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Organizers

Patrick Haack

University of Lausanne

Patrick is Professor of Strategy and Responsible Management in the Department of Strategy, Globalization and Society at HEC Lausanne, University of Lausanne. He serves as the Director of the HEC Research Center for Grand Challenges and is an International Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation. Patrick’s research interests center on the organizational adoption and implementation of CSR as well as the application of experiments and formal models to the study of strategy and organizational processes. A major focus of his current research relates to the conceptual and empirical exploration of legitimacy, a crucial antecedent of social and institutional change. In this context, he is examining legitimacy dynamics in the fields of tax avoidance, anti-corruption, and human rights. One of his emerging research streams is the study of “intergenerational discounting,” a psychological tendency to perceive a desired result for future generations as less valuable than an equivalent result for the present generation.

Anna Jasinenko

University of Lausanne

Anna Jasinenko is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Lausanne (HEC) and will start an Assistant Professorship at the University of St. Gallen in August 2023. She holds a PhD in management from the HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management and a Master’s degree in psychology from the University of Vienna. Her research focuses on the psychological micro-foundation and multi-level interactions of social evaluations, such as legitimacy or the perception of organizational purpose. In her work, she uses experimental and multi-method approaches.

Experts

David Deephouse

University of Alberta

David L. Deephouse, Professor in the Department of Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Management of the Alberta School of Business in the University of Alberta, and International Research Fellow of the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation. I also served seven years as the School’s Associate Dean for PhD Programs and for Research. My research focuses on (1) indigenization and decolonization in business schools, universities, and businesses; (2) social evaluations of organizations, especially legitimacy and reputation; and (3) the causes and consequences of each, especially how organizations position themselves to balance pressures to conform to and differentiate from industry and institutional norms at local, regional, and global levels. I enjoy being with Nature, live music, and baking artisanal bread and pizza. I have licence plates from eight colonial jurisdictions across Turtle Island, and as indicated by my tie, would be sorted into Ravenclaw at Hogwarts.

Michael Etter

King's College London, King's Business School

Michael Etter is Reader at King’s College London. His work looks at the formation and management of social evaluation constructs, such a reputation and legitimacy, and how digital media influence these processes.

Derek Harmon

University of Michigan

I am broadly interested in the assumptions—the things we take for granted—that underlie and influence organizational and institutional phenomena. In particular, I am concerned with how these taken-for-granted assumptions emerge and persist over time, as well as the consequences that arise when they are unexpectedly disrupted. I have studied the assumptions developed around important social judgments (e.g., legitimacy, trust, and fairness), and have done so across numerous settings (e.g., central bank communications, nascent market emergence processes, misconduct in the Chicago Police Department, the adoption of AI decision-making tools, etc.). Overall, my work is highly interdisciplinary, drawing on theories from linguistics, sociology, economics, and psychology, and tries to reveal the microfoundational mechanisms that explain observed macro phenomena.

Laura Illia

University of Fribourg, Switzerland

Laura Illia is Professor of Communication, Business and Social Responsibility at the Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Science (University of Fribourg), Switzerland. Her work is on how discourses and narratives contribute to our understanding of business in a new media landscape where Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking the advent. By applying new digital methods such as machine learning to big dataset she analyzes the legitimation of organizations on social media and the use of new media by companies in the dialogue with their stakeholders.

Roy Suddaby

University of Victoria

Roy Suddaby is the Winspear Professor of Management at the Peter B. Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria, Canada. His research focuses on processes of institutional and societal change with a particular emphasis on understanding how social value judgements – legitimacy, authenticity, status, reputation – are mobilized in social value regimes to promote or resist institutional change.

Alex Bitektine

JMSB - Concordia

Alex Bitektine is Professor of Management in the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) and Canada Research Chair in Institutions and Strategic Entrepreneurship, Tier II. He holds PhD and MBA from McGill University. His research interests include institutional theory, entrepreneurship, social judgments (legitimacy, status, reputation, trust, and others), non-market strategies, sustainable development, as well as application of experimental methods in organizational research. In his research, he seeks to integrate multi-level approach and findings from microsociology and social psychology into Organizational Theory and Management studies. He conducts research using both qualitative and quantitative methods. His work has been published in the Academy of Management Review, Organizational Research Methods, Academy of Management Annals, Academy of Management Discoveries, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of World Business and others. He serves on editorial boards of the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, and the Academy of Management Learning and Education.

