Events 

Guest speaker:  Friday Feb. 15th 10:30 am FC2014 - Short on Time: Temporal Tensions in Business Sustainability by Dr. Natalie Slawinski

Abstract:

This inductive study of five firms in Alberta’s oil sands examines how organizations attend to the temporal tensions between the short term and long term, which are inherent in business sustainability. Grounding our insights in organizational responses to the climate change issue, we find that firms that juxtapose the short and long term also tend to confront the tension between business and society.  These firms are, therefore, more likely to recognize the complexity of climate change and the need for integrated, multidimensional solutions.  These insights contribute to prior research in business sustainability and to the intertemporal choice literature.

Dr. Natalie Slawinski is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Business Administration, Memorial University of Newfoundland. She received her Ph.D. in Strategic Management from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in 2010, and was awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal.  Her research focuses on how organizations balance short-term economic goals with longer-term social and environmental goals.  She has published in Organization Studies, Management Learning and European Business Review.  In addition, her work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Financial Post, and Canadian Business magazine.  Her current research projects include organizational responses to climate change and the role of organizational time orientation in corporate environmental performance and are funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Carbon Management Canada Network of Centres of Excellence and the Research & Development Corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador.

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