The Ivey Sustainability Conference is generously funded by the Beryl M. Ivey fund.
Ivey warmly welcomed Donal Crilly (London Business School), Fabrizio Ferraro (IESE Business School), and Joel Gehman (University of Alberta) to participate in the inaugural Ivey Sustainability Conference. The November 4 event was a joint effort of the Ivey Research Series and the Centre for Building Sustainable Value.
Organizing faculty Diane-Laure Arjalies, Oana Branzei, and Tima Bansal wanted to shake up the traditional Ivey Research Series experience. Rather than inviting one academic to visit three times over the year, organizers identified a dream list of academics in the business sustainability field to present on a single day at Ivey. Building on the success of the first event, there is no doubt Ivey will make this an annual occurrence.
The panelists were invited to participate in a PhD breakfast with young sustainability scholars. Postdoctoral Fellow Sylvia Grewatsch noted that a highlight of the day was connecting with senior scholars on a personal level at the breakfast, where they discussed starting a career in academia. Crilly and Ferraro also provided the PhDs with valuable advice on how to structure their projects, and reminisced about student life.
Postdoctoral Fellow Garima Sharma presented on the importance of finding a common language to bridge the research practice gap. Assistant Professor at HEC Montreal (and Ivey grad) Anna Kim presented her work on fair trade, and positive and negative impacts on the tea leaf industry in three African countries. Doctoral Candidate Hadi Chapardar contributed with a thought provoking lightning presentation titled Tackling Sustainability Tensions Pragmatically: Implications of Paradoxical Thinking.
Professor Oana Branzei moderated an interactive and creative panel on the future of sustainability trends in research over the next 10-15 years. Panelists creatively used images to articulate their expert opinions. Key messages included (1) sustainability is still not taken as seriously as it should in management studies (2) the future holds many exciting and unknown opportunities in the field, and (3) boundaries are being pushed in new directions. It is undoubtedly a critical and exciting time to be a scholar in the field.
Thank you to the panelists, faculty, PhD’s, Postdocs and visiting scholars from the University of Waterloo for contributing to this event. The videos below provide a flavour of the insights our guest speakers shared during the panel presentation. Panelists responded to five thought-provoking questions through imagery. Each speaker selected an image that embodied their response to the question and explained their views. Topics of discussion include the current position of sustainability in the management field, current research trends, and new frontiers in thinking.