Workshop Participants

Ali Ghods

IAE Aix-Marseille University

Ali Ghods holds a position as a junior lecturer at IAE Aix-Marseille Graduate School of Management. His area of research focuses on the topic of entrepreneurship, with a particular interest in exploring the legitimacy of new ventures. In addition, he is affiliated with the research chair of New Venture Legitimacy at Aix-Marseille University; the chair organizes an annual Summer School of New Venture Legitimacy to conduct a dialogue with entrepreneurs and researchers. Besides, Ali has taken on the role of organizing a course entitled "How to Create a Legitimate Business" which is aimed at students within the CIVIS alliance.

Alicia Blanco-González

Rey Juan Carlos University

Alicia Blanco-González I am Full Professor of Marketing at Rey Juan Carlos University (Madrid, Spain). I am Vice-president of European Academy of Management and Business Economics (AEDEM) and Co-director of Organizational Legitimacy Observatory (https://www.legitimacyobservatory.org/). I hold a Ph. D. from Rey Juan Carlos University, MA degree in Marketing from Rey Juan Carlos University, MA degree in statistical methodologies from Polytechnic University of Madrid, and BA in political sciences from University of Santiago de Compostela. I have been a visiting scholar at Emerson College (Boston), University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), Ramón Llull University (Spain) and University of Vigo (Spain). My research lines focus on organizational legitimacy, social responsibility, new consumer behaviors and quantitative methodologies.

Amin Yousefi

Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam

I am doing my PhD in Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship. In my dissertation I am investigating the overlap of two sub-streams of institutional theory: value and identity. My dissertation consists of three projects. The second project is a qualitative case study of a religiously inspired organization that provides micro-credits and training modules for over 60,000 small enterprises. In this project, we try to understand how a meta religion (combination of Sufism, Zoroastrianism, and Shiatism) influences entrepreneurial activities. The third project is an ethnographic field work within a nomadic tribe. I walked with the nomads during their seasonal immigration for over 100km in my first field trip.

Angelo Deleo

L'Università della Svizzera italiana (USI Lugano)

Angelo Deleo is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in management at l'Università della Svizzera italiana (USI Lugano), under the supervision of Prof. Paul Gouvard. He holds a B.A. degree from the George Washington University, and an M.A. degree from Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven. His specific research interests include topics of legitimacy beliefs and judgments. His primary work in development involves the organizational level of legitimacy, between the individual and institutional, as a way of understanding how the varying beliefs of organizational members regarding the legitimacy of certain norms and practices affect organizational action and performance.

Björn Claes

The Open University

Björn Claes is an Associate Professor in Operations Management and Teaching Director of the Masters Programmes at the Open University Business School (Milton Keynes) in the United Kingdom. Besides his interests in social evaluations, particularly with regards to the legitimacy judgment formation process, his research interests span the behavioral aspects of operations and supply chain management and business processes in general. His work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Management Studies, Human Resource Management, Industrial Marketing Management, International Journal of Production Economics, Prometheus, Supply Chain Forum, among others.

Chang-Wa Huynh

HEC Paris / ESCP Business School

Chang-Wa Huynh is a PhD candidate in Strategy and Business Policy at HEC Paris, a Joly Family Chair in Purposeful Leadership Fellow, a member of the Society & Organizations Institute, and an incoming Assistant Professor in Management (Strategy) at ESCP Business School. His research seeks to understand how social evaluations and morality determine the relationships between firms and societies, mainly in the context of purpose-driven companies. His work integrates both practical lines of questioning from his experience in industry and his theoretical background in philosophy, mathematics, law, and management.

Charles-Clemens Rüling

Grenoble Ecole de Management

Charles-Clemens Rüling holds a doctorate from the University of Geneva. He is a professor of organization and management theory at Grenoble Ecole de Management, and his research looks at institutional change and maintenance from a multi-level perspective. He leads the Chair for Public Trust in Health at Grenoble Ecole de Management, focusing on the impact of technological innovation on the healthcare field. He has served as an editor of Long Range Planning, and his work has been published in the Academy of Management Journal, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Research Policy, Organization Studies, and Health Policy.

