Looking for collaborators!
Research in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals
Dear colleagues,
The Iberoamerican Academy of Management (IAM) and Management Research: The Official Journal of IAM (MRJIAM) seek Iberoamerican scholars interested in conducting research in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) enacted by the United Nations in 2015. We hope to gather at the next Academy of Management conference to discuss how Iberoamerican scholars may contribute potential solutions to achieving these goals.
Thanks to consultations involving governments, companies, civil society, and knowledge institutes, including over one million voices across the world, the 17 SDGs stand as the most important global development agenda (van Zanten & van Tulder, 2018). Notably, the business sector, from micro-enterprises and cooperatives to multinationals, all of them drivers of productivity, inclusive economic growth, and job creation, owns this agenda along with governments, the United Nations system, international institutions, local authorities, indigenous peoples, and civil society (United Nations, 2015).
Scholars around the world have joined this effort by calling for research and for providing evidence-based management studies and guidance to leaders on how to tackle the 17 SDGs (Buckley, Doh, & Benischke, 2017; Eden & Wagstaff, 2020; Kolk, 2016; van Tulder, 2018; van Zanten & van Tulder, 2018, 2020b), including the many problems emerging from COVID-19 (van Zanten & van Tulder, 2020a; Wagstaff, Salvaj, & Villanueva, 2020). Recently, the Academy of Management Journal (George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi, & Tihanyi, 2016) and the Academy of Management Discoveries joined this effort by publishing issues dedicated to various SDGs (Howard-Grenville et al., 2019). For example, Bodo, Rogan, and Singh (2019) examined partnerships for the goals, Kucukkeles, Ben-Menahem, and von Krogh (2019) focused on healthy lives and reducing poverty, and Goodman and Kaplan (2019) centered on decent work for all adults and gender equality.
IAM and MRJIAM would like to join this remarkable effort and turn our work into actionable and responsible research insights to tackle some of the biggest challenges of our lifetime (George et al., 2016; Tsui, 2016). By turning our attention to real-world puzzles, focusing on practical problems, and providing evidence-based insights, we can better guide and inform organizational practices (Howard-Grenville et al., 2019). Importantly, we can contribute solutions to problems that pervade the existence of all of us on this planet (Buckley et al., 2017).
How can Iberoamerican scholars contribute to this agenda? The purpose of this call is to invite all of you to join this effort to engage in practical research related to the 17 SDGs in Iberoamerican countries. Many SDGs closely align with management research such as “no poverty” (SDG 1), “good health and well-being” (SDG 3), “gender equality” (SDG 5), “decent economic growth” (SDG 8), “industry, innovation, and infrastructure” (SDG 9), “reduced inequalities” (SDG 10), and “responsible consumption and production)” (SDG 12) (George et al., 2016). We call for research with a practical undertone while focusing on a pluralistic conceptualization of research impact, one that considers multiple stakeholders, including (but not limited to) academics, students, executives, government policy makers, not-for-profit organizations, and media (Aguinis, Shapiro, Antonacopoulou, & Cummings, 2014). With this call, we hope to generate knowledge that can bridge the research-practice gap and provide potential solutions to these societal challenges.
We would like to meet at the next Academy of Management Conference (now virtual) to discuss how different stakeholders across Iberoamerican countries embrace the 17 SDGs. This region offers unique opportunities to engage in research with implications for informing solutions to these grand challenges (Aguinis et al., 2020). Although researchers have advanced tangible solutions to some pervasive challenges in Iberoamerican contexts (cf., Hermans et al., 2017), an evidence-based research agenda for this region focused on current practices and potential solutions remains underexplored. Our agenda for discussion will focus on current practices and potential solutions that show promise to contribute to the achievement of any of the SDGs. This discussion will take the form of a Professional Development Workshop (PDW) to take place next August during the Academy of Management 2021. The best papers will be invited to be part of a special issue of Management Research. We hope to dedicate the second 2022 issue to publishing the work presented at this PDW.
If you are interested in participating in this PDW, please contact us no later than January 4. Your participation in the PDW will involve a commitment to collect data with at least one stakeholder (e.g., government, companies, non-profit organizations) operating in an Iberoamerican country. Upon receiving your letter of commitment to participate in the PDW, we will send you a template with instructions regarding the data collection process, which will occur during 2021. You must submit your report to the PDW organizers no later than June 30. This report should not exceed 1500-2000 words, excluding references, figures, and tables. We welcome and encourage participation from researchers, students (undergraduate, masters, and PhD), consultants, and managers.
If you have questions or comments, please contact us to discuss this opportunity.
