Greetings!
The AOM online program is now available, and we are pleased to invite people to participate in our PDW called Are Sustainability Certifications a Sustainable Form of Governance? Our time is Saturday, Aug 8, 2015, from 9:45AM - 11:15AM. Our place is Room 206 of the Vancouver Convention Centre. Our Session is #304, and our Submission is #15299. This PDW is sponsored by the ONE, OMT, and SIM divisions.
Sustainability certifications are a form of external governance of corporate behavior. They have been spreading over the last twenty years across sectors and proliferating in some sectors. This PDW aims to take stock of the evolution of sustainability certifications and to sustain research momentum on the topic. These five scholars from a variety of disciplines have agreed to come together to generate discussion on the future of sustainability certifications and research on them:
Organizers
David L. Deephouse, Professor, Dept. of Strategic Mgt. & Org., U. of Alberta
Associate Dean, Business PhD Program
International Research Fellow, Oxford U. Centre for Corporate Reputation
Amanda Moss Cowan, Assistant Professor of Management, U. of Rhode Island
Discussants
Ben Cashore, Professor, Environmental Governance & Political Science
Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
Joseph C. Fox Director, Fox International Fellowship Program, Yale MacMillan Center, http://foxfellowship.yale.edu/
Director, Governance, Environment and Markets (GEM) Initiative, http://environment.yale.edu/gem
Aseem Prakash, Professor of Political Science
Walker Family Professor for the College of Arts and Sciences
Director, UW Center for Environmental Politics
University of Washington, Seattle
International Research Fellow, Oxford U. Centre for Corporate Reputation
Juliane Reinecke, Professor of Organisation Studies at Warwick Business School
Member of the Industrial Relations Research Unit and the Global Research Priority in Global Governance (GRP-GG), University of Warwick.
Research Fellow at the Center for Social Innovation, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge,
Fellow at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), University of Cambridge
Fellow at the World Class Research Environment Responsible Business, Copenhagen Business School.
We will begin the session by asking our panel to consider a series of questions, some submitted by the discussants, and others solicited from participants. Some likely topics include:
· Do multiple standards lead to a race to the bottom or to the top?
· When do certifications work, and when don't they?
· In regard to the Rana Plaza collapse, given that it was certified by the Business Social Compliance Initiative before the disaster, how does this affect models of supply chain responsibility?
· How can greenwashes be differentiated from legitimate certification programs?
· How should we think of the relationship between public law and private certification? What explains variations in the types of certification systems across sectors?
Next, we will have roundtables on topics based on the interests of participants. These conversations will help build a community of scholars interested in developing further research on sustainability certifications. This PDW provides a forum for developing new ideas and relationships.
What questions would you like to see addressed by the panelists or in a roundtable? Send your questions to Amanda and David at this email address: cowanama@gmail.com
Thank you for considering our PDW, and best wishes,
Amanda Moss Cowan, University of Rhode Island
David Deephouse, University of Alberta