The 2013 Best Dissertation Winner and Runners-Up for the Academy of Management’s Organizations and the Natural Environment Division

Abstract

The Organizations and the Natural Environment (ONE) Division of the Academy of Management, like most Academy divisions, has an annual dissertation competition to recognize and honor exemplary work in the field. This article, kindly invited by the Editor of Business & Society, provides an overview of the winner and runners-up of that competition, insights into the process for selecting this work, and some reflections on future dissertations in the area.

Keywords

dissertation award emerging research Organizations and the Natural Environment Division

The Organizations and the Natural Environment (ONE, 2014) Division is “dedicated to the advancement of research, teaching, and service in the area of relationships between organizations and the natural environment.” We believe that these interactions are among the most significant components for the continued existence, development, and management of human organizations and societies. Currently, some negative manifestations of these interactions are the pollution of air, water, and land, and the depletion of non-renewable resources. Some positive ones are the development of renewable energy technologies, green building, habitat remediation, and regulations on harmful emissions. Our Division focuses its scholarly attention on the status, causes, and effects of these interactions. High-quality research is fundamental for understanding the complex causes relating organizations and the natural environment. The ONE Best Dissertation Award is one of several ONE Division efforts designed to foster such research. In this short overview, I will discuss the award process, offer short synopses of the winner and two runners-up for the award, and end with some thoughts about the directions of the research in the domain of organizations and the natural environment.

The Award Process

Since the ONE Dissertation Award’s inception, 16 have been given to recipients. In the last five years, working backwards, the awards have gone to Andrea Prado for “Essays on Industry Self-Regulation: Competition Between Environmental and Labor Certifications in the Flower Industry,” to Sara Soderstrom for “Processes of Agenda Change in Organizations,” to Jeffrey York for “The Entrepreneurial Creation of Public Goods: Evidence From the Green Building and Renewable Energy Industries,” to Dror Etzion for “Environmental Performance: What Matters, Who Decides and How Can We Know?” and to Todd Bryan for “Aligning Identity: Social Identity and Changing Context in Community-Based Environmental Conflict” (ONE, 2014). As can be seen from the topics and constructs embedded in the various thesis titles, the ONE Best Dissertation Awards have been given for a variety of current environmental issues, such as green building and measuring sustainability, and have favored a diversity of approaches, from social movements to entrepreneurship and on to regulatory policy. The variety of topics and diversity of approaches are in keeping with the ONE Division’s emphasis on multidisciplinary as a means for understanding the multifaceted organization and natural environment relationship.

The 2013 ONE Best Dissertation Award was presented to Andrea Liesen for her work, “Climate Change and Asset Prices—Evidence on Market Inefficiency in Europe.” A summary of this work is published in this special dissertation forum under the title “Climate Change and Financial Market Efficiency.” The runners-up for the award were Joern Hoppmann’s thesis, “The Role of Deployment Policies in Fostering Innovation for Clean Energy Technologies—Insights From the Solar Photovoltaic Industry,” and Sanjay Patnaik’s “Essays on International Non-Market Strategy and the Political Economy of Environmental Regulation.” Summaries of their work are published in this special dissertation forum under the same titles.

To select the best dissertation, five relatively generic criteria were applied to each thesis by each of the five committee members. These criteria were as follows:

Research question(s) and contribution to knowledge: Do the research questions address important and interesting topics or issues that contribute to both research and practice?

Literature review and theory building: Does the dissertation draw upon the appropriate literatures and do a good job of developing a testable set of research ideas, whether it does so inductively or deductively?

Research design and methods: Are the research design, sample, and analysis procedures appropriate and state-of-the-art?

Findings and implications: Does the thesis offer interesting new findings for the relevant bodies of literature and topic areas? Does the research open up new directions and also contribute, at least potentially, to better practice?

Organization and writing: Is the dissertation well-organized and well-written?

Each question was scored from 1 to 5, and a total score, plus comments, generated. In the first round of rating, the five top-scoring candidates were identified and drawn out of the pool for more in-depth assessment. Committee members then re-read each of the top five, re-rated the documents, and met to discuss the ratings and other summary comments until a consensus on the ranking of the five was reached. Unfortunately, only one best dissertation award could be given. But the committee felt it was important to acknowledge the two runners-up in the Academy meetings, plus send a note to the other two finalists (Joel Gehman and Patricia Kanashiro) about having made it into the final five.

A Synopsis of the ONE Best Dissertation

The Winner

As noted above, the winner of the ONE Best Dissertation Award in 2013 was Andrea Liesen’s “Climate Change and Asset Prices—Evidence on Market Inefficiency in Europe.” Dr. Liesen received her PhD from the University of Leeds in the School of Earth and Environment. She is currently a fellow at the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW), Berlin.

