Topic: Sustainability

Berkeley, Calif. – The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, today announced the launch of the Berkeley Haas Sustainable Business Research Prize. The prize encourages serious research with timely, real-world business-practice applications among business school faculty around the world related to responsible business, sustainability, and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) issues. 

This new prize seeks to recognize the most significant research papers that hold the greatest potential to catalyze immediate change in business management practices in the face of urgent global environmental crises. Additionally, the prize will motivate thought leadership globally and add to the body of knowledge and intellectual capital in the role of business in society. 

Recognizing that the global market is not acting fast enough to address the climate change crisis, the 2023 prize will seek papers that explore economic levers that motivate individuals, corporations, and markets to act with urgency on climate and resource-saving initiatives. 

This Haas Sustainable Business Research Prize is supported by Allan Spivack, MBA 80 and former President & CEO of RGI Home. Spivack has long been at the vanguard of sustainable business and serves on the Senior Advisory Board of the Berkeley Haas Center for Responsible Business. 

“The University of California, Berkeley has a tradition of cutting-edge innovation across many academic and research disciplines,” Spivack said. “My intention in creating the Sustainable Business Research Prize is to provide a platform in which the urgent conversations around climate change and industry can meet the moment.”

A committee of well-regarded sustainability researchers and practitioners at the Haas School of Business will choose one academic study to win the $20,000 prize. The committee will be chaired by Berkeley Haas Dean Ann E. Harrison and made up of faculty members Reed Walker, Transamerica Chair in Business Strategy; Assistant Professor Sytske Wijnsma,; Assistant Professor Jonathan Weigel; and Associate Professor Panos Patatoukas, the L.H. Penney Chair in Accounting and Distinguished Teaching Fellow.

The prize is part of Dean Harrison’s three strategic priorities for the Haas School: sustainability, entrepreneurship, and diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging (DEIJB). As the top public business school, Berkeley Haas is committed to addressing sustainability challenges by preparing our students to lead the transition to a sustainable and inclusive economy through designing and implementing new business models, policies, and solutions.

“At the Haas School of Business, we believe that the transition to a sustainable world is being led by business. It is business that is mobilizing the vast amount of capital and innovation needed to create successful environmental solutions at scale,” Harrison said. “The Haas Sustainable Business Research Prize seeks to address this challenge in translating cutting-edge academic research into action in the face of the climate crisis.”

The prize is administered by the Berkeley Haas Center for Responsible Business (CRB). The CRB connects students, businesses, and faculty to mobilize the positive potential of business to create a more responsible, resilient, and sustainable society. Building on more than two decades of research, teaching, and engaging with business, the center encourages sustainability-minded research and its application in the marketplace of commerce and ideas.

Learn more about the prize and the forthcoming 2023 call for papers here. 

Media Contact:

Emily Pelissier, Associate Director, Center for Responsible Business
[email protected]
(503) 804-6044