2025 Responsible Research in Management Awards

Corporate carbon targets—formal commitments by companies to achieve a specified amount of emissions reductions by a certain date—are now ubiquitous, yet such targets have broadly failed to substantially reduce emissions. This study examines a phenomenon of deceptive target change, where companies alter targets to make them appear more ambitious while in reality weakening them. We conceive this phenomenon results from two countervailing pressures firms face in managing carbon targets—one, pressure to meet heightening expectations of influential stakeholders that induces firms with smaller targets to increase target size (i.e., ambition), and two, pressure to ultimately attain targets that induces firms with larger targets to weaken them in effect. Analysis of nine years of corporate carbon target data provides support for our claim: we find a U-shaped relationship, wherein firms with either relatively smaller or larger targets are more likely to make deceptive target changes. We also find that greater stakeholder monitoring of company policies, such as shareholder resolutions for climate-related reporting, exacerbates this problem, whereas monitoring of company practices, such as media scrutiny over actual climate impacts, mitigates it. The study shows how external monitoring of company actions, rather than statements, can improve accountability over climate commitments.

Whereas advocates point to the benefits of employing people with disabilities, many employers still worry that customers might react negatively—especially in service jobs where employees interact directly with the public. Our research addresses this concern. We study how customers respond to receiving service from employees with a hearing disability or those who use a wheelchair, and how that affects how they view the company (i.e., corporate reputation). Across multiple studies using different methods, we find that customers tend to view companies more positively when they employ people with disabilities, because they interpret their employment as a corporate social responsibility activity.

For example, in a real-world study involving 317 customers of a large international supermarket chain in Lithuania, customers who were helped by an employee with a hearing disability rated the company’s reputation more highly than those who interacted with an employee without a disability. In an additional online experiment using short video vignettes, we replicated this effect and show that it driven by customers viewing the company as socially responsible. Furthermore, positive service interactions also improved competence and warmth stereotypes of people with disabilities.

Together, our results suggest that employers’ fears of negative customer reactions are likely misplaced. In fact, hiring people with disabilities can boost a company’s image and reputation—providing both an ethical and a business case for greater inclusion in the workplace.

In a world increasingly shaped by algorithms and artificial intelligence, digital platform organizations are using these tools to change the rules and criteria for success at an unprecedented speed and scale. Workers often feel trapped in an “invisible cage,” because algorithms control their opportunities without any say, explanation, or recourse. Imagine receiving a poor performance evaluation score by an algorithm that will not tell you why or how you could improve. This dynamic is a reality for millions of workers and now goes beyond the workplace. Opaque algorithms are now influencing who can buy or rent property, who gets hired, and even who is sent to jail. The invisible cage metaphor exposes the profound consequences of using AI to rewrite how individuals, firms, and society function. This book begins the process of creating a future of work that is more equitable, transparent, and beneficial for all stakeholders.

Gig jobs are often considered low-paying, risky, and ruled by “the algorithm.” So why do millions still open the app everyday? This research, a seven-year qualitative study of the largest sector in the gig economy, the ride-hailing industry, describes how workers navigate being managed by an algorithm and how the algorithmic management systems begets their consent. Drawing on more than 130 longitudinal interviews, archival data, and my own experience behind the wheel, I find that the apps break down the work to multiple human-algorithmic interactions. Dozens of a time a day, drivers decide on tiny questions such as: Take this ride? Chase that surge? Rate that passenger? These frequent but narrow choices give workers a feeling of autonomy, even though the algorithm still controls pay, timing, and ratings. Drivers use two approaches when interacting with the algorithmic management system: engagement tactics, in which drivers play by the rules, accepting every ride, and chasing five-star ratings; and deviance tactics, in which drivers push the boundaries by rejecting low-fare trips, studying traffic, and even running two phones to “beat” the algorithm. Both approaches produce choice-based consent, allowing drivers to see themselves as skillful agents while masking the low wages, no benefits, and surveillance within the work itself. This creates what I call the “good-bad” job: work that feels empowering on the surface while being deeply precarious.

