Dare to Care Scholarship Awardees

Addressing many of today’s grand challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and unsustainable food systems, requires diverse actors to stay meaningfully engaged with shared problems over time. Yet the collaborative arrangements built to support such engagement often undermine it. As the burden of maintaining them grows and the scope of what they permit narrows, actors may remain formally involved while their interactions become less meaningful and less responsive to the underlying challenge. This presents a central organizational problem: how can actors sustain meaningful engagement with grand challenges over prolonged timespans?

This project speaks to environmental, participatory, and intergenerational injustice. It asks whose concerns remain visible when collaboration drifts, whose burdens are taken seriously, and whose futures, including those of future generations, are represented. The findings are intended to benefit communities affected by transitions, as well as policymakers, movement organizers, and facilitators who shape them.

The dissertation comprises four papers drawing on three engaged qualitative studies in Dutch agrifood and climate settings: a temporary multistakeholder initiative, a regional community of practice, and a senior-led climate movement. Across these studies, it draws on 276 semi-structured interviews, 982 hours of participant observation, 327 open ended survey responses, and thousands of archival documents.

The dissertation contributes to organization theory by explaining how collaborative arrangements can, over time, decouple from the problems they are meant to address; how interaction rituals help actors self-sustain and shift engagement with grand challenges in contested settings; how connective labor holds cross-field communities of practice together; and how senior climate activists mobilize on behalf of future others rather than future selves.

For policy and practice, the findings yield facilitative, governance, and ritual repertoires, along with teaching cases that equip managers, facilitators, and civil society actors to design collaborative spaces that resist disengagement, keep attention anchored to underlying problems, and sustain long-term action on behalf of affected communities and future generations. In line with RRBM’s principles of service to society, valuing basic and applied contributions, and stakeholder involvement, the research is phenomenon-driven, theory-informed, methodologically plural, and developed in close dialogue with societal partners to produce knowledge that is useful.

Highly salient socio-political disruptions often compel organizations to respond with public commitments, resources, and advocacy. But these events are often momentary. As public attention shifts, conventional theory predicts loosely coupled responses that are eventually abandoned. Drawing on six years of archival data and two years of longitudinal interviews at Inspire Corporation (pseudonym), a large global firm, I examine the trajectories of 17 initiatives catalyzed by the 2020 social justice protests. Contrary to expectations, all 17 remained active in 2026, despite the waning external salience of social justice and even mounting backlash. I ask: how do organizational activities catalyzed by socio-political disruptions persist amid declining event salience and potential backlash? I find that initiatives endured, in part, through recombination: social ideas elevated by the protests were progressively recombined with established organizational ideas, resulting in substantial social innovation across initiatives. The study extends theory on recombination by revealing it as a mechanism of preservation, not only of novelty, and contributes to social innovation scholarship by showing that socially motivated ideas persist not by remaining insulated but by recombining with a wide range of ideas from across an organization.

The findings inform managerial practice and organizational policy by identifying the micro and meso level actions through which event-catalyzed organizational activity is translated into durable organizational structures, routines, and governance mechanisms. Rather than assuming linear progress toward prosocial goals, this work highlights how organizations can innovate in ways that make them resilient to backlash and fluctuating socio-political attention. In doing so, the research contributes to conversations on how organizations can maintain continuous pressure on enduring social challenges.

This proposal engages several of the RRBM Research Principles, particularly those emphasizing collaboration and plurality. The research was conducted with input from a wide group of professional philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, and diversity professionals, who generously offered their expertise on project directions and indicated which lines of research inquiry would be most impactful. Additionally, the inductive nature of the project has allowed a wide range of perspectives to be considered and novel theorization to emerge from the data.

Many organizations are committed to addressing the global challenge of inequality. Despite this, a 2022 United Nations report to the Human Rights Council declared a worldwide crisis surrounding the underutilization of aid, which, “significantly undermines the effectiveness of social protection in reducing poverty and inequalities.” This highlights a pressing need for organizations to understand how to improve their equality-enhancing practices.

This dissertation investigates a descriptive-prescriptive paradox – in which widespread practice may not be the most effective – in organizational attempts to address inequality. Namely, does the common practice of emphasizing autonomy in the processes of giving and receiving aid undermine individuals’ motives to advance broader social welfare?

