December 4, 2012, by ICCSR
Notes from a Visitor
A great international research experience in the field of Sustainability, Strategy and Management Control…
After more than a one-year preparation, I started in May 2012 a seven-month international research journey in order to widen my international research network and to concentrate on a series of research projects in the field of Corporate Sustainability, Strategy and Performance Management. Indeed, I am currently developing a research centre in Belgium and I strongly believe in the importance of international experiences and collaborations in scientific research as well as in academia in general.
In order to make this experience as diverse and rich as possible, I decided to organize this research journey into three steps. I chose to visit three internationally known research centres active in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability in different countries. These centres are the Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business (CoERB) at Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto (Canada); the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (ICCSR) at Nottingham University Business School (UK) and the Centre for Sustainability Management (CSM) at the University of Lüneburg in Germany.
After spending two months at the Schulich School of Business in Toronto, I had thus the opportunity to be a visiting scholar at the ICCSR from July 10, 2012 until September 28, 2012. As a young professor in the field of Sustainability, Strategy and Performance Management at HEC-Management School of the University of Liege (Belgium), this research visit was a unique opportunity for me to meet and share experiences with the ICCSR team as well as to concentrate on two specific research projects.
During this period, I particularly worked on the development of joint research projects with Dr. Christian Herzig. Indeed, already before my arrival at the ICCSR, we had identified common research interests in the area of sustainability performance management and management control.
During my stay in Nottingham, we worked on a literature review dedicated to the association between sustainability, strategy and management control. I had the opportunity to present the preliminary insights coming from our literature review at the 24th CSEAR conference held in St Andrews from September 2 to September 5, 2012.
In addition, Dr. Christian Herzig and I are respectively the UK and Belgian partners of a research project aiming at comparing sustainability corporate practices from an international point of view. This project called “International Corporate Sustainability Barometer (ICSB)” was initiated by Prof. Stefan Schaltegger (CSM, Lüneburg, Germany). In this context, I was pleased to participate in a workshop organized by Dr. Christian Herzig, Prof. Stefan Schaltegger and Prof. Roger Burritt, which was held at the British Academy of Management (BAM) Conference in Cardiff on 12th September to present and discuss initial findings of the ICSB.
Of course, even if my visit at the ICCSR is now officially over, I am definitively convinced that this visit was a first step towards future research collaborations!
To sum up, this experience was a great opportunity for me to develop my international network and my research but also to meet unique people at the ICCSR!
By Dr Nathalie CRUTZEN, Assistant Professor, Accenture Chair in Sustainable Strategy, HEC-Management School of the University of Liege (Belgium).
Contact: ncrutzen@ulg.ac.be
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