I conduct interdisciplinary research on the creative ways businesses and global supply chains can positively impact jobs, society, and the economy. All of my work is applied, designed to inform real-world decision-making.
I examine:
- Novel business models – social enterprise, triple bottom line, hybrid organizations
- Creative supply chain interventions – fair trade, value chain profit-sharing
- Innovative systems of economic governance – sustainability certifications, cooperatives
- New technologies – mobile banking, blockchain, AI
Each project relates to some version of these three questions:
- Under what conditions are they most likely to succeed?
- What prevents leaders and organizations from choosing these alternatives?
- What are the costs, risks, and limitations?
My greatest goal is to empower business leaders, policymakers, nonprofits, unions, and social movements to set and achieve their own goals for creating a more just and vibrant world.
For more on how I bring research-informed recommendations to decision makers, see here.
Select Lines of Research
1 – Living Wages in Global Supply Chains
“Living wages” – the amount of remuneration a worker requires to meet their basic needs – is included in the 1919 ILO Constitution and 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights. Today, almost every country has a legal minimum wage. However, in most places it is far below anyone’s estimate of a “living wage.”
Intuitively, living wages would have been at the center of corporate social responsibility movement that emerged in the 1990s. However, the idea of companies voluntarily paying a living wage did not gain significant traction until the late 2010s.
This line of research examines how and why the global movement for voluntary living wages been able to gain more traction in removing barriers to living wage in the last 10 years than the international community has in a century. It draws on data from eight years of deep field research with the NGOs, businesses, multi-stakeholder initiatives, researchers, and advocates who have moved mountains to make it easier for multi-national corporations to choose to pay workers enough to feed their families.
With support from the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Global Organic Textile Standard.
2 – Approaches to Business and Human Rights
There are many ways that companies and policymakers can use their power to support human rights. This line of research offers a theoretical framework to support scholars and practitioners who want to put these diverse ideas into conversation with one another.
Our model shows how shared ownership, social purpose, and best practices intersect with voluntary corporate responsibility and mandatory corporate regulations. We show how all three approaches can support and reinforce one another, but argue that they do not do so equally. While ownership and purpose have the potential to safeguard and promote each other and best practices, human rights-centric practices are less likely to promote broad-based ownership and social mission. For this reason, we argue that it is particularly important that businesses orient their ownership and mission in ways that promote human rights, as this can create an important foundation for wide-reaching, deeply-impactful, and durable practice changes.
This work is being carried out with colleagues in the Sustainability Research Group at the University of Basel with support from the Forum Basiliense.
3 – Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence: Transformative Revolution or Meaningless Reform?
The negative impacts of global supply chains, such as human rights violations, breaches of labor standards and environmental harms, have led to growing calls by civil society and consumers for policymakers to take action to address them. In response, policymakers have started to require businesses to take greater responsibility for their impact, in a wave of “due diligence” regulations. “Due diligence” means that businesses must identify, report on, and mitigate sustainability and human rights risks in their supply chains.
This line of research asks: Which approaches to business and human rights appear in the final legal text? Were other approaches to business and human rights were introduced in the policy-making process and by whom? We examine the case of the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), a landmark regulation adopted in 2024. What can the CSDDD analysis tell us about regulating business and human rights, in general? We analyze nearly 500k documents related to the policy outcomes process, including responses from rounds of public feedback and a public consultation survey. This work is being carried out with colleagues in the Sustainability Research Group at the University of Basel with support from the Forum Basiliense.
4 – Ethical Consumerism and Sustainable Production: Learning from the Legal US Cannabis Market
For 30 years, consumers been inundated with opportunities to “shop for change” and “vote with their dollar” while business owners have been encouraged to “pursue a triple bottom line” and “do well while doing good.” Advocates of sustainable shopping hope that these initiatives will educate the public and lead to the voluntary adoption of more sustainable production practices.
In the 2010s, several US states voted to legalize cannabis (marijuana), making it the fastest-growing agricultural sector in America. This line of research examines whether, how, and to what end ethical consumerism and sustainable production have emerged in this new sector. It draws on data collected from a random sample of more than 200 dispensaries in 2016, 2019, and 2025; interviews with cannabis sustainability certification founders, and ten years of field research.
With support from the University of California-Berkeley Cannabis Research Center, Dr. Bronner’s Family Foundation and the California Department of Cannabis Control.