The purpose of the thesis was to analyze the efficiency of stock markets with regard to climate change induced systematic risk. An efficient stock market prices risk and rewards investors with higher returns for assuming higher levels of systematic risk. To that end, a Carhart Four-Factor Model (C4FM) extended for industry effects was applied to a sample of 433 European companies in the years 2005 to 2009. Unfortunately, but perhaps not completely unexpectedly, Dr. Liesen found that the stock market seemed inefficient in pricing all six proxies for climate change induced systematic risk. These six proxies were as follows: (a) a company’s affiliation to the European Emissions Trading Scheme, (b) being in high carbon industries, (c) the existence of disclosure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, (d) the completeness of such disclosures, (e) the absolute level GHG emissions, and (f) GHG efficiency. Dr. Liesen explored each proxy individually and jointly, providing convincing enough knowledge about the operation of the measures to rule the measures themselves—and not the market—as the likely reason for the pricing problems.

In an important intellectual pivot within the thesis, Professor Liesen went on to argue—and partially demonstrate—that, “persistent economically and statistically significant arbitrage opportunities exist when trading on publicly available information concerning these proxies” (p. iii). In particular, with regard to the efficient market perspective, Dr. Liesen concluded,

If the risk-adjusted abnormal returns found here were to continue to exist outside of this sample and the period studied, the increased climate change induced systematic risk related to the EU ETS might qualify as an additional risk premium at some point in the future. (p. 175)

The committee was impressed by the centrality of the problem tackled by Dr. Liesen, by the portfolio data collected to set up a credible test of market returns, and by the incorporation of very theoretically and practically important proxies for climate change related risk. Although one might quibble with the use of variants of the CAPM model and whether temporal changes were captured completely, the robustness of the results with different proxies and under different specifications was exemplary.

Runner-Up

One of the two runners-up for the best dissertation award was Joern Hoppmann’s “The Role of Deployment Policies in Fostering Innovation for Clean Energy Technologies—Insights From the Solar Photovoltaic Industry.” Dr. Hoppmann earned his PhD for this thesis at ETH Zurich, Department of Management, Technology and Economics (SusTech), where he is currently a senior researcher.

Professor Hoppmann’s thesis focused on how policy makers might foster technological progress in clean energy technologies, so as to alleviate adverse environmental impacts of the energy sector, reduce the dependence on fossil fuels, and create new jobs in dynamic high-tech industries. His specific research question was “How deployment policies affect technological innovation beyond a diffusion of existing technologies?” (p. vi). The design for addressing the question was based on four linked studies. The first examined the mechanisms through which deployment policies (e.g., feed-in tariffs, market incentives, etc.) affected technological learning at the firm level. The second paper explored knowledge spillovers as a moderator between policy-induced innovation and the economic competitiveness. The third was a deeper investigation of whether deployment policies themselves were endogenous to the technological change they sought to foster. The final study modeled policy as a tool relative to the market for innovation. All four studies were set in the German solar PV industry. Interestingly, the data ranged from qualitative information used to examine deployment mechanisms and policy formation as an endogenous factor, to quant information on spillover effects between 2000 and 2011 and simulations for technology evolution under policy variations.

Dr. Hoppmann found that deployment policies made a difference in the solar PV market—particularly in more mature segments—and that deployment mechanisms, such as demand-inducing policies and standardization, were critical for successful deployment. The downside of this particular deployment method, however, appeared to be the potential technology lock-in for mature tech firms. With regard to spillover, solar PV benefited from spillover from other related segments in firms, especially in R&D and in manufacturing equipment, though it was difficult to see how these other segments benefited from the PV segments. Not surprisingly, when it came to endogeneity, deployment policies were found to be related within the tech system to system change; but, more interestingly, in Dr. Hoppmann’s words, “the unforeseen dynamics of policy-induced technological change require policy makers to adjust the design of policies, leading to a cycle of issues and solutions labeled ‘compulsive policy-making’” (p. 36).

The committee was impressed with the focus and depth of the thesis. The four papers were closely linked, yet used different data and methods to tackle the underlying question about policy deployment and its effect on corporate tech innovation. The thesis also had wide ranging policy implications. Of course, as Dr. Hoppmann noted, the thesis was focused on solar PV and in Germany and in one time period. The radical change of the policy system in Germany in the 2013-2014 era has substantially modified the technology drivers within the system, making the thesis a worthy system study, but one that may already need updating before direct application.

Runner-Up

The other runner-up was Sanjay Patnaik’s “Essays on International Non-Market Strategy and the Political Economy of Environmental Regulation.” Based on this work, Dr. Patnaik received his doctorate (DBA) at Harvard Business School, and he is currently an assistant professor at George Washington University.

