dr. C.H. (Rieneke) Slager

I research corporate sustainability, i.e. the ways in which corporations manage environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues they encounter. I am particularly interested in the ways in which stakeholders, including shareholders, can help or push corporations to play an active role in tackling sustainability challenges.

In previous research, I have looked at the interplay between institutional investors, their tools, and corporations. For example I have studied how sustainability ratings influence corporate sustainability responses, and how institutional investors work together to influence corporate sustainability through shareholder engagement on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. Here, I study the causally complex ways in which ESG shareholder engagement may lead to improvements in corporate sustainability, as well as the communication processes that are constitutive of ESG shareholder engagement. Methodologically, I frequently employ a combination of qualitative case studies, communication analysis and configurational methods, such as Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA).