belonging and performance" Oriane Georgeac, Yale University, dissertation completed at London Business School

"Essays on the Emergence and Mainstreaming of Social Investment in the U.S. 1980-2018"

Ju Young Lee, Ivey Business School, dissertation completed at Boston College

2022 Best Paper Award

Sponsored by Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University

Adrien Gombert

Wittenberg Zentrum für Global Ethik

For:

"Deliberation without romance (nor cynicism): The role of corporations in deliberative democracy"

Abstract:

With a growing number of scholars heralding free and open discourses between corporations and their stakeholders as a governance panacea, deliberative democracy has arrived at the center stage of business ethics research. Recent critiques, however, have put into question whether corporations are, at all, viable entities for such deliberative discourses due to their embeddedness in competition and their subsequent reliance on self-interest. In this paper, I argue that this objection not only relies on a questionable reading of the philosophical works underpinning deliberative democracy (particular those by Jürgen Habermas); it also downplays the important similarities between corporate actors on the one hand and political and civil societal actors on the other. Drawing on this, I develop a more nuanced criteria for assessing the discourse viability of corporations and other governance actors: First, the criterion whether deliberative capacities can be a competitive advantage for the actor and, second, the criterion whether deliberative capacities may result from the actor’s altruism.

The award committee included Michael Pirson (Fordham University), Kendy Hess (College of the Holy Cross), and Hong Bui (University of Bath).

The other finalists were:

"Creating organizational folk devils: The influence of moral panic on misconduct and spillover"

Michael Nalick, Andrew Schnackenberg (both University of Denver)

"Camouflaging and leveraging race: How entrepreneurs deal with racial issues"

Maria Paola Ometto, Carly Offidani-Bertrand (both California State University, San Marcos)

2022 Best Business Ethics Paper Award

Sponsored by Journal of Business Ethics

Leonie Decrinis

Copenhagen Business School

For:

"Means versus ends in business ethics: A behavioral trade-off between compliance and achievement of corporate ethics programs"

Abstract:

The academic discussion on decoupling commonly centers on the macro level, distinguishing between policy-practice and means-ends decoupling. The former concerns the merely symbolic adoption of policies; the latter refers to compliant adopters not achieving intended goals. I build on prior propositions of a trade-off between policy-practice and means-end decoupling in highly opaque fields where causal complexity undermines the understanding of institutional actors. Specifically, I argue that a similar tension exists on the micro level regarding the ethical behavior of employees. Norm ambiguity in organizations is prone to trigger ethical blindness among ethically bounded humans, whereby their moral values and intentions fade away. This drives corporations to introduce tight control elements in form of clear rules, stringent monitoring and sanctioning to induce substantive compliance with specific aspects of ethics programs. However, such tight controls fail to address overall field opacity by undermining the moral awareness of target individuals. Thereby, they hinder the achievement of an organization’s broader value-oriented ethics goals. The resulting tension points towards an inherent trade-off: addressing policy-practice decoupling may aggravate means-ends decoupling and vice versa. I conceptualize this tension and define conditions for a behavioral ethics approach in corporations under which the trade-off can be reduced.

A Few Words from Leonie Decrinis:

Winning the Best Business Ethics Paper Award is a great honor. I am delighted about this unexpected success that encourages me to continue studying the challenges of addressing employee misconduct in my dissertation.

My paper is inspired by the foundational work of Frank Wijen, who proposes a compliance-achievement trade-off on the level of institutional policy adopters. In my PhD project, I focus on employee behavior and the possibilities of nudging as behaviorally informed approach to promote responsible workplace conduct. Reading Frank’s paper, I saw the similarities between the macro and the micro level regarding the limitations of compliance-based means in addressing desirable policy objectives. Empirical evidence tells shows that compliance inducement does not always lead to desirable ethics objectives in the workplace. With my interest in nudging, I got eager to study the possibilities of its application as novel organizational intervention tool to address this problem. Under specific conditions, I argue that nudges could work to raise the moral awareness and ethical conduct of employees, whilst preserving their freedom of choice.

I would like to thank the members of the 2022 SIM Best Business Ethics Paper Committee for selecting my work as well as the Journal of Business Ethics for the generous sponsorship of the award. Special thanks also go to my supervisors Jeremy Moon and Andreas Rasche as well as to Lucia Reisch for the continuous feedback and advice during my PhD journey. I would also like to thank Verena Girschik and Frank Wijen for the feedback on the paper at an earlier stage. Last but not least, I am grateful for the wonderful community at the Department of Management, Society and Communication at Copenhagen Business School, who enrich my work every day.