Dr. Patnaik’s thesis, in some ways, complements Dr. Liesen’s. Recall that Dr. Liesen’s was on the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) system and the various proxies for corporate effects on climate change that were being modeled to capture systematic risk in portfolio returns. Dr. Patnaik’s thesis was also on the EU ETS. In the first section of the chapter, Dr. Patnaik focused on iron and steel operations in the cap-and-trade program to determine whether some firms were able to incorporate climate mitigating practices and whether multinational corporations (MNCs) trading in the system could recognize the differences among firms and seize upon the arbitrage opportunities—the very opportunities noted to exist by Dr. Liesen. Indeed, MNCs, compared with smaller, more local firms, were more able to do so.

In the second part of the thesis, Dr. Patnaik explored the classic strategy issue of firm versus industry as strategic levels of analysis, adding in country as a third level for explaining variance. The approach for comparing effects was based on the established research stretching from Schmalensee (1985) forward to Makino, Takehiko, and Chan (2004). Patnaik also added in cross-country data, panel data from the EU ETS and focused on non-market (permit related) rents. He found that industry accounted for up to a third of the variance, with firms accounting for, perhaps a sixth, and country variance, less than a tenth. The implications were manifold, but among them were the need for complementary firm-industry assessment of non-market performance and the need to further explore the somewhat low country-level effects. The third part of thesis did precisely that it examined cross-country, institutional effects on non-market rents (permit exchange). It found evidence that some countries and legal traditions favored larger firms in particular industries, leading to higher non-market rents. Interestingly, left-leaning governments were typically associated with higher rather than lower rents in the system.

The committee was impressed by the scope of Dr. Patnaik’s thesis. Not only did it build out certain portions of the claims examined in depth by Dr. Liesen by adding in more industry- and country-level difference, the thesis also used a uniquely constructed dependent variable for capturing non-market rents and relied on high-quality methods. However, the breadth of the theorizing and sweep of the quantitative data did not quite match the in-depth knowledge of the EU ETS system evinced by Dr. Liesen’s study. Also, how well the country-level component explored in the third section fit with the claims about the importance of firms and industries in the prior two sections was an issue for some committee members.

Future Directions in ONE Dissertation Research and Methods of Selecting It

Having served on the ONE Best Dissertation Committee twice over the years, as well as Awards Chair and currently as Program Chair for the ONE Division, I would like to offer some closing observations on ONE dissertation topics, theory, method, and application. These observation are not just my own, but include those shared by other committee members, reviewers, and division members. Unfortunately, given the cumulative and composite nature of the comments, I cannot adequately reference or acknowledge their source except via a collective “thank you” to all.

A glance at the topics of the best dissertations winners, and a look at the pool in selected years, would show what you might expect: the topics are current in both theoretical and practical terms. In 2013, the topics around non-market performance and climate change stemmed from an increasing interest in the economics of sustainability and whether climate change effects could be mitigated by political and economic drivers. In future years, these climate change and policy topics are likely to remain current, but with wrinkles. As shown in the Hoppmann thesis, they are likely to be pushed down into more specific problems, jurisdictions, and types of technologies; at the same time, as shown by both the Liesen and Patnaik studies, there will be an increasing interest in cross-national or global studies, such as Schüssler, Ruling, and Wittneben’s (2014) work on the Copenhagen climate change meetings.

Quite a different strand of thinking about organizations and the natural environments comes from ONE researchers examining social issues, such as inequality and social enterprise. The degradation of the environment in many parts of the world can be attributed to the actions of disadvantaged groups involved in the negative externalities of production in those. This means that the drivers of and outcomes from environmental degradation are joined in a negatively reinforcing cycle around social inequality. We think that future work in ONE is likely to grapple more directly with such issues, including how social enterprise and clean technology initiatives may engage with the inequality process and mitigate its negative effects on the natural environment.

In terms of theory and method, ONE researchers continue to wrestle with building unique, within-domain theory and method specific to the organization and natural environment relationship, rather than just borrowing from organization theory and method as well as from theories and methods about the natural environment. In fact, all the three theses above borrow from domains like organization, finance, technology commercialization, and policy, as well as from climate change theory and solar tech knowledge. Still, each study also does a fine job of mixing organization and environment theories about their specific phenomenon in question. In this regard, Liesen’s study goes the furthest, for it starts from a within-domain perspective—to wit, that various climate change mitigation instruments may not achieve their targets and/or be inefficiently valued by markets. Quite the opposite starting assumptions and claims are used in the Hoppmann and Patnaik studies. Given Liesen’s different starting points, the issue becomes how to activate the arbitrage opportunities in particular directions to enhance the organization and environment relationship, even if symbolic means are required. Future dissertations in the area of the natural environment must continue to identify these within-domain starting points and do their best to blend both the organization and natural environment arguments about the phenomena.

