Action4Commons researchers had quite a memorable participation in the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (AoM) this year. The researchers were granted two distinguished awards, gave paper presentations as well as organised and participated in workshops. The 83rd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management took place in Boston, Massachusetts, USA from 4-8 August 2023.
Workshops
Laura Albareda (LUT University) participated as facilitator for the discussion on the Professional Development Workshop (PDW) Community-based organizing and entrepreneurship to address Grand Challenges. The main goal of the PDW was to connect community-based organizing and community-based enterprises (CBEs) to the current research context of addressing grand challenges. The main discussion focused on while research on community-based phenomena is growing, there remains a need to further explore the practices and processes of community-based organizing, including how communities shape entrepreneurial efforts and how CBEs work in and with communities to address challenges and build local resiliency. Moreover, the PDW discussed the future of community-based organizing research and scholarship seeking to advance organization theory and research in entrepreneurship and social and environmental issues in management. The PDW connects to Action4commons project as it was interested on how communities play an important role in mining and biodiversity, and how communities carry out their regeneration work and build resiliency. The organizers were Jennifer Brenton and Sara Soderstrom (University of Michigan) and Natalie Slawinski (University of Victoria). The panelists were Oana Branzei (Wester University), Helen Haugh (University of Cambridge), Tom Lumpkin (University of Tennessee) and Ana Maria Peredo (University of Ottawa).
Another PDW was organized by Johanna Kujala and Anna Heikkinen (Tampere University) together with Sybille Sachs and Silvan Oberholzer from HWZ University of Applied Sciences, Zurich. The topic was Creating nature-positive value through human-nature stakeholder relationships and the aim of the PDW was to debate how nature-positive value creation can result from human-nonhuman nature stakeholder relationships. The PDW provided insights into the latest research on stakeholder engagement and nonhuman nature stakeholders and brought together leading thinkers such as Irene Henriques (York University), José-Carlos Garcia-Rosell (University of Lappland), Robert Phillips (York University), Nicolas Poggioli (Appalachian State University), Mark Starik (University of Wisconsin) and Judith Walls (University of St.Gallen). Participants had the opportunity to contribute to novel approaches, going beyond human-focused theorizing, to how firms can make sense of human-nonhuman nature stakeholder relationships and underlying mechanisms for value creation that benefits nature and society.
Paper presentations and awards
Action4Commons/WP1 researchers were authors in two papers presented in the meeting. The first paper titled A typology of nonhuman stakeholders authored by Anna Heikkinen, Sybille Sachs and Johanna Kujala aims to examine what types of nonhuman stakeholders firms can identify when they consider nonhuman nature as a stakeholder in their activities. Building on previous research, the paper proposes two dimensions that distinguish relationships with nonhuman nature as a stakeholder: an intrinsic vs. instrumental approach to nonhuman stakeholders and remote vs. intertwined connection with nonhuman stakeholders. Based on these dimensions, the paper suggests four frames of nonhuman stakeholders: an environment, a resource, a protected and a partner.
The second paper titled Knowing through Artist-led practices for the Inclusion of Nature as a Stakeholder authored by Nil Gulari (Audencia Business School), Anna Heikkinen, Johanna Kujala and Anna Dziuba (Hanken School of Economics) responds to recent calls to identify alternative ways of knowing and examine how they can advance the (non-anthropocentric) inclusion of nonhuman stakeholders in organizational activities. This paper was designated as a “Best Paper” by Social Issues in Management (SIM) Division and, as a recognition, published in the AOM2023 Proceedings.
In addition, Laura Albareda, Samuli Patala (Aalto University), Minna Halme (Aalto University) received the 2023 Responsible Research in Management Distinguished winner award for the paper Patala, S., Albareda, L., & Halme, M. (2022). Polycentric governance of privately owned resources in circular economy systems. Journal of Management Studies, 59(6), 1563–1596.
The winners were honored at an Awards Ceremony and Celebration held at the Academy of Management’s 2023 Annual Meeting on August 6, at the Hynes Convention Center, Boston MA. The award is sponsored by the Academy of Management Fellows and co-sponsored by Responsible Research in Business and Management. This annual award recognizes and celebrates recent research that benefits society by producing credible and useful knowledge.