This dissertation leverages full-cycle research in partnership with organizations to build and test novel theory around the consequences of focusing on the personal control and independence that an agent can derive from giving or receiving aid. The first chapter challenges the common belief that to increase donations, charities should let donors choose how their donation will be used. Using experiments in field and online settings, this chapter distinguishes between the psychology of deciding what to give versus who to help. Unlike the former, which is a choice among objects, the latter choice among human lives instills a feeling of emotional discomfort, which reduces donation behavior. This reveals one downside to prioritizing donors’ autonomy. The second chapter studies the receipt of government benefits using qualitative (interviews, focus groups) and quantitative (archival data, surveys, field experiment) methods. While the most common practice of promoting government benefits emphasizes how aid helps recipients independently fulfill their need for essential resources, the most effective approach instead describes how aid can advance recipients’ goals to support their communities. Interdependence, rather than autonomy, emerges as an unexpected motive for aid recipients.

Organizational practices that emphasize autonomy in the processes of giving and receiving aid may undermine individuals’ social motives and stunt related behaviors. By leveraging interdisciplinary literatures and methods, and conducting stakeholder engagement in every research stage, this dissertation meets all seven principles of responsible research. Collectively, this research offers novel discoveries and actionable solutions for organizations committed to addressing inequality.

Persistent inequalities within organizations raise fundamental questions about the role of leadership representation in shaping equitable outcomes. In this project, I ask: When and how does the presence of Black managers help reduce—or inadvertently widen—wage disparities between Black and White employees? Motivated by the growing backlash against DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) efforts and the enduring racial wage gap, this research investigates whether increased racial representation in management leads to fairer outcomes, or whether underlying organizational dynamics continue to sustain inequalities despite surface-level diversity. Brazil offers a critical setting for this investigation: a country marked by profound racial disparities despite its majority non-White population, where Black workers remain underrepresented in leadership and concentrated in lower-wage roles.

This project addresses racial injustice by moving beyond symbolic diversity to assess whether and when representation disrupts inequalities or reproduces them under a different guise. Its findings will have important implications for organizational policies, helping companies design strategies that create more equitable workplaces. It aims to benefit historically marginalized employees, inform corporate DEI efforts, and contribute to broader societal debates around racial justice and economic inequality.

Methodologically, the project primarily relies on quantitative panel data analysis to examine how racial managerial representation affects wage disparities within organizations. A complementary qualitative approach is employed to deepen understanding of the mechanisms behind these patterns, drawing on interviews with managers and employees. This combination captures both large-scale trends and the organizational processes shaping racial inequalities in wage outcomes.

The project contributes to the literature on organizational inequalities and DEI by reframing leadership diversity around substantive outcomes rather than representation alone. It offers insights into when minority leadership fosters—or fails to foster—equity for marginalized groups. Rather than assuming diversity at the top automatically improves outcomes, this study critically examines the processes through which change occurs.

Ultimately, this research generates actionable ideas for firms and policymakers, providing evidence-based recommendations to advance racial equity. It aligns closely with Responsible Research in Business and Management (RRBM) principles, aspiring to produce credible, useful, and transformative knowledge at the intersection of leadership, inequality, and social justice.

Globally, 1.4 billion people still live in “banking branch deserts”¹ – areas with little or no access to formal financial services. In these markets, local shopkeepers increasingly act as last-mile banking agents, providing essential services such as remittances, deposits, and bill payments. My dissertation investigates how general-purpose AI models, such as large language models (LLMs), can promote financial inclusion by sustaining these merchant networks, which often serve as the only accessible financial touchpoints for underserved communities.

To explore this, I conducted a randomized field experiment with over 30,000 merchants in India, delivering AI-personalized financial product guidance via WhatsApp. I examine both the promise and limitations of AI personalization in data-scarce markets. While general-purpose AI offers a cost-effective approach for firms to deliver personalized guide at scale, models trained primarily on public web data risk reinforcing existing inequalities when structural data frictions are ignored. I develop a theoretical framework explaining how these frictions limit algorithmic effectiveness and test interventions to mitigate bias and improve its effectiveness across diverse merchant segments.

