Faculty of Economics and Business

More and more companies are appointing Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs). But what makes the presence of CSOs effective for companies’ corporate social responsibility (CSR)? PhD candidate Marloes Korendijk explores this together with Professor Rian Drogendijk, who is the Director of Graduate Studies at the Faculty of Economics and Business. They examine how the relationship between CSOs and their companies’ CSR activities is shaped by firm-level factors such as board diversity and the presence of a CSR committee, as well as country-level factors like CSR standards. Additionally, the researchers investigate whether the CSO’s role is merely symbolic for CSR communication or if they have a tangible impact on CSR outcomes.

Assistant Professor Katrin Heucher is one of six FEB researchers who received an acceleration grant from FEB's Research Institute. She has extensively researched how individuals can catalyze positive social change from within organisations. FEB Research talked to her about her project proposal and what she intends to achieve.

In his research at FEB, Hagen Kruse focused on topics of macroeconomic development. Part of his PhD research, on structural change in developing countries, is already mentioned in a report of the World Bank and another of his projects serves as background to a forthcoming World Bank report. Now, on the brink of obtaining his PhD, Hagen has started a job as an economist at the World Bank head-quarters in Washington, D.C.

Concerns over climate change are more pressing than ever. More and more firms are taking actions to improve corporate environmental sustainability (CES), such as appointing governance actors with assigned roles and responsibilities to improve the environmental sustainability of the corporation. For example, Royal Dutch Shell appointed clean energy leaders to manage Shell's transition from brown to green energy. However, only weeks before Shell was set to announce the strategy for the transition, its clean energy leaders left the firm. Intrigued by such developments, PhD scholar Ina Karn and co-authors wondered why improving CES remained a challenge, even though firms take actions such as appointing relevant actors.

In today’s business landscape, corporate environmental performance transcends mere metrics; it is a strategic imperative. The question then arises: How can organizations prepare themselves to approach environmental challenges, embedding sustainability into the core of business strategies? A recent study by Professors Asad, Hennig and Oehmichen shows reconfiguring boardrooms to include environmental expertise is one solution.

Jutta Bolt, Robert Inklaar, Bart Los and Gaaitzen de Vries are the leading experts of the Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC). Their focus is on the measurement and analysis of global economic welfare. The GGDC hosts a range of comprehensive open access databases. Since 2010, Google Analytics has recorded more than 3.4 million visits to the GGDC project websites.

In the face of societal and environmental challenges, organizations need to do more than just make symbolic gestures or resort to greenwashing. The real change-makers are often found within the organizations themselves. They are the insider social change agents. These individuals are driving change and have the potential to significantly impact societal transformations. However, their efforts need to extend beyond isolated wins within their organizations.In a recent review in the Academy of Management Annals, Assistant Professor Katrin Heucher, along with a team of international co-authors, delves into how these individual efforts can aggregate and lead to broader, more impactful change.

Creating societal impact is one of the ambitions of FEB's research policy. This case is one of the impact cases rewarded by FEB in 2023. Paul Buijs’ research on sustainable urban freight transport actively engages with practice. Activities initially focused on Groningen and its surrounding areas, but have now expanded to national and international contexts. His involvement with practice has resulted in contributions to policy documents, but also to the development, implementation, and evaluation of sustainable urban freight transport solutions with the goal of improving accessibility and quality of life in cities.