Finally, when it comes to application, a look at the winners of the best dissertation awards over the last 16 years immediately shows that not only were the topics they examined au courrant in each year, but they had an applied or practical dimension. Indeed, both Best Dissertation committees on which I sat—as well as committees for ONE Best Paper, ONE Emerging Scholar, and ONE Distinguished Scholar—have given some consideration to whether a submission has policy or practice implications. However, in the case of the ONE Best Dissertation, our committee, at various points in time, did question how much the criterion in Point 4 about “better practice” should be weighted. An argument for path-breaking work specific to a new domain of study is that it may have to be so fundamental that its applied dimensions cannot yet be discerned. For instance, if a person were to examine the shift to the Anthropocene from the Holocene Era (Crutzen, 2002) and its implications, the sheer length of the time frames (thousands of years) might make any study done of the shift appear both overly historical and impossible to apply in policy circles. Yet, science is now suggesting that we move to these longer time frames and larger scale events if abrupt climate shifts and their effects are to be understood and, eventually, with luck and hardwork, partially mitigated.

Modifications to the Selection and Recognition Process?

This last concern brings us to a reconsideration of the selection and recognition process of best dissertations. In the future, the ONE Division remains committed to recognizing emerging, high-quality work such as displayed in the 2013 Best Dissertation nominees, runners-up, and winner. Our current process of soliciting nominations, however, is primarily internal to the Division and via word-of-mouth and web postings. We are endeavoring to reach out to more divisions for nominations. In fact, many of the researchers whose work was nominated are also listed as members of other divisions, such as BPS, OMT, SIM, and MOC. We encourage readers of this article to also serve as potential conduits for quality work. Please contact the ONE Division 2014-2015 Awards Chair, Judith Walls, at jwalls@ntu.edu.sg.

Our method for selecting the best dissertation has been via multiple rounds of committee assessment of submitted dissertations. The committee members were junior and senior members in the organization and natural environment field, and at least two of the five were recent Best Dissertation Award winners. In addition, the backgrounds of the committee were diverse in both theoretical and methodological terms. While this committee structure has been quite good for sorting among the dissertations on the first round, given its emphasis on breadth and diversity, we do see issues with the structure for sorting among top quality products on the second round. In the past, to overcome this issue on the second round, we pushed ourselves to read the dissertation in their full length (not just the 20-30 pages abstracted versions sent to us) and to weight the information from members who knew the areas, plus to consider the comments of recent dissertation winners carefully. We would welcome suggestions from applicants and from readers of Business & Society about this process, and how we might further improve upon it.

Finally, to recognize this emerging research, we have presented the ONE Best Dissertation Award (the plaque and check) to recipients at the annual Academy of Management Meetings, sent a letter to the university of the winner and runners-up, and posted the results in the ONE Newsletter (online and on the home page). In addition, courtesy of Business & Society, we discussed these winners and runners-up in a brief article, similar to this one. However, we do think that it is possible to do more to disseminate the work. There have been discussions of having symposia or PDWs designed around past Best Dissertation Award winners. Certainly, these winners have participated in doctoral consortia, offering advice for thesis design and how to publish this work. Again, we solicit advice from the readers and potential applicants about how to enhance this recognition process.

To end, we would like to thank the Duane Windsor, Editor of Business & Society, and the journal’s readers for this opportunity to discuss the ONE Best Dissertation award outcomes and process in the journal. Of course, we also wish to thank all the nominees, runners-up, and the winner for their fine submissions.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

P. Devereaux Jennings was the 2013 Organizations and the Natural Environment (ONE) Best Dissertation Awards Chair and is the incoming Program Chair for the ONE Division. He is also the incoming director of the Canadian Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (CCCSR) at the University of Alberta, where he currently teaches strategy and clean technology courses. Over the years, he and his colleagues have examined institutional effects on the natural environment, including water laws, oil spills, and environmental management systems, and he continues to work on social and environmental entrepreneurship issues. Besides having a long, varied career in research, he is known for his editorial services at Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Business Venturing, and Strategic Organization.

References

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(2002). Geology of mankind. Nature, 415, Article 23.

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Organizations and the Natural Environment. (2014). Retrieved from one.aomonline.org/ONE_Web/About_ONE.html

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(1985). Do markets differ much? American Economic Review, 75, 341-351.

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(2014). On melting summits: The limitations of field-configuring events as catalysts of change in transnational climate policy. Academy of Management Journal, 57, 140-171.