My dissertation directly addresses economic inequality by democratizing access to advanced AI tools for small businesses serving marginalized populations. The findings have significant implications for the estimated 700 million people living in extreme poverty who depend on these merchant networks for financial access². The study contributes new insights to the literature on AI personalization, B2B relationship management, algorithmic bias, and financial inclusion in low-data environments, providing novel field-based evidence that LLM-powered personalization can improve merchant engagement and business sales in B2B financial services at scale. My research exemplifies responsible scholarship by addressing real-world financial inclusion challenges, employing rigorous experimental methods, maintaining deep stakeholder engagement through continuous collaboration with industry partners, and creating clear pathways from research to practice.

¹ World Bank Blog, The Global Findex Database 2021 identifies opportunities for increasing financial inclusion

² World Bank Group, Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report

Due to societal pressures and greater calls for organizations to address equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) issues, it is increasingly common for leaders to publicly communicate their support as allies for minority employees. Ironically, they often fall short by not following up on their promise and moral commitment to diversity. This inconsistency between their words and actions represents superficial EDI support—a rising phenomenon understood as performative allyship. To understand this phenomenon, I focus on a fundamental question: How do minority employees perceive, moralize, and react to organizational leaders who engage in performative allyship?

Despite its potential to benefit the organization by showing awareness of social justice movements, I propose that the seemingly prosocial act of allyship, in particular, when enacted performatively, can be morally dubious. Provocatively, it can lend itself to moral hypocrisy and in fact harm the workplace in various aspects, especially toward minority workers. I theorize that the negative moral evaluations of performative allies lead to moral outrage and, as a result, a higher likelihood of minority turnover. However, attributing performative allyship as hypocrisy ignites moral outrage, and may therefore simultaneously motivate minority employees to advocate for social change, which represents an important silver lining to this dark side allyship phenomenon.

This issue is important to study because minorities (populations facing disadvantages from race, gender, sexual orientation, or indigenous status) are the ones who benefit (or suffer) the most from true EDI support (or lack thereof). Following best practices of full-cycle organizational research to build and test theory, I will implement a mixed-method approach and conduct several studies—qualitative study, field survey, and pre-registered experiment.

Overall, my research benefits both the business and broader society by addressing the novel, underexamined phenomenon of performative allyship at work. It sheds light on the experiences of marginalized employees, uncovering potential consequences and downsides of EDI support in organizations and the business world. This research further contributes to the growing allyship literature by offering a more nuanced and balanced view through an untapped morality and justice lens, with profound practical implications for organizational diversity practices.

Despite extensive policymaking, legislative reforms, and research, many children in America still lack access to quality public education. My dissertation adopts an organizational approach to examine the drivers of educational inequalities in the US, aiming to support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of providing inclusive, equitable, quality education (SDG4).

My dissertation focuses on two primary research questions. First, given the local governance of public education in the US, I explore how to build racially inclusive and collectively effective local communities capable of supporting public education. Drawing on prior research, I argue that increasing diversity tends to reduce the density of homophilous social ties, making collective action in support of public education more challenging. However, the presence of bridging ties, where different groups interact regularly, can mitigate these effects. I demonstrate that maintaining intra-organizational diversity within a community is key to creating high-performing and inclusive communities.

While prior research provides evidence of the effectiveness of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in providing public education, the impact of such partnerships on those not directly receiving their benefits remains underexplored. Thus, my second research question asks: what impacts do PPPs in public education have on traditional public providers? I investigate how the privatization of public education through PPPs may negatively affect those remaining in public schools by: a) increasing public providers’ costs as a larger share of less economically viable student segments may be left to public providers, b) reducing revenues as community support shifts to private providers, and c) impacting the ability of public providers to attract or retain human capital, such as teachers. I also compare the negative spillovers of PPPs involving for-profit private partners versus those involving non-profit private partners. This research question aligns with the UN’s SDG17 about Partnerships for the Goals.

My primary research methodology is quantitative analysis of archival data. I supplement this with qualitative interviews with stakeholders including superintendents, school principals, teachers, and community members. My dissertation aligns with responsible research principles as it places inequality of opportunity at the heart of its inquiry and engages with various stakeholders throughout the research process.