Christina Kannegiesser

University of Mannheim

Christina Kannegießer is a doctoral student at the University of Mannheim and a research associate at the Professorship for Sustainable Business at the University of Hamburg. She holds a Master of Science in Management from the University of Mannheim, Germany. Her research broadly revolves around sustainable business practices and alternative forms of organizing inside and outside established organizations. Christina particularly focuses on studying the tensions which can occur between purpose-orientation and profit-seeking, e.g., by examining how profit-purpose tensions are perceived and evaluated by stakeholders, or by investigating how these tensions can be managed.

Craig Carroll

Rice University

Craig E. Carroll (Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin) is the Founder and Executive Director of Observatory on Corporate Reputation® (OCR) and Lecturer of Management in the Department of Strategy and Environment at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. Dr. Carroll’s teaching, research, and public engagement focuses on the roles of communication and media for creating social change through organizations. Carroll has published three research compendiums on corporate reputation: Corporate Reputation and the News Media (Routledge, 2010), the Handbook of Communication and Corporate Reputation (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), and the SAGE Encyclopedia of Corporate Reputation (Sage Publications, 2016). With Prof. Roderick Hart of the University of Texas at Austin, he is the co-author of DICTION 7.1, a computer-aided text analysis program that analyzes texts for their rhetorical influence strategies.

Cynthia Friedrich

RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau

I have been a member of the Chair of Sustainability Management at the RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau since completing my Master's degree in Industrial Engineering and Management. In the course of my PhD, I am primarily working on the occupation of sustainability managers with an emphasis on the three aspects of legitimacy, professionalization and institutionalization. However, legitimacy research is of particular interest to me because of its multifaceted nature and the recent developments in terms of its conceptualization. My research in this area is mainly at the individual level and is methodologically open. Another peculiarity is the nature of the legitimacy subject in the form of occupations or even individuals rather than organizations.

David Langley

University of Groningen

During 30+ years working in industry, in the telecom / internet sector, I gradually migrated towards academia, recently taking the chair in Digital Transformation & Strategy at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. I have set up and led collaborative research and innovation projects in the areas of health, energy, banking and the public sector, among others. Now I continue to connect industry and academia on the topics of digital transformation, the societal impact of digital technology, and its importance for sustainable business practice. My work has been published in journals including Journal of Interactive Marketing and Organization Science.

Duygu Phillips

University of Delaware

Duygu Phillips is an assistant professor of entrepreneurship at the Alfred Lerner College of Business & Economics. She earned her Ph.D. in Entrepreneurship from Oklahoma State University and a MSc in Marketing from the University of Birmingham, UK. Dr. Phillips’ research focuses on new venture strategy and cultural entrepreneurship integrating institutional theory, specifically legitimacy, and organizational identity theory. She studies how new venture identity is created and communicated in various contexts to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the stakeholders. She also conducts research on family businesses, innovation, women and minority entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial finance. Her research has appeared in the Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research Proceedings, and Academy of Management Proceedings. She also has published several book chapters focused on entrepreneurial finance and family business.

Evelina Gillard

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Evelina Gillard is a scholar in the second year of PhD at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam focused on human resources management. For her PhD, Evelina is looking at human resource management strength from a strategic perspective and its relationship with organizational legitimacy across multiple levels. Consequently, this new reading of organizational legitimacy as an antecedent of human resource management strength may explain broader human resource processes and the way they contribute to organizational performance and resilience. Her research prior to the PhD program at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam includes publications on procedural corruption as illegitimate use of authority in service organizations. Past recipient of the French Government’s Postgraduate Scholarship for Ukrainians and holder of the master’s degree in business administration, Evelina has several years of professional experience in international real estate management, automobile, and service industry. She is currently working in a private hospitality business management school Cesar Ritz Colleges Switzerland.

