I am a Professor at the Ivey Business School.
I spend most of my professional time, thinking about business sustainability. This is where businesses aim to assure the prosperity of today’s and tomorrow’s generations. It ensures that business outcomes are connected not only to better business, but a better world.
In the process of amassing enormous wealth, businesses have been taxing the planet beyond its regenerative capacity. Yet, reversing this trend is difficult because profit-seeking is encoded in the DNA of business and reinforced by its surrounding systems. I believe that there is a better way. Business can indeed create wealth, distribute it equitably, without taxing the planet.
I describe my research program in the ‘research’ menu tab above. Essentially, I suggest that the dimensions of time, space and scale are currently undertheorized in business strategy. Applying a systems thinking lens, I show how sustainable development is not merely an elusive vision, but an achievable aspiration. I have garnered these insights not only by studying business sustainability by applying both qualitative and quantitative methods.
In addition to my own scholarly research, I am committed to raising the profile of sustainability research in my professional Academy. To that end, I have taken editorial roles at the Academy of Managment Journal (Associate editor from 2010-2013, Deputy Editor from 2016-2019) and have sat on over 10 other editorial boards. In 2005, I also founded Ivey’s Centre for Building Sustainable Value, which aimed to raise the profile of research, teaching and practice of sustainability at Ivey. I stepped down in 202.
I credit many of my insights through my engagement with the community of practice (employees, executives). In 2003, I founded the Network for Business Sustainability and transferred leadership in 2021. In 2019, I founded Innovation North, which I continue to lead. The ambition of both initiatives is to engage with executives closely in the research process. By doing so, I believe researchers will produce more creative, impactful research and managers will innovate new sustainable practices.
I have been at the Ivey Business School at Western University (London, Ontario) since 1999. I like ‘little’ London, as I am able to work at a world-class institution in a livable city of human scale. I am proudly Canadian because Canada values diversity in all its various forms. There are few places that offer the community and lifestyle I enjoy.
But, I do appreciate the opportunity to build community elsewhere. I have had appointments of various forms and lengths at the University of Cambridge, MIT, the Copenhagen Business School, and Monash. I am also truly honoured to hold three honorary doctorates from the University of Hamburg, University of Montreal, and VU Amsterdam.
Maybe the source of my curiosity and recent ambitions is attributable to the University of Oxford, where I earned my Doctorate in Management Studies. It was wonderful to gain a ‘classical’ education in business, while representing Oxford in both squash and wine tasting in varsity matches — which I assure you were not practiced simultaneously. Since then, I have taken to gardening and road biking, but still continue to enjoy wine.
I live with my husband, who is a mathematician at Western University. He offers unending debate on the (de)merits of social science, while I try to hold my own about the value to contemporary society of theoretical mathematics.