I seek to answer questions about autism as both a disability and a strength, what I term the duality of autism, specifically in the workplace. How do Autistic professionals perceive and navigate the duality of strengths and challenges they bring to organizations? What, if any, different strengths and challenges do Autistic women experience, and how do they navigate these differences? And what do Autistic professionals need from managers and organizations to better support the duality of autism and foster strengths?

My dissertation aims to support the United Nations’ goals of promoting decent work for all and reducing inequalities by improving work opportunities for Autistic professionals. Despite a rising prevalence of autism, many Autistic individuals remain unemployed or underemployed, with estimates of unemployment rates for Autistic high school graduates ranging from 50-90%, underscoring the urgency of researching Autistic workers’ lived experiences. Understanding how managers and organizations can better support the strengths of Autistic professionals can help reduce inequalities in unemployment and promote social justice for this understudied and underrepresented population.

The findings of this study aim to help Autistic individuals, managers, and organizations focus on how to not only survive with autism at work, but how to thrive as active agents managing the duality of autism. I will conduct about 50 semi-structured interviews with individuals who are currently employed professionally and have a diagnosis of ASD or identify as Autistic, and then analyze the data following steps recommended for grounded theory.

This study aims to move beyond a descriptive narrative of strengths or challenges by building an understanding of the processes Autistic professionals engage in as active agents navigating both the workplace and autism. I seek to understand not only what these individuals experience, but also how people actively navigate this space in a positive way. My research aligns with all seven principles of responsible research. Specifically, I have invited Autistic scholars to provide feedback on all stages of my study to be authentic to the Autistic community. Also, I aim to make both basic and applied contributions through extending theory and providing recommendations for actively navigating the duality of autism.

Food security is a pressing concern in the US, with 12.8% of its population identified as food insecure. Online grocery delivery services have recently surfaced as a potential solution to this issue, offering increased access to grocery stores through delivery. However, the high costs associated with typical “on-demand” grocery delivery services pose a challenge to leveraging this solution. This research explores the effectiveness of an alternative, more cost-effective grocery delivery service called “scheduled neighborhood delivery” in mitigating the food security problem. In this innovative service, the delivery platform receives orders within a fixed order window, and picks and delivers orders for each neighborhood in batches following a predetermined weekly schedule.

In collaboration with a startup grocery delivery platform providing this service, the research explores the research question: How can we reduce food insecurity and promote healthy food consumption through a more cost-effective online grocery delivery service design? The project first quantifies the logistics cost savings of the scheduled neighborhood delivery service by modeling the labor contents using work measurement data. Next, it explores the potential of the delivery service to promote healthy food consumption by utilizing lab experiments and analyzing the partner’s order transaction data. These insights will be used to develop strategies to further nudge healthy food consumption behavior among low-income customers through a field experiment on the partner’s platform.

This project contributes to the academic literature by outlining how a novel online grocery delivery service can enhance food security. It integrates psychological theories on intertemporal decision-making into the operational context of online grocery delivery logistics. The results of this study will also provide practical recommendations for designing an online grocery delivery service that better supports people in need. The scheduled neighborhood delivery service has the potential to provide more affordable and healthy food access to everyone, promoting equitable food security in our society. Furthermore, the collaboration with industry will have a tangible, real-world societal impact by contributing to the food security of the local community through discussion and implementation of more effective strategies to serve low-income customers.