This study examines how a private-sector firm can help mitigate climate change by aligning stakeholder interests to preserve the Amazon rainforest. Focusing on Natura, a Brazilian cosmetics company, the paper analyzes the firm’s long-term collaboration with Indigenous Amazonian communities to source ingredients sustainably. Using a mixed-method approach that includes satellite imagery and econometric analysis, the authors show that Natura’s presence in Amazonian municipalities is significantly associated with forest preservation—preventing deforestation across 730,000 hectares, the equivalent of 676,000 soccer fields. Natura facilitated mutually beneficial partnerships that offered economic incentives to local communities for harvesting forest-compatible products like açaí and cocoa, rather than engaging in destructive agriculture. This realignment of incentives not only curbed deforestation but also supported community development and reduced carbon emissions by 58 million tons. The study exemplifies principles of responsible research by offering rigorous evidence of how stakeholder-oriented business models can achieve both environmental and economic goals, contributing meaningfully to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

In recent years, there has been a global emphasis on the role of corporations in acting responsibly toward society and the environment. One factor believed to enhance such corporate responsibility is the presence of more women on corporate boards. While the gender diversity in top leadership is widely studied, past research has paid limited attention on the conditions under which board gender diversity improves corporate social responsibility (CSR). It is not well understood whether the gender diversity effect remains or varies across different societal contexts. Our study of over 5,000 firms across 25 countries investigates this issue and finds that national culture plays a key role. Specifically, our study shows that gender-diverse boards are more effective in promoting CSR in harmony-oriented cultures, that value fitting in with the social and natural environment, whereas their impact is weaker in mastery-oriented cultures that emphasize ambition, control, and competition. Furthermore, we find that the strength of social norms in a country—whether the culture is “tight” or “loose”—matters. In tight cultures, where social norms are strongly enforced, the positive influence of harmony values is amplified, strengthening the role gender diverse boards play in promoting CSR. Our findings suggest that cultural values and societal norms shape the extent to which board gender diversity fosters responsible corporate behavior.

This study examines how e-commerce firms interact with consumers in disadvantaged urban areas, with a focus on Brazilian favelas. Using a mixed-methods approach that includes a large dataset of 406,900 transaction quotes and ethnographic fieldwork, the research reveals a persistent “favela effect”: firms are more likely to refuse orders and charge higher delivery prices to customers living in favelas compared to those in adjacent neighborhoods, despite similar logistical conditions. The analysis identifies significant variations across firms. Companies with physical stores located inside or near favelas utilize these complementary assets to support last-mile delivery, serving these communities more equitably. Likewise, firms with a strong stakeholder orientation, reflected in positive employee culture and responsiveness to customer concerns, are less likely to discriminate against favela consumers. This work exemplifies responsible research by highlighting how firm strategies can exacerbate or alleviate structural inequality. Ultimately, it shows that businesses can achieve commercial success while advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals, including reducing inequality and fostering inclusive urban development.

In recent years, online platforms began labeling minority-owned businesses to help customers show support and promote equity. But does this visibility actually benefit these businesses? Our research investigates this question by examining how online reviews of restaurants in New York City changed after being identified as Black-owned on a major review platform. We found that while these restaurants received significantly more reviews after being identified as Black-owned, their average ratings declined. This drop was largely driven by less credible reviewers while ratings from more credible reviewers remained consistent. Importantly, the effects varied by context. The more popular restaurants with strong initial visibility benefited more from increased engagement without suffering a drop in ratings. In contrast, less popular restaurants were more vulnerable to biased ratings. Additionally, restaurants located in neighborhoods with higher rates of hate crimes saw larger increases in review volume. Our study reveals that even well-intentioned efforts to support minority-owned businesses can lead to unintended harm. By uncovering these dynamics, we offer practical insights for platforms and policymakers seeking to advance racial equity in a responsible and effective way.

