Horacio Rousseau
Universidad de Navarra
Let’s talk: Studying Dialogue among Firms and Outside Actors on Social and Environmental Issues.
Relying on the institutional logics perspective, we analyze the factors that enable dialogue between corporations and external actors on social and environmental issues. We define an institutional context consisting of an overarching shareholder value logic, a social welfare logic and an environmental logic. Using data on shareholder activism, we found that both external actor power and CEO NGO experience are important features in fostering dialogue with corporations on both social and environmental issues. The external actor’s legitimacy, CEO’s NGO experience, and CEO participation in boards are significant factors to promote dialogue on social but not on environmental matters. CEO elite education, long-term CEO pay, and corporate visibility all have significant effects on enabling dialogue on environmental but not on social issues. These results indicate support the idea that social and environmental issues are rooted in different institutional logics.
Biography
I’m a 3rd year PhD Student at IESE Business School, in Barcelona, Spain. I was born in Buenos Aires, where I earned a B.Sc. in Business Administration from Universidad de Buenos Aires and a M.Sc. in organization studies from Universidad de San Andrés. My research interests fall broadly on the intersection of sustainability, strategic management and organization theory. Basically, I want to understand the drivers of social and institutional change in firms and sectors that produce a sizeable effect on the environment (i.e. polluting industries). My main project involves understanding the institutional and organizational factors that enable dialogue between corporations and external actors on social and environmental issues. I’m also currently working on two other research projects. The first project involves understanding why managers engage in greenwashing, despite its strong unethical component. The second project is centred on understanding the emergence and growth of environmental nonprofit organizations.