Dear colleagues,
We are excited to invite you to our Professional Development Workshop (PDW), Compliant but Irresponsible?: Sustainability and the Rhetorics of Organizational Stewardship, at the 2026 Academy of Management Annual Meeting.
The PDW will be held from 8:00 to 10:00 AM ET (GMT-4/UTC-4) on Sunday, August 2, 2026, at the Sheraton – Liberty Ballroom A. Those participating in the conference remotely will also have the opportunity to join online. Please send a direct message to any of the organizers if you would like to receive a link to participate.
As organizations face growing expectations to address pressing social and ecological challenges, compliance with regulatory and voluntary sustainability standards has increasingly become a key indicator of responsibility and organizational stewardship. Meanwhile, history is replete with examples of organizations celebrated for their sustainability commitments while being implicated in environmental degradation, social harm, and other forms of irresponsible conduct. These tensions raise fundamental questions about the relationship between compliance, accountability, and stewardship, as well as the limits of organizational responsibility in addressing contemporary socioecological challenges.
This PDW brings together scholars from different regions across the globe to critically examine these issues through historically informed and Indigenous perspectives on socioecological stewardship. Drawing on litigated cases involving multimillion-dollar liability claims and compensation settlements, particularly in Indigenous contexts, the workshop will explore how responsibility is constructed, contested, justified, and sometimes denied across organizational, legal, and community interfaces.
Participants will engage with questions such as: Can organizations be compliant and still be irresponsible? Where do the boundaries of organizational socioecological accountability lie? What insights can Indigenous ontologies, relational ethics, and intergenerational accountability offer for sustainability organizing? And how might management theory and practice move beyond the rhetorics of compliance toward more meaningful forms of stewardship?
Through case presentations, panel discussions, and interactive sessions, the workshop aims to advance conversations on sustainability, stewardship, organizational responsibility, and the normative foundations of socioecological accountability.
The panelists include Irene Henriques (York University, Canada), Diego Coraiola (University of Victoria, Canada), and Stephen Cummings (University of Sydney, Australia).
Case presentations will be delivered by Peter Musinguzi (University of Melbourne, Australia), Esther Hennchen (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain), Hellen Marquezini (University of Victoria, Canada), Christian Igbeghe (University of Jyväskylä, Finland), and Irene Henriques (York University, Canada). The session will be moderated by Lauren Walter (University of Victoria, Canada).
Organizers: Christian Igbeghe (University of Jyväskylä, Finland), Peter Musinguzi (University of Melbourne, Australia), and Lauren Walter (University of Victoria, Canada).
This PDW is sponsored by the ONE Division and is relevant to scholars and practitioners across career stages, divisions, and interest groups, providing a vibrant space for critical dialogue and the advancement of ongoing conversations on sustainability, organizational responsibility, and stewardship.
We look forward to seeing you there.
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Christian Igbeghe
Doctoral Researcher,
University of Jyväskylä School of Business and Economics,
Finland.
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