Increasingly we are faced with broad societal challenges that encourage us to rethink existing institutions. Yet many people also want to preserve institutions they cherish. This tension points to the need for change that can erode or discontinue unsustainable or problematic aspects of institutions while also maintaining what is sacred and valued. In this paper we ask how can organizations deinstitutionalize taken-for-granted practices while also preserving the institution? We answer this question by exploring how Trout Unlimited deployed visual and discursive tactics to push out unsustainable catch-and-harvest fly fishing practices and insert new catch-and-release practices. Our primary theoretical contribution is a model of repair-focused deinstitutionalization, illustrating how custodians utilize three forms of work to respond to threats—mending, caring, and restoring—all with an eye on deinstitutionalization via repair rather than disruption. Importantly, we show how the construct of repair is multipurpose, not limited to maintenance strategies, but can also be a catalyst for change. In addition, we extend research on deinstitutionalization by presenting a multimodal approach that goes beyond discourse, with particular attention to visuality and show how different modalities present different affordances in longer-term repair efforts.

Professional accountability is considered important to the legitimacy and survival of a profession. Prior research has examined the role of top-down scrutiny by audiences, such as supervisors, regulators, and certification agencies, in improving professional accountability. But the advent of social media platforms has increasingly enabled the bottom-up scrutiny of professionals—especially professionals on the front line—by audiences such as customers and the public. In this research, I examine how and when bottom-up scrutiny through social media (hereafter, social media scrutiny) impacts the accountability of frontline professionals. Conducting an ethnography of 911 emergency management organizations, I find that social media scrutiny of 911 call-takers—the frontline professionals in this setting—can obscure rather than improve professional accountability. I elaborate on how, why, and under what conditions social media scrutiny pushes frontline professionals to deviate from their mandate, which, in turn, obscures their sense of professional accountability. These processes also generate spillover effects on the everyday work and mandate of downstream professionals (e.g., 911 dispatchers, police officers), producing a cascading set of unintended consequences that further obscures accountability for multiple actors across the professional ecosystem.

Existing theory suggests that professionals are ineffective at regulating the work of their peers, especially when it comes to disciplining misconduct, because of professional norms of collegiality. In response, transparency measures have been put in place over the years to increase accountability toward key external audiences, such as the public, and to ensure that professionals hold guilty peers accountable for misconduct. Few studies, however, have sufficiently investigated how professionals discipline peer misconduct in the face of transparency measures. We gained access to a state medical board’s internal deliberations about how to discipline physicians guilty of overprescribing opioids, endangering public health. We found that even in the most egregious cases, the board predominantly refrained from implementing stringent disciplinary action despite extensive transparency measures. Our data allow us to theorize what we call bounded accountability, which refers to individuals charged with holding guilty actors accountable for their misconduct instituting only limited discipline. We found four mechanisms that constrained the exercise of accountability: information asymmetries between regulatory bodies, bureaucratic inefficiencies of the disciplinary apparatus, shared professional beliefs among decision makers, and interpersonal emotions between decision makers and the guilty professionals whom they are put in charge of disciplining. We found that these mechanisms operated at the field, occupational, organizational, and interpersonal levels, respectively. Utilizing a highly consequential study context, our findings suggest that when professional misconduct is disciplined by members of the same occupation, bounded accountability is the most likely outcome, even with extensive transparency measures in place.

This paper explores when and how entrepreneurs who operate new organizations in environments where corruption is endemic can resist it. Despite the continued scholarly interest in corruption, anticorruption efforts by micro, small, and medium enterprises have been largely overlooked. Instead, studies have focused on the intraorganizational actions of larger established organizations (local and multinational) without sufficiently considering their interdependence with other actors in their external environments. Given the social exchange nature of corruption, we collected and analyzed data from interviews with Tanzanian entrepreneurs, and theorized about when and how they circumvent or resist corruption. Our findings illuminate the complex relationship between entrepreneurs’ motivations and capability, and highlight the strategies entrepreneurs use when they seek to resist corruption without compromising their resource needs. Subject to their leverage (i.e., resource endowments and available alternatives), entrepreneurs resist corruption by avoiding powerful focal firms, restructuring their resource dependence in a firm-focused manner, and managing risks. Considering social-relational dynamics, entrepreneurs also find ways to avoid interactions with corrupt agents and to use power strategically (through political tactics, such as co-opting and challenging) that influence agents to act in the entrepreneurs’ best interests and against corruption.

