2023 Responsible Research in Management Awards

When our trust is broken, and when our own trustworthiness is called into question, many of us are left wondering what to do. We barely know how trust works. How could we possibly repair it?

Peter H. Kim has conducted over two decades of groundbreaking research to answer that question. In How Trust Works, he draws on this research and the work of other social scientists to reveal the surprising truths about how relationships are built, how they are broken, and how they are repaired. Dr. Kim’s work shows how we are often more trusting than we think and how easily our trust in others can be distorted. He illustrates these insights with accounts of some of the most striking and well-known trust violations that have occurred in modern times and unveils the crucial secrets behind when and why our attempts to repair trust are effective, and which breaches of confidence are just too deep.

How Trust Works transforms our understanding of our deepest bonds, giving us the tools to build strong and supportive relationships on every level. With our families, coworkers, and friends. With the groups, organizations, and institutions that touch our lives. And even with societies and nations.

The circular economy is presented as a novel solution to many environmental problems. Yet it comes with governance challenges making its progress in reality slow. Circular economy is about using residual waste and side-streams accruing from processes of other organizations: they are privately owned and not readily for sale like virgin resources in the linear economy, and knowledge about them is often withheld as a business secret.  These form “the tragedy privately owned residual resources”, a governance challenge which has not received much attention in management research. Building on institutional economics, and empirical research in Finland, Spain and USA, we develop the concept of polycentric governance of privately owned resources for circular economy. Our findings show how collective action between diverse organizations can enable effective, polycentric governance of circular economy. It involves actors mutually adjusting their activities to facilitate cooperation, engaging in cooperation and information sharing routines to enable new circularity opportunities, and building new infrastructures which maintain circular economy development over time. Alongside with refining the polycentric governance for management studies, our study offers lessons for managers and policymakers for how to develop and govern circular economy activities over larger, cross-industrial and cross-sectoral systems.

This research addresses corporate means of helping to develop and empower at-risk communities — those in which income and opportunity disparities manifest in social problems, including substance abuse, crime, inadequate education, health problems, and social dislocation.  Building a consortium of companies, non-profits and community partners, the longitudinal ethnographic qualitative design involved interviews and narratives, as well as epidemiological data in the communities, and survey research conducted in the companies, regarding longer term impact.  The data were analyzed both holistically through case comparison, but also at the level of individual psychological experiences through comprehensive content analysis. Three relational pathways were identified, mutual perspective taking, reciprocal respect, and communal advocacy.  The research documented significant intermediate-term psychological and behavioral outcomes in the communities (e.g., increased self-determination, strategic capability, proactivity). This was associated with longer term social impact — increased labor force participation, health outcomes and educational attainment, as well as reduced unemployment and crime. Company participants also experienced increased meaningfulness, thriving, intercultural competence, and prosocial behaviors.  In terms of longer term impact, corporations experienced increased loyalty, performance, and customer engagement. The approach identified helped to better direct the community investment toward meaningful and sustained changes in the communities and companies.

Companies are increasingly facing intense pressures to address stakeholder demands from every direction: consumers want socially responsible products; employees want meaningful work; investors now screen on environmental, social, and governance criteria; “clicktivists” create social media storms over company missteps. CEOs now realize that their companies must be social as well as commercial actors, but stakeholder pressures often create trade-offs with demands to deliver financial performance to shareholders. How can companies respond while avoiding simple “greenwashing” or “pinkwashing”? Suggesting that the shared-value mindset may actually get in the way of progress, bestselling author Sarah Kaplan shows in The 360° Corporation how trade-offs, rather than being confusing or problematic, can actually be the source of organizational resilience and transformation. Using in-depth case studies of companies like Nike and Walmart, 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.

Refugees who are forced to flee their country often live in a state of “indeterminate temporariness”, an uncertain state without a defined ending they can foresee or control. For them, the present can feel empty and meaningless, and the future feels uncertain, frightening and bleak. Our research in Lebanese refugee camps examined how a local NGO supported Syrian refugees in rebuilding their lives and reducing dependency on aid. The NGO implemented a “small grants program”, providing entrepreneurial training to help refugees establish small businesses. We identified three ways in which the NGO empowered refugees and helped them cope with the crippling uncertainty. First, it encouraged refugees to focus on feasible short-term goals, offering a sense of control over a foreseeable future; second, it structured refugees’ days with activities and routines, providing a sense busyness; finally, it gave refugees a sense of belonging to a community and place. By “sheltering” refugees from imposed temporariness, the NGO enabled them to find greater meaning in the present and fostered a renewed sense of hope for a positive and attainable future. This type of work by local NGOs will become increasingly significant, as millions are expected to migrate to escape the climate crisis.

Prior research underscores the economic benefits that shareholder activism can bestow upon the shareholders of the companies. Our study, however, shifts focus to analyze the repercussions of shareholder activism on other stakeholders, particularly the employees. We examine whether shareholder activism, when spearheaded by institutional investors, could inadvertently impinge on the health and safety of employees by increasing the incidence of workplace injuries and illnesses. Furthermore, departing from previous studies assuming a homogeneity among financially motivated institutional investor activists, we delve into the possibility that the impact of institutional investor activism on employee health and safety may be contingent upon the political ideology of both the shareholder activist and the board of the targeted firm. By employing establishment-level data, our findings reveal that institutional investor activism can lead to a surge in workplace injuries and illnesses at the targeted companies. Interestingly, this effect is attenuated when the shareholder activists or the boards of the targeted firms lean towards liberal ideologies. This study contributes to management research by elucidating the adverse effects of financially driven institutional shareholder activism on the welfare of employees. It also sheds light on the role that the partisanship of shareholder activists and company boards play in shaping the consequences of shareholder activism on the firm’s stakeholders.

Three out of four U.S. employees are managing one or more chronic health conditions (e.g., diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, anxiety). Most programs helping people manage chronic health conditions are not well-suited for the actively working population. We examined how a workplace-tailored program—Live Healthy, Work Health (LHWH)—can benefit employees and their organizations. Participants joined the program immediately (intervention group) or 6-month later (delayed control group). Findings reveal that employees in LHWH reported numerous positive work-related outcomes, including a decrease in burnout and job stress as well as increases in perceived organizational support (POS), work engagement, work ability, organizational commitment, and organizational citizenship behavior (i.e., going “above and beyond”). The increases in POS during the intervention led to other desirable changes that happened simultaneously and over time (subsequent changes in burnout, job satisfaction, work ability, and turnover intention). Importantly, researchers also found that positive changes were strongest when workplaces chose to offer the LHWH program on work time. In summary, when employers are proactive in helping their employees manage their chronic health conditions, employees feel that their employers care about them as people—not just employees—and this leads to positive changes in personal and organizational outcomes.

Using a qualitative, interview-based approach, this study explores how Black law enforcement officers combat racism within their highly racialized institutions. The authors present a theoretical model of employee anti-racism that explains why racial minority employees choose to join organizations that continually perpetuate racism, how they challenge racism, and how they sustain their anti-racism efforts in the face of continuous racial discrimination both within their organizations and society more broadly. Findings from the qualitative data highlight how Black police officers leveraged their unique position as members in both law enforcement and the Black community, simultaneously working to reduce racism in policing and remediate the effects of racism in the Black community. Overall, this work provides a theoretical and practical roadmap highlighting how racial minority employees combat racism in a holistic manner via organizational membership—tackling multiple facets of the social system in which it is deeply embedded—and how they sustain their positive impact across both their organizations and their racial communities.