Corporate Governance Research Workshop XVII

For the 15 consecutive years before Covid and again in 2024, corporate governance researchers gathered at IABS’ Corporate Governance Research Workshops to discuss their research at the intersection of corporate governance and business and society. Regular attendees have published on a variety of related topics, including board refreshment (Clark & Brown, 2022), board diversity and corporate social responsibility (Sealey & Grosvold, 2024), the effects of CEO gender on investor activism (Cowen, Montgomery & Shropshire, 2022), investors and ethical mutual funds (Peifer & Liu, 2022), and the shareholder perspective on the corporate objective (Goranova & Ryan, 2021). Several also contributed to Maria Goranova’s and Lori Ryan’s edited volume Shareholder Empowerment (Goranova & Ryan, 2015).

These publications demonstrate both the ongoing importance of corporate governance research in the field of Business and Society and IABS members’ desire to better understand and influence the appropriate roles and responsibilities of corporate executives, directors, and investors.

A varying group of scholars interested in corporate governance research—including 10 researchers from 5 countries in 2024—have participated in previous IABS Corporate Governance Research Workshops. In an effort to encourage and support corporate governance research in the business and society literature, we ran these workshops at every IABS meeting from the initial 2005 showcase workshop through 2019, and again in 2024. These events have been unqualified successes, and past participants look forward to having time set aside on the 2025 program to continue their corporate governance conversations.

The ongoing visibility and central role of corporations in society demonstrate that we need continuing high-quality research on such corporate governance topics as CEO compensation, social and financial investor activism, shareholder engagement, board involvement and diversity, the “ESG” controversy, and corporate responsibility. We are confident that the ongoing teamwork among our cohesive group of researchers, along with an annual infusion of new participants, has helped to generate and sustain it. This proposal outlines our carefully refined method of organizing these successful workshops and explains how we propose to accomplish our goals of both encouraging and collaborating on corporate governance research at the IABS 2025 annual meeting in Maastricht.

Workshop Procedures and Format

• In late January, everyone attending the IABS conference will be invited by e-mail to participate in this workshop by submitting an abstract related to a corporate governance project or research idea.
• Each workshop participant will submit a 2-3-page, double-spaced prospectus or overview of his or her corporate governance research topic. The abstract can be related to an existing paper, a work in progress, or a proposed research project or idea.
• In late February, overviews will be due to the organizer, who will in turn distribute them to all submitters for review and development of comments to share at the workshop.
• At the workshop, “pre-registered” participants—those who submit their abstracts by the deadline and review others’—will work in one large group if up to eight submissions are received, or in small groups if nine or more (we generally include five or six projects per group), created by matching the research interests of the participants. Each table will be led by a workshop facilitator, who will ensure that the group allocates an appropriate amount of time to each of the submitted projects and that participants provide useful feedback and ideas to each author. Authors will be encouraged to identify key questions or issues that they would like to see addressed (e.g., concerns raised by reviewers, difficulties associated with trying to operationalize key variables, or problems accessing particular data). These groups (separately or together) may also decide to spend a portion of their time developing and designing new corporate governance research projects and collaborations.
• While all registrants of the IABS conference will be welcome to participate in the workshop with or without pre-registering, “drop-in” participants will form a stand-alone group separate from the pre-registered members. They will be free to either discuss corporate governance research topics independently among themselves, without distributing them to workshop participants, or to listen to the pre-registrants’ discussions without participating. This structure allows the organizers and pre-registered members to focus their attention on those participants who have invested thought and preparation in advance of the workshop.
• These workshops have always been held for the final half day of the conference on Sunday, which helps to facilitate scheduling their papers on Friday/Saturday and tends to keep key researchers at the conference on Sunday instead of losing them to early Sunday flights.
• The goal of the workshop will be to bring IABS corporate governance researchers together for the 17^th time, so that they can improve the quality of their research, develop new ideas and projects, strengthen and enlarge their research networks, and increase collaboration. We believe that this ongoing effort has encouraged the development of a body of corporate governance research that has added substantially to our understanding of business and society. As evidenced by the outcomes of previous years’ events, the workshop should help each participant to move his or her research forward with the support of a strong network of corporate governance scholars.