Award Committee Report by Kam Phung, Simon Fraser University:

Leonie Decrinis’ paper addresses an interesting and important topic with a clear focus on business ethics. It revisits and offers a refreshing take on the long standing discussion on policy-practice and means-end decoupling by shifting the focus from the macro level to the micro level and illustrating the tensions that exist in the ethical behavior of employees. The paper present convincing arguments that clearly advance our collective understanding of trade-offs in business ethics, particularly how they can be reduced. Overall, the paper is well-written and is a very enjoyable paper that leaves readers with important business ethics ideas to think about. The committee extends the warmest of congratulations to Leonie Decrinis for their insightful work in the area of business ethics!

The committee also included Aishwarya Shahrawat (Indian Institute of Technology), Laura Albareda (LTU University), and Harry Van Buren III (University of Tennessee, Chattanooga)

The runner-up is:

"My company cares about my success….I think: Clarifying why and when a firm’s ethical reputation impacts employees’ career success"

Darryl Rice (Miami University, Ohio), Regina Taylor, Sijing Wei (both Creighton University), Yiding Wang (University of Houston, Downtown), Valentina Ge (Creighton University)

2022 Best Student Paper Award

Lambert Zixin Li & Sarah Soule

Stanford University

For:

"Corporate activism and organizational authenticity"

Abstract:

Corporate activism is when a firm takes a public stance on a social or political issue. Although the public increasingly expects corporations to engage in activism, public support varies across individual corporate activist campaigns. While social movement theories would predict that the public will support corporate activism in general, organizational authenticity theory suggests that corporate activism may backfire if firms lack type or moral authenticity. Using semi-structured interviews with diverse stakeholders, a national survey on 525 corporate activist statements, and two pre-registered experiments, we find that the public generally supports corporate activism, but that a firm’s type and moral authenticity substitute each other in shaping both attitudes (support for and intention to join) and behaviors (donation and writing letters of support). We contribute to social movement theory by bringing in organizational theories of authenticity to add nuance to our expectations about public support for corporate activism, and we extend research on organizational authenticity by showing an interaction between type and moral authenticity.

A Few Words from Lambert Zixin Li and Sarah Soule:

Our paper explores how two different dimensions of organizational authenticity interact with one another to shape stakeholders' perceptions of and support for corporate political activism. The idea was shaped by our joint interest in the intersection of organizational and social movement studies, and our observation that scholars typically treat the different dimensions of organizational authenticity independently. We find that type and moral authenticity interact in fascinating ways, and shape stakeholders' perceptions of and support for company leaders engaging in political actions and discussions.

We are honored to have won the 2022 SIM Best Student Paper. The award has encouraged us to return to our data and to begin the work of carefully assessing the language that corporate leaders use when making statements about social issues, such as the Black Lives Matter movement. We are thankful to the SIM Best Student Award Committee for selecting our paper for this prestigious award!

Award Committee Report by Carolyn Dang, Pennsylvania State University:

Each year, all papers authored or co-authored by students and accepted to the SIM Division program are eligible for the Best Student Paper Award. For 2022, the Winner of the Best Student Paper Award goes to Lambert Zixin Li and Sarah A. Soule for their paper “Corporate activism and organizational authenticity”. The committee appreciated the paper’s timeliness and theoretical importance in addressing the topic of corporate activism, the focus on moral authenticity as an overlooked outcome in the activism literature, and the multi-method approach (interview, survey, and experiment, with both qualitative and quantitative data).

We also congratulate the runner-ups, Marcelo De La Cruz and Jelena Spanjol, for their paper “For-profit firms’ contribution to society: A strategic orientation perspective”. And we extend our congratulations to the other finalists: Leonie Decrinis for the paper “Means versus ends in business ethics: A behavioral trade-off between compliance and achievement”; Fengbin Wang, Guo Changwei, and Jianxun Chen for their paper “The conjoint effects of accountability and capability on financial/social Balance”; and Jiangtao Xie and Tanusree Jain for their paper “Unpacking micro-CSR from an internal stakeholder perspective: A computational literature review”.

The committee also included Lucas Amaral (IESEG School of Management), Yan Bai (Católica Lisbon), and Xinran (Joyce) Wang (University of Missouri).

