Organization and Strategy Seminar（2015-01）

Topic：Speaking of Corporate Social Responsibility

Speaker: Christopher Marquis , Connell University

Time: Monday,14 September, 15:30 – 17:00 pm

Location: Room 217, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract:

We argue that the language spoken by corporate decision makers can significantly affect how they perceive future-oriented strategies, such as corporate social responsibility (CSR). Building on research in economics and linguistics that shows that obligatory future-time-reference (FTR) in a language reduces the psychological importance of the future, we theorize that companies with strong-FTR languages as their official/working language will have less of a future orientation and so perform worse in future-oriented activities such as corporate social responsibility (CSR). Examining thousands of global companies across 59 countries from 1999-2011, we find support for our theory. Furthermore, the negative association between FTR and CSR performance is weaker for firms with greater exposure to diverse global languages due to (a) being headquartered in countries with higher degree of globalization, (b) having a higher degree of internationalization, and (c) having a CEO with more international experience. These results are robust after controlling for country fixed effects and in a quasi-natural experiment setting, and similar language effect is found for other future-oriented organizational behaviors such as R&D expenditure. Contributions to the globalization of CSR and cognitive bases of strategy are discussed.

Bio:

Chris Marquis is the Samuel C. Johnson Professor in Sustainable Global Enterprise and Professor of Management at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. Prior to joining Cornell, he worked at Harvard Business School and has held visiting positions at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Peking University, Fudan University and Shanghai Jiaotong University. Marquis received a PhD in Sociology and Business Administration from the University of Michigan.

Professor Marquis’ teaching and research is focused on how business can have a positive impact on society and the natural environment. He is currently pursuing several streams of research. The first seeks to assess how firms’ and entrepreneurs’ social and environmental strategies and activities can be designed to maximize both business and social value. The second explores how environmental sustainability and shared value initiatives have developed in China. Finally, the third examines institutional change processes in emerging markets. These research projects build on Marquis’ earlier work that analyzed how firm behavior is shaped by broader contexts such as embeddedness in geographic communities and how environmental conditions during founding periods leave a lasting imprint on organizations. In particular, Marquis’ prior research examined the effects of these processes in the contexts of community-based social networks and the evolution of the US banking industry.

Marquis’ research has won a number of national awards including the 2006 William H. Newman Award for best dissertation across the entire the Academy of Management, the 2006 Louis R. Pondy award for best dissertation in organizational theory from the Academy of Management, the 2003 James D. Thompson Award for best graduate student paper from the American Sociological Association and the 2005 State Farm Doctoral Dissertation Award. He was a finalist for the 2010 and 2013 Aspen Institute Faculty Pioneer Award, a runner-up in the Academy of Management’s Best Published Paper in Organization and Management Theory in 2009 and a finalist in the 2004 INFORMS/Organization Science Dissertation Proposal Competition.

Marquis has published in Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, American Sociological Review, Organization Science, and Strategic Management Journal as well as a number of edited collections. He is an Associate Editor of Administrative Science Quarterly and an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management, and the International Association of Chinese Management Research (IACMR). Before his academic career, Marquis worked for 6 years in the financial services industry, most recently as Vice President and Technology Manager for a business unit of J.P. Morgan Chase.

Your participation is warmly welcomed!