Transitioning toward Sustainability: How Corporate Sustainability Strategies Affect Stakeholders' Actions

向可持续发展转型：企业可持续发展战略如何影响利益相关者的行动

• 批准号: ES/X007308/1
• 负责人: Nareuporn Piyasinchai
• 金额: $ 14.88万
• 依托单位: University of Cambridge
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FX007308%2F1
• 关键词: Transitioning; toward; Sustainability; How; Corporate

My research on corporate sustainability is motivated by the big problems we face. While we are facing unprecedented climate change and rising inequality, and still navigating the COVID pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war has highlighted in heartbreaking ways of the human rights crisis, and extreme political instability. While the governments are not functioning well, I believe businesses can step up and take the lead in solving the world's problems at scale. Over the past decades, organizations are also facing increasing pressures from diverse groups of stakeholders to engage in sustainability practices. Yet, despite growing demands for corporate sustainability and increasing opportunities arising from technological advance and economic growth, such problems persist, and the society's transition toward sustainability appears increasingly precarious. Thus, my ongoing and proposed research examines the important unintended consequences arising from the interaction between stakeholders' reactions to firms' sustainability practices and offers solutions for firms and policy makers to be well prepared and address such unanticipated problems. Specifically, my proposed research includes two main streams and uses two main methods.The first stream (organization- and industry-level) is quantitative empirical studies using archival data of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues of firms globally. My proposed research examines how stakeholders perceive and evaluate firms' ESG strategies, and how firms respond. The insights would shed light on the key factors that drive variation in corporate engagement in ESG practices (i.e., why some firms positively respond and are motivated to be sustainable, while others are not). For instance, one of my dissertation chapters discovers the novel phenomenon that public criticism regarding firms' ESG practices during periods of complexity and uncertainty such as global crises can create divergent path-dependent spirals of firms' responses and reinforce over time after the crsies i.e., some firms race to the top by becoming more sustainability, while others race to the bottom by reducing ESG practices. My proposed research during my postdoctoral fellow aims to answer "why". Specifically, I will empirically examine more deeply about the mechanisms that drive such divergent spirals. For instance, firms that were highly criticized during global crises might face resource constraints and higher costs to invest in ESG as well as risk attacks of greenwashing from ESG investments, and thus they can benefit financially by shifting their resources away from ESG to invest in other strategic activities. Thus, public criticism, which aims to encourage organizational learning and reform, can have unintended effects by creating polarization across firms in our society today.The second stream (an individual-level) focuses on psychological mechanisms that drive behavioral reactions of individual stakeholders to firms' ESG practices, using field and online experiment methods. My proposed field experiment project is to examine how firms can communicate multiple goals (i.e., financial, puspose, and ESG) to motivate gig workers, and when and under what conditions communicating ESG can backfire i.e., leading to unintended effects such as making employees demotivated and thus lowering performance. I will conduct field experiments at NextOnc, a precision medicine startup (with remote work context) which I co-founded, by recruiting gig workers through online platforms.The insights from my proposed research will provide important implications to both academia and practice on how to anticipate and overcome such unintended consequences. For instance, my work can inform companies on how to most effectively engage in and communicate ESG practices as well as inform policy makers and regulators on how to scrutinize and work in partnership with firms to accelerate the diffusion of sustainability practices in our society.

我对企业可持续发展的研究源于我们面临的重大问题。尽管我们面临着前所未有的气候变化和日益严重的不平等，并且仍在应对新冠疫情，但俄罗斯-乌克兰战争以令人心碎的方式凸显了人权危机和极端的政治不稳定。虽然政府运作不佳，但我相信企业可以挺身而出，带头大规模解决世界问题。在过去的几十年里，组织还面临着来自不同利益相关者群体的越来越大的压力，要求他们参与可持续发展实践。然而，尽管对企业可持续发展的需求不断增长，技术进步和经济增长带来的机会也越来越多，但这些问题仍然存在，社会向可持续发展的转型似乎越来越不稳定。因此，我正在进行和拟议的研究探讨了利益相关者对企业可持续发展实践的反应之间的相互作用所产生的重要的意外后果，并为企业和政策制定者提供了解决方案，以便做好充分准备并解决此类意外问题。具体来说，我提出的研究包括两个主流，并使用两种主要方法。第一个流（组织和行业层面）是使用全球企业环境、社会和治理（ESG）问题的档案数据进行定量实证研究。我提出的研究探讨了利益相关者如何看待和评估公司的 ESG 战略，以及公司如何应对。这些见解将揭示导致企业参与 ESG 实践发生变化的关键因素（即为什么一些公司积极响应并有动力实现可持续发展，而另一些公司则不然）。例如，我的论文章节之一发现了一种新现象，即在全球危机等复杂和不确定时期，公众对企业 ESG 实践的批评可能会造成企业反应的不同路径依赖螺旋，并在危机后随着时间的推移而强化，即：一些公司通过提高可持续性而竞相跻身榜首，而另一些公司则通过减少 ESG 实践而竞相垫底。我在博士后期间提出的研究旨在回答“为什么”。具体来说，我将根据经验更深入地研究驱动这种不同螺旋的机制。例如，在全球危机期间受到严厉批评的企业可能会面临资源限制、ESG投资成本上升以及ESG投资洗绿的风险攻击，因此他们可以通过将资源从ESG转移到其他领域来获得经济利益。战略活动。因此，旨在鼓励组织学习和改革的公众批评可能会在当今社会的企业之间造成两极分化，从而产生意想不到的效果。第二个流派（个人层面）侧重于驱动个体利益相关者对企业行为反应的心理机制ESG实践，采用现场和在线实验方法。我提出的现场实验项目是研究公司如何传达多个目标（即财务、目的和 ESG）来激励零工工人，以及何时以及在什么条件下传达 ESG 可能会适得其反，即导致意想不到的影响，例如使员工失去积极性从而降低性能。我将在 NextOnc 进行现场实验，这是我共同创立的一家精准医疗初创公司（具有远程工作环境），通过在线平台招募零工。我提出的研究的见解将为学术界和实践提供重要启示，帮助他们了解如何预见并克服此类意外后果。例如，我的工作可以帮助企业了解如何最有效地参与和沟通 ESG 实践，并帮助政策制定者和监管机构了解如何审查企业并与企业合作，以加速可持续发展实践在社会中的传播。