Leeds faculty advance thought leadership in CESR鈥檚 three focus areas: 1) Business solutions to environmental challenges; 2) Diversity, equity and inclusion; and 3) Ethical leadership. Through original research, they are helping define best practices, and influence business and policy conversations, in critically important areas related to environmental sustainability, social impact and governance (ESG).

To read more about their work and impact, please see our Faculty Thought Leadership articles.

CESR Research Grants & Awards

Each year, CESR recognizes Leeds faculty for research that has already been published with two awards: Best Paper and Highest Impact Paper. In addition, CESR names faculty for the CESR Research Fellowship grant to support ongoing research projects.

Award winning papers focus on issues that are timely, impactful and critically important to sustainability. These works not only are cited and used, but also change the way people think and work.

Best Paper Award

  • 2024 (Co-Winner): Wonjae Chang, Michael Damba, Bryce Schonberger, and Inho Suk: Does Sensationalism Affect Executive Compensation? Evidence from Pay Ratio Disclosure Reform, , 2022
  • 2024 (Co-Winner): Dejun Tony Kong, Sanghee Park, and Jian Peng: Appraising and Reacting to Perceived Pay For Performance: Leader Competence and Warmth as Critical Contingencies, , 2023
  • 2023: Beth Embry, Jeff York, Michael Conger, and Sid Vedula,听Green to Gone: Regional Institutional Logics and Firm Survival in Moral Markets,听, 2022
  • 2022: Andrea Pawliczek, Nikki Skinner, and Laura Wellman,听A New Take on Voice: The Influence of BlackRock鈥檚 鈥楧ear CEO鈥� letters,听, 2021, vol. 26, issue 3, No 8, 1088-1136
  • 2021: Emily Gallagher,听Let the Rich Be Flooded: The Distribution of Financial Aid and Distress after Hurricane Harvey,

Highest Impact Paper Award

  • 2024: Emilio Castilla and Ethan Poskanzer, Through the Front Door: Why Do Organizations (Still) Prefer Legacy Applicants? American Sociological Review, September 2022
  • 2023:听David Drake, Gloria Urrea, and听Karthik Balasubramanian,听The Impact of Poverty on Base of the Pyramid Operations: Evidence from Mobile Money in Africa, September 2022
  • 2022: Gloria Urrea and Eunae Yoo,听The Role of Volunteer Experience on Performance on Online Volunteering Platforms, February 2021
  • 2021: David Drake, and Jeff York, Kicking Ash: Who (or What) is Winning the 鈥淲ar on Coal鈥�?, Production and Operations Management,听, July 2021, Pages听2162-2187

CESR Research Fellowship Grants 2024

  • Stephen Billings & Jaehee Song, Declining Homeownership and Wealth in Minority Neighborhoods: The Role of Corporate Buying of Single-Family Homes

  • Dejun "Tony" Kong, 鈥淎 New Way of Seeing鈥� DEI That Guides Better Practices

  • Rebecca Mitchell & Christina Lacerenza, Nurturing the Garden: Team-Level Structures that Promote Female Leadership

  • Levente Szentkir谩lyi, No CSR, No Market: Rejecting the Supererogatory Industry Standard of Sustainable Development Goals听

  • Jeff York, Catching the Wave: The Emergence (or lack thereof) of Marine Energy

CESR Research Fellowship Grants 2023

  • Marcia Kwaramba,听鈥楧oing More With Less鈥�: Securing Food Security Through Frugal Innovations in Developing Economy Markets
  • Liu Liu,听Brand Advertising and Climate Change
  • Austin Moss,听Investment Decisions of Everyday People and Welfare Implications
  • Ethan Poskanzer,听Automation Technology, Diversity and Performance in Innovation
  • Meghan Van Portfliet,听Whistleblowing and the Media
  • Ash Ganzoury and Jeff York,听How Entrepreneurial Ventures Link Business Models to Social and Environmental Impact

CESR Research Fellowship Grants 2022

  • Tony Cookson, Emily Gallagher, and Indeesh Mukhopadhyay Person-to-Person Giving and Inequalities in Post-Disaster Recoveries
  • Eric Alston and Ryan Lewis,听Making Water Markets More Liquid? 鈥� Institutional Resilience to Weather Shocks
  • Sabrina Volpone,听Exploring the Use of Identity Management during the Grief Process in Employees Who Have Experienced Pregnancy Loss

