8th Annual Jeff YorkThe 8th Annual ARCS Research Conference was hosted by the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado, Boulder from May 18-20, 2016. The Conference Chair was Jeffrey York,  Assistant Professor  of Management and Entrepreneurship. The conference brought together 80 scholars, students and practitioners from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives interested in advancing research on corporate sustainability. This year’s participants hailed from North America, Canada, France, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK, Singapore and Japan. “The thing I’m perhaps most pleased about is that over 40% of the participants were new to ARCS. I think this is a great sign that the ARCS community is growing and open,” York said.

ARCS President Magali Delmas said: “The conference was a great success. The papers were of excellent quality; the audience provided stellar comments; the panel discussions were thought  provoking; and the evening events were a lot of fun! I didn’t know we had so many musicians among the ARCS community. Many thanks to Jeff York (U. Colorado), Ann Richmond (U. Colorado) and the ARCS Conference Committee for organizing such an amazing event, and to all the reviewers who contributed to such a rich and wonderful program.”

You can view photos from the event here: https://flic.kr/s/aHskzUy4tC 

The ARCS Board of Directors voted to elect Guy Holburn (Ivey Business School, University of Western Ontario) and Jeffrey York (Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado) to the ARCS Executive Committee.

Several awards for scholarly contributions were presented at the conference. Ioannis Ioannou (Assistant Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School) and Jeffrey York (Assistant Professor  of Management and Entrepreneurship, Leeds School of Business) each received an ARCS Emerging Sustainability Scholar Award – given to an “untenured, emerging scholar in the area of corporate sustainability who is likely to make significant contributions to the advancement of scholarship and practice through a body of work that is rigorous, impactful, and which speaks across disciplines”. Frank Wijen, Chair of the ARCS Nominations Committee, said: “This year’s slate showed a number of particularly strong candidates. Jeffrey has shown to be a versatile scholar, engaged in a variety of research types – theory development, qualitative studies, and large-N work – and has performed salient research at the nexus of sustainability and entrepreneurship, demonstrating insightfully how entrepreneurs drive environmental stewardship. Ioannis has been very active in the academic community, as evidenced by his involvement in the organization of several sustainability-relevant conferences, and has published multiple articles at the intersection of strategy, finance, and corporate sustainability in a variety of top-tier journals.”

The conference organizers also awarded ARCS Outstanding Paper Awards to the 3 best papers out of 89 papers submitted. This award is based on the research paper’s potential impact on management practice and rigor of analysis. The winning papers are listed below.

ARCS conference attendees also voted on their own favorites, choosing 3 ARCS Conference People’s Choice Award winners from among the presenters. The winners are also listed below.

The 2017 ARCS Annual Research Conference will be held at the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University. The Conference Chair is Frank Wijen, Associate Professor of Strategic Management.

The 2018 ARCS Annual Research Conference will be held at MIT, in Boston. The Conference Chair is John Sterman, Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management, Sloan School of Management, MIT.

2016 CONFERENCE PROGRAM

“OUTSTANDING PAPER” AWARD WINNERS

Executive Compensation and Misconduct: Environmental Harm
Dylan Minor (Northwestern University)

Substantive Implementation with Symbolic Silence: The Strategic Publication of Certification Status
Chad Carlos (Marriott School of Management, Brigham Young University)
Ben Lewis (Marriott School of Management, Brigham Young University)

A Model of Organizational Symbolism: Understanding the Different Shades of Green
Rodolphe Durand (HEC Paris)
Olga Hawn (Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina)
Ioannis Ioannou (Erasmus School of Management, Rotterdam University)

“PEOPLE’S CHOICE” AWARD WINNERS

Precautionary Federalism and the Sharing Economy
Sarah E. Light (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)

External Market Threats and Entrepreneurial Collective Action in the Emergent U.S. Wood Pellet Industry
Shon Hiatt (University of Southern California)
Sangchan Park (KAIST)

Corporate Sustainability Metrics: What Investors Need and Don’t Get
Daniel C. Esty (Yale University)
Todd Cort (Yale School of Management)