The runner-up is:

"For profit firms’ contribution to society: A strategic orientation perspective"

Marcelo De La Cruz, Jelena Spanjol (both LMU, Munich)

The other finalists were:

"Means vs. ends in business ethics: A behavioral trade-off between compliance and achievement"

Leonie Decrinis (Copenhagen Business School)

"The conjoint effects of accountability and capability on financial/social balance"

Fengbin Wang, Guo Changwei (both Renmin University, China), Jianxun Chen (University of
International Business and Economics, Beijing)

"Unpacking micro-CSR from an internal stakeholder perspective: A computational literature review"

Jiangtao Xie, Tanusree Jain (both Trinity College, Dublin)

2022 Best Book Award

Andrew J. Hoffman

University of Michigan

For:

"Management as a calling: Leading business, serving society"

A Few Words from Andrew J. Hoffman:

I want to begin by extending my sincere thanks and gratitude to the SIM Division and the Selection Committee for honoring my work in this way. This means a lot to me, both because it is gratifying to see my book recognized in this way, but more importantly because it offers some degree of support and validation for the area of management as a calling or vocation.

I must say that I get a mix of responses when I mention this idea, ranging from “what are you talking about” to “that’s naïve” to “that is great and more people should do this.” Obviously, I am in agreement with the last response and find that my students are as well. It is critically important for us, at this moment in time, as business school faculty to redesign our curriculum and create graduates who see their role in business as one serving society and solving society’s problems (environmental, social and economic). Business and the market are the most powerful institutions on earth and, quite frankly, if they do not solve these problems, they will not be solved. It’s that simple.

This focus represents a transition I have been making in my career. Where I have focused on environmental issues and sustainability for the decades leading up to now, I have begun to recognize that the problems we face are much deeper than simply responding to a market shift and require much more than incremental solutions. Climate change, for example, is not an environmental problem per se. It is a systems breakdown. As such, it needs a systemic solution. The system that needs adjustment is capitalism, and we in business schools have a role to play in directing that adjustment. The first place we can do that is with our curriculum, hence this book.

I will do what I can in my work to try to steer the business school pedagogy, offering new kinds of courses that help business students understand what capitalism is and how to amend it, how government can and should play a stronger role in the market, how business can play a constructive role in guiding policy, how we should question certain sacrosanct ideas within our curriculum and the market (around growth, efficiency, corporate purpose, consumerism and more), and help students examine their calling in management.

On this last front, I have received a grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations to develop a program of guided retreats to help students in their discernment of a calling in management. I will make this program totally open source. So, if you would like to see the approach, details and materials of how I do this, please send me an email. All of us have a role to play in amending capitalism to address the problems of our day and bring about a better future. I welcome anyone who wants to help in that task.

Award Committee Report by Petya Koleva, Emirates Aviation University:

Winner: "Management as a Calling: Leading Business, Serving Society"

By Andrew J. Hoffman

A book that is meant to challenge future business leaders but is definitely of relevance to management in general. Rethinking capitalism and its dynamic features and referring to “other” capitalistic practices across the globe, offer great learning points. The book is great for all (students, business leaders, and educators), and an invitation to what will become more “common sense” approach to business which will help the move towards a world that is more equitable and transformative.

First runner-up: "Transforming towards Life-centered Economics: How Business, Government, and Civil Society Can Build a Better World"

By Sandra Waddock

The book provides an in-depth understanding of what it will take, especially in the wake of the global Covid-19 pandemic and the burgeoning climate emergency, to transform today's growth-and profit-oriented socio-economic systems to life-affirming ways benefit all rather than just an elite few.

Second runner-up: "The 360o Corporation: From Stakeholder Trade-offs to Transformation"

By Sarah Kaplan

This book lays out a roadmap for organizational leaders who have hit the limits of the supposed win-win of shared value to explore how companies can cope with real trade-offs, innovating around them or even thriving within them. This book talks about the shared-value mindset which may actually get in the way of progress.

The committee also included Theodora Issa (Curtin University) and Yusuf Sidani (American University of Beirut)

2022 SIM-ONE Outreach Award

Mark R. DesJardine

University of Michigan

Rodolphe Durand

HEC Paris

For their outreach efforts related to a publication in the Strategic Management Journal:

"Disentangling the effects of hedge fund activism on firm financial and social performance"

A Few Words from Mark R. DesJardine and Rodolphe Durand:

We are honored to receive this award. As you can tell from our work, impact is very dear to our hearts, and it motivates us to keep going. As a matter of fact, this paper was inspired by a question that a well-known CEO of a multinational once asked us. If not to offer insights that inform practice, what is the point of our work as academics? Each of us, in whatever field, should think carefully about what we’re doing to advance the broader conversation. We are pleased that awards like this one reward researchers who engage with practitioners and that put impact at the center of their work.