Upcoming Events & Recent Seminars

“ESG as the latest entrant to the alphabet soup: The challenges and dynamics of Business & Society research”
by Dirk Matten
York University
Place: MA-330

Abstract

ESG (‘Environment, Social, Governance’) has recently joined the many labels in the ‘Business & Society’ field. I will critically assess the emergence of ESG, the reasons for such new language, and the challenges it poses. In doing so, I will relate my ongoing research work to three core questions that have been defining for the ‘Business & Society’ field for the last 40 years. (1) What is the status of the business case versus the moral case for business responsibility to society? (2) What are the dynamics of business responsibility, temporarily and comparatively? (3) What are the implications of Business & Society research for ongoing work in the field, and for the notion of business in mainstream business/management research?

Bio

Dirk Matten holds the Hewlett-Packard Chair in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at the Schulich School of Business, York University in Toronto, Canada. He is also the founding director of Schulich’s Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business and was instrumental in making his school one of the world’s top ranked institutions in sustainable business research and education. He has a doctoral degree and the habilitation from Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf in Germany.

Prof. Matten has published 30 books and edited volumes as well some 100 journal articles and book chapters which are cited widely and received numerous international awards. For instance, his 2008 paper on ‘Implicit and Explicit CSR’ (with J. Moon) has won the “Academy of Management Review Paper of the Decade” Award, for. He also received the Max Weber-Award for Business Ethics from the Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft, Berlin, for his textbook “Business Ethics” (with A. Crane, OUP). In 2023, he was ranked in the top five scholars in Political Science in Canada by research.com

He has a truly global focus in his approach on CSR, having taught and done research at academic institutions in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Turkey, and the USA. In 2018/19 he held the prestigious Gourlay Visiting Professor of Ethics in Business at Trinity College of the University of Melbourne. He is also a Visiting Professor at the University of London, the University of Nottingham, and Copenhagen Business School.

“Brand – pandemic fit and eWOM intentions: The role of ad appeals and future focus”
by Ayşegül Özsomer
Koç University
Place: MA-330

Abstract

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020 brands have quickly adapted the content of their advertising to include pandemic related social and health messages. This paper explores the relationship of fit between the advertised brand and the pandemic as a potential influence on consumers’ eWOM intentions in an advanced and emerging market. Inspired by metacognitive fluency theory, we propose and find that pandemic adapted advertisements for brands that are high on brand-pandemic fit enhance consumers’ eWOM intentions in both markets. This relationship is stronger for experiential ad appeals and future focus in the ads. In terms of temporal focus, building on construal level theory, we find that the effect of fit on eWOM is increased by using future focused ads. Together, the results establish relationships between brand-pandemic fit of advertisements, ad liking, ad-appeals, future focus, and eWOM intentions. We conclude with a discussion of how brand advertising can facilitate societal well-being as high fit brands help individuals solve pandemic related challenges and generate more consumer engagement via eWOM intentions.

Bio

Ayşegül Özsomer is Professor of Marketing at Koç University, Istanbul, Türkiye.  She specializes in global marketing, branding, emerging markets and the role of marketing in tough economic times. Prof. Özsomer has taught, consulted, and conducted research in the US before joining Koç University. She has published in top scholarly journals including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of International Marketing and Human Resource Management. She received several research awards including the 2011 Gerald Hills Best Paper Award for ten-year impact on entrepreneurship research, the 2013 Cavusgil Award for her paper investigating the interplay between global and local brands, and most recently the 2023 Cavusgil Award for her paper on marketing agility. Her research is well read and well cited with more than 5100 google scholar citations. Dr. Özsomer has held visiting scholar positions at the Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA, and Harvard University. Her co-authored book, The New Emerging Market Multinationals: Four Strategies for Disrupting Markets and the Competition (McGraw Hill) was selected the best strategy book by Business+Strategy. She is the incoming Editor in Chief of the Journal of International Marketing, an American Marketing Association Journal published by SAGE. https://www.ama.org/press-releases/aysegul-ozsomer-selected-as-next-journal-of-international-marketing-editor-in-chief/