CESR Research Fellowship Grants 2021

  • Sabrina D Volpone, Am I Committed to Addressing Racism? It May Depend on If My Organization Is Sincere about Racial Justice
  • Joshua Steven Nunziato,听The Risks and Rewards of Serotonergic Psychedelics for the Ethical Formation of Business Leaders
  • Tony Cookson,听Love, Politics, and Money: The Consequences of Intra-Family Partisan Disagreement
  • Asaf Bernstein,听Wealth Inequality: The Role of the 鈥淢ortgage Piggy Bank鈥�
  • Jonathan Rogers,听Socially Responsible Investors and Firm Political Contributions 听

Faculty Thought Leadership in CESR Focus Areas

Wiley
The impact of poverty on base of the pyramid operations: Evidence from mobile money in Africa

Aug. 21, 2021

Business models designed to serve those at the 鈥渂ase of the pyramid鈥� are an effective means to create employment and improve quality of life. However, the effect that poverty has on the performance of such businesses is not well understood. We address this gap through the context of 鈥渕obile money,鈥�...

The Journal of Applied Psychology
How CEOs Respond to Mortality Salience During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Integrating Terror Management Theory With Regulatory Focus Theory

Aug. 1, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in the U.S. As chief strategists of their respective firms, how do Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) react to mortality salience associated with the number of new daily COVID deaths in the U.S.? To answer this question, we integrate terror management...

American Economic Association
The Long-Run Effects of School Racial Diversity on Political Identity

March 1, 2021

How do early-life experiences shape political identity? We examine the end of race-based busing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, an event that led to large changes in school racial composition. Using administrative data, we compare party affiliation in adulthood for students who had lived on opposite sides of newly drawn school boundaries...

Production and Operations Management
Kicking Ash: Who (or What) is Winning the 鈥淲ar on Coal鈥�?

Feb. 21, 2021

US coal-fired generating capacity has shed nearly 25% of its footprint between 2011 and 2018. Multiple factors鈥攔egulation, natural gas prices, renewable energy adoption, and environmental activism鈥攈ave each been lauded by various stakeholders for this trend. To improve our understanding of this environmental technology transition, it is important to determine the...

SSRN logo
The Role of Volunteer Experience on Performance on Online Volunteering Platforms

Feb. 17, 2021

Online volunteering platforms allow humanitarian organizations (HOs) to recruit volunteers to work remotely on projects of various urgency levels. While the removal of time and space constraints enables HOs to scale up their volunteer force, HOs must manage greater heterogeneity in volunteers鈥� experience. We investigate empirically how volunteers鈥� experience impacts...

Journal of Institutional Economics
The Chronic Uncertainty of American Indian Property Rights

Jan. 7, 2021

Institutions are the stuff of social and economic life. The importance of understanding the role of institutions in economic growth is now widely appreciated. The Journal of Institutional Economics is devoted to the study of the nature, role and evolution of institutions in the economy, including firms, states, markets, money,...

ASCE Library
Gendered Knowledge Accessibility: Evaluating the Role of Gender in Knowledge Seeking among Engineers in the US

Jan. 1, 2021

Women are heavily underrepresented in engineering companies. Gender issues arise in daily interactions where employees may not seek knowledge from others when they need it, even if they know who possesses the knowledge, because they may find the knowledge holder difficult to access. In this research, drawing upon social role...

Springer
Resistance Will Be Futile? The Stigmatization (or Not) of Whistleblowers

Nov. 11, 2020

Does speaking up ruin one鈥檚 life? Organizational and whistleblowing research largely accept that 鈥渨histleblower鈥� is a negative label that efects one鈥檚 well-being. Whistleblowing research also emphasizes the drawn-out process of speaking up. The result is a narrative of the whistleblower as someone who sufers indefnitely. In this paper, I draw...

Management in Engineering
Gendered Knowledge Accessibility: Evaluating the Role of Gender in Knowledge Seeking among Engineers in the US

Sept. 30, 2020

Women are heavily underrepresented in engineering companies. Gender issues arise in daily interactions where employees may not seek knowledge from others when they need it, even if they know who possesses the knowledge, because they may find the knowledge holder difficult to access. In this research, drawing upon social role...