PDW Organizers:
Fernanda Wagstaff, The University of Texas at El Paso; [email protected]
José Ernesto Amorós, EGADE Business School, Tecnológico de Monterrey and Universidad del Desarrollo; [email protected]
Erica Salvaj, Universidad del Desarrollo and Universidad Torcuato DiTella; [email protected]
References
Aguinis, H., Shapiro, D. L., Antonacopoulou, E. P., & Cummings, T. G. (2014). Scholarly impact: A pluralist conceptualization. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 13(4), 623-639. doi:10.5465/amle.2014.0121
Aguinis, H., Villamor, I., Lazzarini, S. G., Vassolo, R. S., Amorós, J. E., & Allen, D. G. (2020). Conducting management research in Latin America: Why and what’s in it for you? Journal of Management, 46(5), 615-636. doi:10.1177/0149206320901581
Bode, C., Rogan, M., & Singh, J. (2019). Sustainable cross-sector collaboration: Building a global platform for social impact. Academy of Management Discoveries, 5(4), 396-414. doi:10.5465/amd.2018.0112
Buckley, P. J., Doh, J. P., & Benischke, M. H. (2017). Towards a renaissance in international business research? Big questions, grand challenges, and the future of IB scholarship. Journal of International Business Studies, 48(9), 1045-1064. doi:10.1057/s41267-017-0102-z
Eden, L., & Wagstaff, M. F. (2020). Evidence-based policymaking and the wicked problem of SDG 5 Gender Equality. Journal of International Business Policy. doi:10.1057/s42214-020-00054-w
George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A., & Tihanyi, L. (2016). Understanding and tackling societal grand challenges through management research. Academy of Management Journal, 59(6), 1880-1895. doi:10.5465/amj.2016.4007
Goodman, R., & Kaplan, S. (2019). Work–life balance as a household negotiation: A new perspective from rural India. Academy of Management Discoveries, 5(4), 465-486. doi:10.5465/amd.2018.0105
Hermans, M., Newburry, W., Alvarado-Vargas, M. J., Baldo, C. M., Borda, A., Durán-Zurita, E. G., . . . Zwerg-Villegas, A. M. (2017). Attitudes towards women’s career advancement in Latin America: The moderating impact of perceived company international proactiveness. Journal of International Business Studies, 48(1), 90-112. doi:10.1057/s41267-016-0039-7
Howard-Grenville, J., Davis, G. F., Dyllick, T., Miller, C. C., Thau, S., & Tsui, A. S. (2019). Sustainable development for a better world: Contributions of leadership, management, and organizations. Academy of Management Discoveries, 5(4), 355-366. doi:10.5465/amd.2019.0275
Kolk, A. (2016). The social responsibility of international business: From ethics and the environment to CSR and sustainable development. Journal of World Business, 51(1), 23-34. doi:10.1016/j.jwb.2015.08.010
Kucukkeles, B., M. Ben-Menahem, S. M., & von Krogh, G. (2019). Small numbers, big concerns: Practices and organizational arrangements in rare disease drug repurposing. Academy of Management Discoveries, 5(4), 415-437. doi:10.5465/amd.2018.0183
Tsui, A. (2016). Reflections on the so-called value-free ideal: A call for responsible science in the business schools. Cross Cultural & Strategic Management, 23(1), 4-28. doi:10.1108/CCSM-08-2015-0101
United Nations. (2015). Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015.
van Tulder, R. (2018). Business & the Sustainable Development Goals: A framework for effective corporate involvement. Rotterdam: Erasmus University.
van Zanten, J. A., & van Tulder, R. (2018). Multinational enterprises and the Sustainable Development Goals: An institutional approach to corporate engagement. Journal of International Business Policy, 1(3), 208-233. doi:10.1057/s42214-018-0008-x
van Zanten, J. A., & van Tulder, R. (2020a). Beyond COVID-19: Applying “SDG logics” for resilient transformations. Journal of International Business Policy. doi:10.1057/s42214-020-00076-4
van Zanten, J. A., & van Tulder, R. (2020b). Towards nexus-based governance: defining interactions between economic activities and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 1-17. doi:10.1080/13504509.2020.1768452
Wagstaff, M. F., Salvaj, E., & Villanueva, S. (2020). Champions in the time of COVID-19: Tracing paths to recovery in Ibero-America. Management Research: The Journal of the Iberoamerican Academy of Management, 18(4), 379-399. doi:10.1108/MRJIAM-06-2020-1064
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Fernanda Wagstaff
Associate Professor of Management
Robert E. and Jacqueline Skov Professorship in Business Ethics
Associate Editor – Management Research: The Journal of the Iberoamerican Academy of Management
Director of the Center for Multicultural Management and Ethics
The University of Texas at El Paso
El Paso TX
(915) 747-5378