Felix Honecker

University of Glasgow

Felix is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Early-Stage Researcher at the University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School. His PhD research is part of the EC-funded MCSA-ITN Project Legitimation of Newness and Its Impact on the EU Agenda for Change. Felix's research interests include the analysis of legitimacy and other social evaluations of technology-driven start-ups, as well as broader digital entrepreneurship trends.

Francisco Diez-Martin

Rey Juan Carlos University

Full Professor of Business Management and Director of the Master in Advanced Management at Rey Juan Carlos University (Madrid). He is member of the European Academy of Management and Business Economics. Editor of the Journal of Management and Business Education. His current line of research is organizational legitimacy. Antecedents and consequences of organizational legitimacy.

Hung Nguyen

ESSCA School of Management

Dr. Nguyen is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at ESSCA School of Management, where he conducts research and teaches courses on entrepreneurship and social innovation, with a focus on social and sustainable business models. In addition to his position at ESSCA, he is also a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Social Innovation and Impact of the University of Northampton in the UK, and he co-organizes the annual Social Business Creation conference at HEC Montreal in Canada. Dr. Nguyen’s career has been centered around interdisciplinary research, with a focus on investigating how entrepreneurship can effectively tackle and resolve significant societal challenges. He often uses the "Economies of Worth" theory and the "Social-Symbolic Work" theory for his research.

Ivan Miroshnychenko

IMD

Ivan Miroshnychenko is a Research Fellow and Term Research Professor of Family Business and Sustainability at the International Institute for Management Development. He carries out research on the economics and management of family businesses and sustainability with a focus on how to manage growth dynamics, nurture environmental champions, and design successful family-business governance mechanisms.

Lukas Krenz

University of Mannheim

Lukas Krenz is a doctoral candidate at the Chair of Sustainable Business at the University of Mannheim. He holds a Master of Management from the University of Mannheim and a Master in International Business from Queen’s University, Canada. In his research, Lukas focuses on how consumers perceive and react to firms’ sustainability activities. Specifically, he is interested in how firms can stimulate more sustainable consumer behavior.

Marco Clemente

ZHAW - School of Management and Law

Marco Clemente is a Professor of Sustainability and Management, Co-Head of the Research Center for Corporate Responsibility at the ZHAW School of Management and Law. His research interests include organizational misconduct, corporate scandals, and, more broadly, social evaluations and strategic management. He has analyzed a variety of contexts, including automotive, advertising, and sports. Marco has published in leading academic outlets, including the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Management Inquiry, and Research in the Sociology of Organizations. Marco has organized several PDWs at the Academy of Management and EGOS on organizational wrongdoing and corporate scandals. He also has a passion for personal development. Marco did a TEDx in Mantova on the topic of personal crises, and he is the author of the book “Simple Rule of The Day: The daily art of becoming a better you”. Marco is also an executive coach and created a top-rated MBA elective called: “Strategize your life with Simple Rules”. Marco has an M.Sc. in Management from LSE and a Ph.D. in Strategic Management from HEC Paris. Before joining Academia, Marco was a marketing manager at Procter & Gamble in the beauty sector in Rome and Geneva. Marco lived in eight countries between Europe, North America, and Asia and has visited more than 50 countries.

Melanie Richards

Technical University Munich (TUM)

Melanie Richards is Associate Professor at the Technical University of Munich (Germany) where she holds the EQUA endowed Chair for Family Business Culture and Ownership. Before, she has been Associate Professor at the University of Bath (UK). Her main research interests include corporate social responsibility (CSR), entrepreneurship and innovation in family businesses. Her work has been published in leading journals such as Journal of Management Studies, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Business Ethics, and Journal of Product Innovation Management. She is currently serving on the editorial review board of Family Business Review.

Mirjam Goudsmit

Radboud University Nijmegen

Mirjam Goudsmit is Assistant Professor of Strategic Management at the Nijmegen School of Management at Radboud University in the Netherlands. Mirjam's research interests include strategy and innovation in turbulent environments. She studies strategic choice, legitimacy, and interactions between organizations and their environment - as industries arise and evolve in relation to new technology, stakeholders, social media, and grand societal challenges. Mirjam received her PhD from UNSW-Sydney (University of New South Wales), Australia. Prior to academia, Mirjam had different roles in finance, insurance, sports, and information (media) industries.