Workshop Organizer

Long-standing IABS member and Past President Lori Verstegen Ryan of San Diego State University, who has organized or co-organized the event since its inception, will lead the workshop. She is well versed in the corporate governance literature and has a significant track record as a corporate governance researcher and reviewer. She is well connected with other scholars in the area of corporate governance and will be able to draw additional scholars to the workshop. Her formal biographical statement follows.

Lori Ryan, Ralph V. Whitworth Chair in Corporate Governance and Professor of Management at San Diego State University, focuses her research primarily on the intersection of business ethics and corporate governance, with a special emphasis on the roles, characteristics, and responsibilities of institutional and individual investors. In addition to having edited the 2015 scholarly volume Shareholder Empowerment with Maria Goranova, her work has appeared in such journals as Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Business Ethics Quarterly, Business & Society, and Corporate Governance: An International Review. In her capacity as Director of San Diego State University’s Corporate Governance Institute, she facilitates an active network of corporate governance researchers, many of whom have participated in the 16 previous IABS workshops. She is Past-President and a Fellow of IABS and served for six years on the Executive Committee of the Academy of Management’s Social Issues in Management Division and on the editorial board of Academy of Management Review. She is currently on the editorial boards of Business Ethics Quarterly and Business & Society.

Participants

In addition to the organizer, a core group of researchers have already communicated their intention of participating in the 2025 workshop, some for the dozenth time:

Jill Brown, Bentley University

Paul Dunn, Brock University

Jennifer Griffin, Loyola University Chicago

Johanne Ward-Grosvold, University of Bath

Harry Van Buren, University of Tennessee

Our dynamic group of regular attendees consists of both highly respected and aspiring scholars in the area of corporate governance; many also have strong reputations in business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and corporate strategy. All have demonstrated their commitment to the field of business and society and most have published in top-tier management journals.

Workshop participants agree to submit their own work-in-progress, read and comment on others’ abstracts, and actively participate in the half-day Sunday morning workshop in Annapolis. All also express a commitment to providing constructive, helpful feedback, sharing ideas for future progress, and looking for ways to collaborate on corporate governance research.

Contribution of the Workshop to IABS Goals

This workshop advances several IABS objectives. First, it allows for the further development of works in progress, a long-standing IABS tradition. It provides a forum for business and society researchers to present and explore the corporate governance issues and relationships that capture their interest. Our proven workshop format allows researchers to draw on others’ expertise, varying backgrounds, and knowledge of different research streams to address their research questions and challenges, resulting in more publishable manuscripts.

Second, IABS encourages innovative formats for sessions. At IABS 2005, we viewed our workshop format as an experiment that could help to foster future innovations. Its continuing success at that and succeeding conferences has allowed us to institutionalize a workshop format that others now often follow.

Finally, our workshop has drawn researchers from other Management disciplines, such as Strategic Management and Organization Theory, to participate in the IABS conference. Collaborative research efforts within IABS, developed through workshops such as ours, will help to foster a larger volume of high-quality, published corporate-governance research by Business and Society scholars.

REFERENCES

Clark, C.E., & Brown, J.A. 2022. Meet the New Board: Same as the Old Board. MIT Sloan Management Review: 1-4.

Cowen, A.P., Montgomery, N.V., & Shropshire, C. 2022. Choosing sides: CEO gender and investor support for activist campaigns. Journal of Applied Psychology.

Goranova, M., & Ryan, L.V., Eds. 2015. Shareholder Empowerment. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Goranova, M., & Ryan, L.V. 2021. The Corporate Objective Revisited: The Shareholder Perspective. Journal of Management Studies

Peifer, J.L., & Liu, J. 2022. A Moral Foundations Framing Approach: Retail Investors’ Investment Intention in Ethical Mutual Funds. Business & Society, 61: 1804-1837.

Sealey, R., & Grosvold, J. 2024. Boardroom Diversity: The Role of the Responsible Leader. In M. Magnan and G. Michelon, Eds., Handbook on Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.