Social entrepreneurs venture to create just societies, yet despite a quest for justice, well-meaning missions resulting in unintended consequences exist, necessitating social accountability. While social accountability is necessary, conventional approaches favour external audiences’ needs and tend to be a poor fit for micro and small organizations operating under severe constraints with ad hoc, informal social accounting practices. This is a problem because micro and small organizations represent the majority of social enterprises, constituting an under-explored segment with significant aggregate impact. Consequently, we know little about social accounting from an insider’s perspective, and our current knowledge of social accounting is a poor fit for understanding internal processes of becoming accountable, knowledge that is critical to growing the field and its intended impact.  Inspired by the principles of Responsible Research in Business and Management, this study seeks to serve society by engaging social entrepreneurs in the research process to collaboratively improve accounting for social impact. As our driving research question, we strive to understand accounting for impact from practitioners’ perspectives and capabilities, exploring how social entrepreneurs make meaning of their work and become personally accountable for social change. Our engaged scholarship study uses a two-phased, multi-method design. We begin with an inductive approach analysing interview and archival data related to internal, tacit accountability methods and use the findings to build a process tracing model theorizing the path of accountability formalization. In phase two, we will engage social entrepreneurs in a participatory action research approach to refine the model and explore how tacit practices can be formalized in an actionable way. Based on the refined model, we will co-design a social accountability framework suited to micro and small social enterprises and useful for external audiences. In so doing, this study seeks to make a theoretical contribution to advancing our understanding of how internally driven accountability formalizes in social entrepreneurship while offering practitioners a co-designed accountability framework suited to the needs and capabilities of micro and small social enterprises. Such a framework may assist social entrepreneurs to improve their work and accountability practices, thus yielding greater social impact.

Often unseen and unnoticed, invisible disabilities are ubiquitous. Whether they are physical, mental, neurological, or cognitive, nearly half of the American population struggles to manage an invisible disability that affects their everyday lives. Accordingly, a large part of the workforce is composed of employees with invisible disabilities, many of whom experience bias. Despite this, how employees with invisible disabilities can reduce the bias they experience remains underexplored. It is imperative to understand how these employees can manage the disclosure of these identities to mitigate inequality following disclosure.

To address this, I explore two central research questions. First, how do employees with invisible disabilities manage the disclosure of their stigmatized identities? Specifically, which disclosure strategies are employees with invisible disabilities most likely to employ when disclosing to a manager and why. Second, how do these disclosure strategies effect outcomes for these employees? Specifically, which disclosure strategies lead managers to form positive perceptions, reduce their bias, and be more likely to grant necessary accommodations.

I draw from stigma theory and signaling theory to develop and test a model of how employees with invisible disabilities can effectively disclose in the workplace. I demonstrate that an asymmetry exists between employees’ intuitions of the most effective way to frame a disclosure, and managers’ interpretations of the message. In testing these propositions, my research employs multiple methods (qualitative, correlational, field data and experiments) to produce both robust and ethical research. In doing so, it can practically inform employees with invisible disabilities regarding how to mitigate negative outcomes following disclosure. Further, it can inform evidence-based interventions that organizations can employ to maximize performance and improve the lives of their employees. This research will help increase equity for a large portion of the workforce which is often underdiscussed – people who struggle with invisible disabilities.

Startups can be a significant source of wealth accumulation. However, creating, investing in, or even working in startups is highly skewed by race and gender. Founders of venture capital-backed startups are overwhelmingly male (89.3%) and White (71.6%), and 93% of venture capital partners are White males. Black women founders receive only 0.06% of VC funds in the U.S. When members of underrepresented groups receive opportunities to associate with startups, they often report feeling discriminated against or marginalized.

My dissertation addresses several of the UN’s sustainable development goals such as gender equality, decent work & economic growth, and reduced inequalities (specifically by race). I do this by examining two key questions. First, can working as a startup joiner empower underrepresented groups to create their own growth-oriented company, and if so, how? Second, how can founders create cultures that include and welcome all groups? I study these questions using multiple methods including a longitudinal multiple case inductive study, quantitative analysis of archival data, and exploratory interviews that elucidate the mechanisms driving statistical results. My research aims to expand our theoretical understanding of (1) heterogeneity in accumulating human capital and (2) the role of founders’ imprints and intentionality in creating organizational culture. I anticipate that my research will positively impact multiple groups. I seek to provide members of underrepresented groups interested in entrepreneurship with a path to create companies, policymakers with a lever to stimulate entrepreneurship, and founders with data about how to create great cultures.

My dissertation research incorporates all RRBM principles. In particular, I intend for my research to make both basic and applied contributions by using inductive methods to extend theory while providing evidence-based advice for entrepreneurs. I leverage multiple literatures, for example, legal and sociological research about intersectionality, and methods. Lastly, I am working to share my findings in practitioner-focused publications.

