Long Institute Distinguished Scholar Lecture Series 

Regulatory Uncertainty and Corporate Response to Environmental Protection in China

 Christopher Marquis
Associate Professor of Business Administration, Marvin Bower Fellow
Harvard Business School

China's rapid industrialization and economic development in the past three decades has been accompanied by extreme environmental degradation. However, as development has progressed, there has been increasing awareness among the Government, business community and general public of the importance of environmental protection. The Chinese Central Government in particular has been paying increasing attention to these issues as environmental security is seen to be essential for China to continue its future growth trend. The 11th and recent 12th Five-Year Plans focuses on energy efficiency and the enhancement of environmental protection are prominent examples of this recent commitment. While this change in governmental policy and action has been widely supported by the general public and global business community, it has created extreme uncertainties regarding the priority and goals among key business actors, both Chinese firms and multinationals. The talk will focus on these developments and questions of how have businesses operating in China responded to these changes?

Chris Marquis is an Associate Professor in the Organizational Behavior unit at the Harvard Business School and is affiliated with the HBS Social Enterprise Initiative and Harvard University Hauser Center for Non-Profit Organizations.  He teaches the MBA elective Social Entrepreneurship in the Business Sector and a doctoral course on Organizational Theory. He has previously taught Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LEAD) in the required MBA curriculum, and in a number of executive education programs.

Professor Marquis' current research is focused on how business can have a positive impact on society and in particular how historical processes and community relations have shaped firms' and entrepreneurs' social strategies and activities. He is currently pursuing several streams of research. The first seeks to assess how organizations can be designed to maximize both business and social value. Questions that drive his inquires include: How can companies grow in reach and profit, while staying true to a social mission and maintaining their quality of services or products? And, should social entrepreneurs focus their efforts on leading change of the broader system in which they operate, or should they focus on achieving impact within the existing system? The second explores how environmental sustainability initiatives have developed in China. This research investigates questions such as: What are the implications of transitioning to greener technology when government and business are structurally intertwined? These research projects build on Marquis' earlier work that analyzed how firm behavior is shaped by broader contexts such as embeddedness in geographic communities and how environmental conditions during founding periods leave a lasting imprint on organizations. In particular, Marquis' prior research examined the effects of these processes in the contexts of community-based social networks and the evolution of the US banking industry.

Marquis' research has won a number of national awards including the 2006 William H. Newman Award for best dissertation across the entire the Academy of Management, the 2006 Louis R. Pondy award for best dissertation in organizational theory from the Academy of Management, the 2003 James D. Thompson Award for best graduate student paper from the American Sociological Association and the 2005 State Farm Doctoral Dissertation Award. He was a finalist for the 2010 Aspen Institute Faculty Pioneer Award, a runner-up in the Academy of Management's Best Published Paper in Organization and Management Theory in 2009 and a finalist in the 2004 INFORMS/Organization Science Dissertation Proposal Competition. He has published in Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, American Sociological Review, Organization Science, and Strategic Management Journal as well as a number of edited collections. He is a member of the editorial boards of Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science and Strategic Organization. 

Marquis received a BA in History from Notre Dame, MA in History and MBA in Finance from Pitt, and MA and PhD in Sociology from Michigan. Prior to his academic career, he worked for 6 years in the financial services industry, most recently as Vice President and Technology Manager for a business unit of Bank One Corporation (now J.P. Morgan Chase).