Dissertation Proposal Awards

Jessica Dillabough, University of Calgary

Haskayne School of Business

"Doing Institutional Work in Response to Failure: The Case of Creative Sentencing"

Jess is a fourth year doctoral student at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business. Her research stems from a long-standing interest in the relationship between businesses and the environment. This interest has evolved into a focus on a particular mechanism for influencing firm behavior towards the environment: creative sentencing. Creative sentencing is used in addition to traditional fines when sentencing organizations convicted of breaching environmental law. Jess finds creative sentencing fascinating for two reasons. First, Jess argues, creative sentencing is effective because it betters industry and firm behavior towards the environment. Second, she states, creative sentencing is not always forced on firms by government agencies. Thus, proactive firms prefer creative sentencing because it helps them improve their environmental performance.

 

Andrea Romi, University of Arkansas

Department of Accounting

"Discretionary Compliance with Mandatory Environmental Sanction Disclosures," "Carbon Disclosure Incentives in a Global Setting: An Empirical Investigation" and "U.S. Corporate Carbon Reporting: Determinants and Benefits of Disclosure"

Andrea is currently a Visiting Professor at Indiana University - Bloomington. As part of her PhD studies at the University of Arkansas, Andrea’s dissertation examines different aspects of the determinants associated with and financial consequences of environmental accounting disclosure. With the increased focus on the need for corporations to accept greater responsibility for their contributions to environmental degradation, and with an increased effort by national and global regulators to require greater disclosure by these companies, Andrea focuses on the current determinants of environmental disclosures by corporations in the United States and abroad.

David Wernick, Florida International University

College of Business Administration

"Do Secondary Stakeholder Lawsuits Affect Corporate Financial Performance? An Event Study of Alien Tort Claims Act Legislation: 2000-2009"

David is a doctoral candidate at Florida International University (FIU) studying Management and International Business. His dissertation examines how multinational enterprises manage political, legal, and social risks in developing countries and the financial and reputational impact of human rights-related litigation initiated under the Alien Tort Claims Act. David’s interest in international economic development and sustainable business practice is longstanding. This interest motivated him to pursue his Masters in International Studies at FIU. Following this David spent ten years working in New York and Miami as a journalist, consultant, and risk analyst, before returning to FIU to pursue his doctorate in Business Administration.

 

 

Shared Capitalism through Employee Ownership Award Finalists:

Dustin Avent-Holt, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Department of Sociology

"Organizing Economics: The Structuring of Neoliberalism in the U.S. Airline Industry"

Dustin is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. As a sociologist, Dustin is broadly interested in the institutional and relational processes that shape the organization of markets and firms, and the distribution of income. His primary scholarly focus has been to develop theoretical architecture for understanding how markets and firms are organized in particular historical moments, and what this means for the dynamics of income distribution across those markets and firms. He has pursued these ends through empirical research using a variety of quantitative and historical methods.

 

Vernon Woodley, University of Iowa

Department of Sociology

"Gender in the Workplace: The Effects of Social Networks and Status in Team-Structured Work Organizations"

Vernon is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Iowa with emphasis on Social Psychology and Work Organizations. Broadly speaking, Vernon is interested in how democratic work practices, particularly the use of self-managed project teams, affect occupational outcomes such as earnings, promotion, and job satisfaction on women and minorities in the private sector investments and financial services sector. As a person of color, Vernon’s interest in employee ownership is both professional and personal. In recent years, more women and minorities have entered the financial services sector; at the same time, that sector has increasingly organized workers into self-managed teams. Subsequently, Vernon states, it is necessary to examine how this relatively new strategy for organizing work, affects not only the organization productivity, but the workers themselves.