Societal grand challenges have taken a toll on humanity, which finds itself at a crossroads. The concentration of wealth and economic inequality, the dominance of Big Tech firms, the loss of privacy and free choice, and the overconsumption and abuse of natural resources have been reinforced by globalization. Regulation, legislation, international treaties, and government and corporate policies have fallen short of offering sufficient remedies. This book identifies the root cause of these problems and offers a bold solution: a new economic system, free from the design flaws that have contributed to these societal grand challenges.

The proposed cooperative economy is an ethical community-driven exchange system that relies on collective action to promote societal values while accounting for resource constraints. Unlike the modern economic system that is predominantly driven by opportunistic behavior, the cooperative economy moves away from a materialistic orientation and follows a more balanced perspective that leverages prosocial behavior. The book explains how this new system adopts design principles that promote self-sufficiency of communities, sustainability and entrepreneurship while limiting overconsumption and excessive profit-making. It enhances economic equality by leveraging price subsidization and by restricting salary differences. The book describes how the system serves the interests of consumers, vendors, and employees while preventing the accumulation of power by the platform owner who operates this system.

This book is invaluable reading for policymakers who have been searching for solutions to some of the grand challenges that our society faces, and to managers who have sought alternative ways to cope with platform ecosystems, resource shortages, and supply chain disruptions. It revisits long-held assumptions, offering a treatise and food for thought, as well as a plan for concrete action. The book is also highly relevant to scholars and students in the study of economics, strategy, innovation, and public policy and to all readers who are concerned about the future of our planet and society.

Creating a long-lasting impact is one of the defining goals of social entrepreneurship. Yet, social entrepreneurs often face a dilemma between sustaining their organization and offering a permanent fix to a social problem. We question the assumption that organizational permanence and growth are intrinsically desirable for social entrepreneurs and propose an alternative, an inductively grounded model of ecosystem leadership, which we term ecosystem catalysis. Through a single case study of social entrepreneurs addressing the lack of access to diarrhoea treatment in Zambia, we conceptualize ecosystem catalysis as a process through which an organization forms an ecosystem around a new value proposition while gradually making itself redundant, ultimately withdrawing from the ecosystem without compromising its functioning. Our work contributes to ecosystem literature by contrasting the key aims and mechanisms of an ecosystem catalyst to those of an orchestrator and identifying the conditions under which catalysing may be a better choice than orchestrating an ecosystem. We contribute to social entrepreneurship literature by decoupling social impact from organizational growth and permanence and presenting a more dynamic model of social impact resulting from distributed contributions in ecosystems.

Creating a long-lasting impact is one of the defining goals of social entrepreneurship. Yet, social entrepreneurs often face a dilemma between sustaining their organization and offering a permanent fix to a social problem. We question the assumption that organizational permanence and growth are intrinsically desirable for social entrepreneurs and propose an alternative, an inductively grounded model of ecosystem leadership, which we term ecosystem catalysis. Through a single case study of social entrepreneurs addressing the lack of access to diarrhoea treatment in Zambia, we conceptualize ecosystem catalysis as a process through which an organization forms an ecosystem around a new value proposition while gradually making itself redundant, ultimately withdrawing from the ecosystem without compromising its functioning. Our work contributes to ecosystem literature by contrasting the key aims and mechanisms of an ecosystem catalyst to those of an orchestrator and identifying the conditions under which catalysing may be a better choice than orchestrating an ecosystem. We contribute to social entrepreneurship literature by decoupling social impact from organizational growth and permanence and presenting a more dynamic model of social impact resulting from distributed contributions in ecosystems.