Odile Hettler

Grenoble Ecole de Management (GEM), France

Odile Hettler holds a Doctor of Pharmacy degree (Pharm.D.) from the Faculty of Pharmacy in Strasbourg (France), a postgraduate degree in Pharmaceutical Medicine from the Faculty of Medicine in Basle (Switzerland) and an EMBA from the William E. Simon School University of Rochester (USA). She is currently a Doctorate candidate in Business Administration and Management at GEM, France. Odile has more than 25 years of scientific and business experience accumulated in multifunctional and multicultural environments in the pharmaceutical industry, mainly in R&D and Marketing. She worked for Zeneca Pharma Laboratories, for Sandoz and then for Novartis. Her responsibilities included leading an international clinical team working on the development of Lamisil (terbinafine) from Phase 2 clinical trials through to preparation and submission of the final dossier. During this time she interacted with Swissmedic, the European Medical Agency (“EMA”) and the US Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) and was invited as a speaker at national and international congresses. She moved to Marketing after completing her EMBA and worked as a task force member reporting to the Novartis Pharma CEO evaluating internet suppliers and investment opportunities. Later, she led a cross-functional team controlling market research, competitive intelligence, business analytics and commercial assessments. In 2005, she moved to the Canton de Vaud in order to follow her husband and family and set up a consulting practice. Odile has been lecturing at HEC Lausanne since 2015, where she brings her real-life experience as an expert to her work on the Strategy Consulting Projects with EMBA students. She has also been lecturing within the health care and strategy module which forms part of the EMBA health care focus curriculum.

Patricia Enzmann

ZHAW SML

After completing my master’s degree in Industrial & Organizational Psychology, Social Psychology and Business Administration at the University of Berne in 2000, I started working at UBS. In 2007, I relocated to China and attained an MBA degree from the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. Following my studies, I headed until 2013 the European Union Chamber of Commerce Chapter in Nanjing where I represented the interests of the European Business. Back in Switzerland, I joined in 2014 the Department of International Business of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences as Research Associate where I gained experience in publishing peer-reviewed articles, leading projects and modules in an international business and Asian context, while I also served as the ad interim head of the Center for Asia Business. My research interests are entrepreneurship at the intersection of strategy and institutional theory in the cultural and creative industry.

Sonia Siraz

University of Essex

Sonia Siraz is Assistant Professor at the University of Essex (UK). She received her Ph.D. from IE Business School (Spain) in entrepreneurship and organization theory. She was a postdoc with Sharon Alvarez at the University of Pittsburgh (USA). Prior to management academia, Sonia specialized in international and EU law, worked as an Assistant Professor of Law in France and was an entrepreneur, founding her own consultancy firm, with a portfolio of clients ranging from Governmental authorities to SMEs. Her research seeks to investigate how legitimacy perceptions in complex environments enhance or constrain the success of controversial organizations, and entrepreneurial endeavors. Specifically, her interests include analyzing the grey area between legitimacy and illegitimacy, the interplay between validity, validity beliefs and propriety, and minority entrepreneurship (ethno-racial, gender, immigrant etc..). To carry out her research, Sonia primarily uses experiments and quantitative text analysis. For a detailed elaboration about clarifying the grey area between legitimacy-illegitimacy, please see Siraz, Claes, De Castro and Vaara (2023) in the Journal of Management Studies, and Sonia’s website for further details on her research.

Yang Mei

University of Zurich

I am currently working as a Research Assistant at both the University of Zurich (Executive Education, 80%) and the University of St. Gallen (Institute of Responsible Innovation, 20%). Additionally, I am independently collaborating with a scholar at the National University of Singapore on a research project. I would like to take this opportunity during the workshop to seek advice on my search for a PhD program with my research proposal. My research interests include organization theories, social evaluation, organizational identity, empirical ethics, and paradox research. I am particularly interested in applying mixed methods such as experiments, content analysis, and field research in my work. My academic background is in Hispanic studies and sport ethics, and I have also gained some work experience in international relations and business. I am excited to learn from everyone!