Professor Marquis will discuss the growing trend of “social businesses” in the United States and in particular the work that the US NGO B Lab has undertaken to spur this development. The mission of B Lab is to create a new sector of the economy by: 1) Building a community of Certified B Corporations (B=Benefit) that had legal responsibility to diverse stakeholder interests beyond shareholders; 2) Advancing the public policies necessary to create a new corporate form called "benefit corporation:s; and 3) Creating a social investment rating system to help drive institutional investment to the emerging asset class of "impact investments" that focused on both financial and social performance. The talk will more generally explore the ways in which norms and institutions have been changing in the USA and around the world to facilitate the spread of social businesses.

Chris Marquis is the Samuel C. Johnson Professor of Sustainable Global Enterprise and Professor of Management at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Peking University. Chris’ teaching and research focus is the sustainability and corporate social responsibility strategies of global corporations, with a particular emphasis on firms in China. Theoretically, this research builds on his prior research on the mechanisms of how and why firm behavior varies over time and across geographic contexts. He has published this research in leading journals including Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, American Sociological Review, Harvard Business Review, Organization Science, and Strategic Management Journal. He received his PhD in from the University of Michigan. He is an Associate Editor of Administrative Science Quarterly and on the Executive Committee of the IACMR.