International Business (IB) literature has so far given short shrift to analyzing the societal impact of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and their foreign direct investments (FDI). While a lot of research has investigated how host country conditions affect FDI, IB scholars have not demonstrated the same interest in the inverse relationship. Moreover, the relationship between FDI and undesirable local activities, such as crime, remains underexplored. It is therefore not surprising that Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 of peace, justice and strong institutions remains one of the least researched SDGs. In a quest to change this tendency, I investigate the relationship between FDI and crime in Mexico.

The Mexican socio-political landscape is shaped by the war on drugs. A question that deserves attention, is how the various foreign and local stakeholders, and especially foreign companies, interact with (organized) crime in Mexico. The overarching question of this project thus is “How do MNEs’ strategies to interact with crime in Mexico affect their impact on broader societal stakeholders?”

To tackle this research question and context, I choose an approach that combines qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative insights based on interviews with managers and other societal stakeholders help understand how both foreign and local companies react to the crime and security threats. In contrast, I analyze quantitative data collected by Mexico’s national statistical institute (INEGI) to tease out society-level consequences of firms’ interaction with different types of crime.

Ultimately, these studies should provide valuable insights into to what degree foreign companies can play a role in reducing crime. These findings expand theory of how firms deal with extreme contexts such as crime and security threats, and, more importantly, contribute to scholarly understanding of MNEs’ societal impact on host countries. The practical application of these findings has the potential to influence policies on attracting FDI as well as mitigating crime, and eventually benefit the local population by reducing crime. In addition, this study is in line with responsible research principles as it puts an inherently societal outcome in the limelight, emphasizes collaboration with various stakeholders in the data collection process, and provides insights of relevance for these stakeholders beyond academic theory.

Why does inequality persist even when it extracts a price from everyone in society? In my dissertation, I integrate theories of social identity with theorizing on zero-sum thinking to understand individuals’ perceptions towards policies aimed at reducing social inequalities of all kinds. I argue that advantaged group members––the people with perhaps the greatest power to create change––fundamentally misperceive equality-enhancing policies as harmful to the advantaged group, even when policies do not harm them. I also hypothesize that advantaged group members hold more inaccurate perceptions of equality policies than do disadvantaged group members. Based on these central predictions, my dissertation research is also focused on (a) investigating mechanisms that may explain the discrepancy between advantaged and disadvantaged group members (e.g., motivated reasoning, group dominance, fairness perceptions), (b) understanding consequences of this misperception (e.g., endorsement of anti-egalitarian ideologies), and (c) testing intervention strategies to reduce individuals’ misperception of policies that enhance equality and could benefit everyone in society. To investigate whether (or not) these perceptions are indeed misperceptions, I focus on non-zero-sum equality policy solutions that propose either increasing resources to disadvantaged group members without affecting the resources to advantaged group members, or policies that propose increasing the resources to both disadvantaged and advantaged group members. In doing this, I am able to examine whether participants still perceive such equality-enhancing policies as harmful to the advantaged groups’ ability to access material resources, even when they do not change or improve advantaged groups’ resource access. It is my hope that this dissertation, and subsequent program of research, reveal that the most promising, and effective, path towards achieving equality is one that ties the interests of everyone together; that we can only win if we all win.

Alignment with RRBM Principles of Responsible Research:

In my dissertation, I integrate theories of social identity with theorizing on zero-sum thinking to argue that advantaged group members misperceive equality-enhancing policies as harmful to the advantaged group, even when policies do not harm them. I also hypothesize that advantaged group members hold more inaccurate perceptions of equality policies than do members of disadvantaged groups. This research is connected to the RRBM principles of responsible research in various ways. In accordance with Principles 1-2, this research offers theoretical contributions to research in organizational behavior and social psychology and provides practical contributions to policymakers that aim to increase equality within business and society. In line with Principles 3-5, I will conduct a series of experiments in which I will recruit a diverse pool or participants, explore perceptions of equality policies across various group boundaries, examine perceptions between both real groups (e.g., White and Black Americans) and in arbitrary group settings, and obtain data from online and field settings. In line with Principles 6-7, I hope to not just share this work within academic settings but also to help practitioners translate the insights from this body of work into equality-enhancing policies that can help construct a better, more equitable society.

