My Interest in Business Ethics

Region
Ontario

Sector
Academic - PhD Student

Areas of Interest
Accountability


Me in Brief

"Exchanging values, changing organizations: How activist ratings change corporate institutions" Dissertation Abstract How do corporate leaders identify best practices and choose those they wish to adopt? How do new practices enter corporate organizational fields and become institutionalized? Might the free availability of numeric governance scores influence the adoption decisions of firms? In this dissertation, I explore the capacity of raters to place a value on desired corporate behaviors (commensuration) and that of firms to respond strategically to being rated (reactivity and performativity). Building on neo-institutional theories and social studies of finance literature, I propose and test explanations for the influence of corporate rankings and ratings on the practices of individual companies and their diffusion through an organizational field. Finally, I consider the implications of this research for other fields of research in strategic management, focusing particularly on the construction of social performance metrics.