Preliminary Conference Programme

Investors and regulators are concerned that investment funds use the ESG-investing label to attract investment flows without making real ESG-oriented investments. Exploiting the launch of the SEC’s Climate and ESG Task Force (the Task Force hereafter), we investigate whether securities regulators’ oversight disciplines the funds to “walk the talk.” We show that ESG-labeled funds exhibit an improvement in fund-level ESG performance after the launch of the Task Force. Such changes are more pronounced among ESG funds located closer to the SEC and those whose prospectuses have a greater emphasis on ESG issues. Further analyses reveal that ESG funds claiming negative (positive) screening strategies are more likely to drop (initiate) investments in stocks as claimed in their prospectuses; those claiming ESG integration strategies reduce their investments in firms with negative ESG incidents; those claiming active ownership strategies are more likely to vote to support proposals advocating greater transparency in ESG issues. Collectively, our results suggest the effectiveness of regulatory oversight in disciplining ESG funds to “walk the ESG talk”.

This paper examines how place-based infrastructure shapes the translation of corporate sustainability efforts into environmental outcomes under conditions of urgency. Sustainability research often emphasizes the role of sustained effort in improving outcomes, while research on organizations and place highlights how localized infrastructure shapes economic activity. We integrate these perspectives to theorize how urgency makes place-based infrastructure a binding constraint on environmental outcomes despite sustained sustainability pursuits. Using an abductive, pattern-then-probe approach, we develop a mechanism in which environmental outcomes arise from operational execution tightly coupled to local infrastructure. When urgency accelerates execution beyond the pace of infrastructure adjustment, execution is carried out through existing systems, whose characteristics vary across places and shape the environmental outcome. Empirically, we leverage the public release of ChatGPT in 2022 as an increase in urgency for firms developing proprietary AI models. We first show that urgency does not induce within-facility reconfiguration, isolating the siting of facilities as the primary mechanism. Results suggest that data centers most exposed to urgency (i.e., large-scale facilities operated by model-developing firms) are disproportionately sited in regions with greater power availability and higher fossil fuel dependence, even as firms continue large-scale renewable energy procurement.

This paper addresses the paradox that despite significant corporate investment in sustainability, ecosystems essential for business viability such as forests, water, and biodiversity continue to degrade. We examine how firms can regenerate natural common goods when property rights are fragmented or contested. We develop a conceptual typology of regenerative business models grounded in Sikor and Lestrelin (2017) revised property rights conceptual schema. By disaggregating use, control, and authoritative rights, we theorize how rights configurations condition firms’ business models and their capacity for value creation, capture, and distribution. The typology identifies seven ideal-type models ranging from firm-led regeneration to intermediary and governance-based roles, each linked to distinct value logics. The framework provides managers with a diagnostic tool to select viable regenerative strategies under different rights regimes, helping them align profitability with commons regeneration. We extend business model and sustainability scholarship by integrating locus of governance authority and degree of integration of property rights into theorizing about regeneration, offering actionable guidance for managers confronting this unsolved problem.