Each year around 5.5 million children under 5 years and pregnant women die from diseases that can be prevented by improving access to basic healthcare. Whilst the number of organizations advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) proliferated, including SDG3 to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all, many of their initiatives have been criticized as ineffective in part because they were not adequately sensitive to the local context and poorly formulated theories of change (Calderisi, 2012; Ramalingham, 2013). Management and organization studies, particularly the work examining institutional change can be helpful in developing insights that could advance, what Rosalind Eyben refers to as, “new ways of thinking” (Eyben, 2008) about how individuals and organizations can engage in institutional change, including improving access to healthcare services for young children and their families.

Through this study I seek to develop conceptual and actionable insights that could inform and encourage new ways of thinking and practices for actors engaged in systems change that usually accompanies the advancement of the SDGs. I adopt qualitative research methods to examine the work of institutional entrepreneurs – actors purposefully seeking to change institutional arrangements within an organization or a field (Garud, Hardy, & Maguire, 2007) – driven by the vision that one day no child dies from preventable diseases. Specifically, I want to explore the role of empathy in how actors make sense and enact change to yield research insights into the processes of institutional change at a micro level.

Alignment with RRBM Principles of Responsible Research

• Principle 1: I seek to develop insights that can help actors engaging with complex systems and embark on change thoughtfully.
• Principle 2: My research aims to integrate theory-based puzzle and practice-led problems to contribute to knowledge development and how it is applied by stakeholders.
• Principle 3: Whilst this study is primarily located in management research, it intersects with development studies and policy studies.
• Principle 4: This study utilizes several qualitative sources of data to probe and enrich the insights – interviews, documents analysis, and observations.
• Principle 5: Engaging different stakeholders from the beginning was important to defining the scope and emphasis of what I studied, whilst also being open to surprises.
• Principle 6: My hope is that the research insights can benefit a variety of groups – managers, policy makers, professionals, students – to consider alternative ways of thinking and practicing change.
• Principle 7: My aim is to produce different outputs based on the research findings, including a journal publication, a teaching case study, a practice-oriented work, and a blog.

Over the past few years, organizations have developed new programming to encourage their employees to become allies, those who advocate and actively work for the inclusion of marginalized groups, not as a member of that group but in solidarity with its struggle. This was fueled by the summer of 2020 with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement during the racially fraught climate of the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, after George Floyd was murdered, organizations held webinars encouraging their members to evaluate their own privileges and employees began forming resource groups for those learning to be an ally for the first time. Allyship may be a powerful tool for increasing social equity, however, more research is needed to understand whether allies are effective at helping organizations meet their social equity goals. A particular threat to the impact of allyship is ambiguity: allyship is a new concept for many people and employees may not know how to be an ally. I suggest that this ambiguity may leave individuals unsure about how to behave as an ally, which can lead to paralysis and inaction. Allies may acknowledge that they should do something to reduce inequity but may feel like there are no clear right answers and many areas for potential missteps. As a result, employee’s commitment to and engagement in allyship may be especially likely to decrease over time, even after initially joining newly formed organizational allyship resource groups. The idea that organizational allyship programs may be all talk is major threat – marginalized employees are tired of empty promises. Thus, my research question asks: given ambiguity, how do workplace allies maintain their commitment to reducing systemic inequity? I study these emerging programs to understand how to reduce inequities and achieve justice for all through organizational allyship.

Alignment with RRBM Principles of Responsible Research:

My research follows the principles of responsible science. I contribute knowledge of allyship programs that will help organizations meet their social equity goals (Principle 1&2). My research develops new theories of allyship in management, drawing on research in multiple disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and education (Principle 2&3). I adopt a mixed-methods approach, conducting interviews with those organizing allyship programming in their companies to identify potential explanations which I can then test in a pre-registered experiment to ensure falsification of theory (Principle 4). This ensures that I ground my research in stakeholder insights without compromising academic integrity (Principle 5). In addition to publishing my results in a peer-reviewed journal, I will partner with companies to share my findings and see how they benefit from the insights I uncover (Principle 6&7). This research thus represents the beginning of a scholarly journey to understand how to create long-term societal impact through allyship.