Please come and warm up for Saturday's cocktail parties at the PDW on
Sustainable Enterprise and Systemic Change
Saturday, August 8th, 2015
4:45 PM - 6:15 PM
Vancouver Convention Centre, Rooms 223-224
Primary Sponsor: Organizations and the Natural Environment Division
Pre-registration is not required.
Corporate sustainability, once seen as window-dressing or even subversive, has become a core part of many corporate strategies. Reducing wasted energy and materials is good business---and good public relations. Marketing to the growing segment of green consumers offers top-line benefits as well. And yet, the State of Green Business 2014 concluded that "Companies continued to tinker with incremental changes in their products and operations...All told, they were necessary but wholly insufficient to address their fair share of environmental impacts."
How can managers take the next steps forward to really move the needle on their sustainability efforts? What can companies do to create systemic change that goes beyond the boundaries of the firm and raises the playing field for everyone? When will corporate sustainability efforts reach a tipping point that truly transforms markets? This PDW addresses these questions starting from case studies where companies took strategic action to change the playing field for entire markets or industries.
Organizer: Thomas P. Lyon, University of Michigan
Presenters: The speakers are all senior faculty members at schools with a commitment to corporate sustainability, and all are Board members of the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS), a professional organization that fosters high-quality research on corporate sustainability. Each presenter will discuss a specific case of corporate-led systemic change, assess its success or failure, and offer a preliminary diagnosis of what worked and what did not work. The PDW will leave participants with new ideas for cases to teach, an ability to lead thought-provoking class discussions around this important topic, and ideas for new research topics. The selection of faculty and case topics will provide broad coverage of issues that span industries and countries to give a truly global sense of the possibilities and limitations of corporate sustainability leadership. The following scholars will share case studies that they have found valuable for provoking discussion of systemic change:
Thomas Lyon (University of Michigan)
Michael Lenox (University of Virginia
Magali Delmas (UCLA)
Craig Smith (INSEAD)
Takeaways: The PDW will leave participants with new ideas for cases to teach, an ability to lead thought-provoking class discussions around this important topic, and ideas for new research topics. The selection of faculty and case topics will provide broad coverage of issues that span industries and countries to give a truly global sense of the possibilities and limitations of corporate sustainability leadership.
Questions may be addressed to Thomas P. Lyon at tplyon@umich.edu.