Global Sustainable Enterprise Expert and Author Chris Marquis Explains B Corps


Global Sustainable Enterprise Expert and Author Chris Marquis

Most of us in society today are pretty fed-up with how a lot of businesses are operating. Is there a way for companies to be more socially responsible and not be so focused on shareholder profits? Dr. Christopher Marquis says there IS and it’s called a B Corp.

A professor at Cornell and the author of Better Business: How the B Corp Movement Is Remaking Capitalism, Dr. Marquis explains what a B Corp is and what it means to businesses and consumers.  What are the benefits and what are the motivations for a business to become socially responsible?

We learn which companies are already on board as B Corps, how it has affected their profits, what open hiring is, and what greenwashing is.

Click on the player below to hear the chat with Chris and Pam

About Chris Marquis

Chris Marquis is the Samuel C. Johnson Professor in Sustainable Global Enterprise and Professor of Management at the Cornell University Johnson College of Business. Prior to joining Cornell, he worked for 10 years at Harvard Business School and has held visiting positions at Harvard Kennedy School, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Peking University, Fudan University, and Shanghai Jiaotong University. Marquis received a PhD in sociology and business administration from the University of Michigan.

Marquis’ current teaching and research is broadly focused on the two areas of social innovation and change and doing business in China. Under these themes he has examined entrepreneurship in China, the triple-bottom line and building sustainable businesses globally, and business competition in emerging markets. These research projects build on Marquis’ earlier research on how business can have a positive impact on society and in particular how historical and geographical processes have shaped firms’ and entrepreneurs’ social and environmental strategies and activities. His latest book, Better Business: How the B Corp Movement Is Remaking Capitalism, focuses on the potential for stakeholder governance models to reform capitalism.

Marquis’s research has won a number of national and international awards, including the 2006 William H. Newman Award for best dissertation across the entire the Academy of Management, the 2006 Louis R. Pondy award for best dissertation in organizational theory from the Academy of Management, the 2003 James D. Thompson Award for best graduate student paper from the American Sociological Association, and the 2005 State Farm Doctoral Dissertation Award. He was a finalist for the 2010 and 2013 Aspen Institute Faculty Pioneer Award, a runner-up in the Academy of Management’s Best Published Paper in Organization and Management Theory in 2009, and a finalist in the 2004 INFORMS/Organization Science Dissertation Proposal Competition. In 2018 he was given the International Educator Award, from China’s State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs.

Marquis has published in Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, American Sociological Review, Harvard Business Review, Organization Science, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Strategic Management Journal, as well as a number of edited collections. From 2014-2020 he was an Associate Editor at Administrative Science Quarterly and he has served as an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management and of the International Association of Chinese Management Research (IACMR). Before his academic career, Marquis worked for six years in the financial services industry, most recently as vice president and technology manager for a business unit of J.P. Morgan Chase.

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