The world has transformed at an overwhelming pace over the 20 years since the Centre for Business, Organisations and Society (CBOS) was founded. The world’s population has grown by almost two billion people; the value of global trade in goods and services has more than doubled; the percentage of people living in poverty globally stands at less than half its 2005 rate.
Technology is more of a staple in our lives than ever before – the iPhone was launched in 2007, and has since sold over 2.5 billion units – and the majority of us now take internet access for granted as part of our daily lives.
But global temperatures have continued to rise alarmingly, and a climate emergency has now been declared in 40 countries. The Covid-19 pandemic claimed more than 7 million lives across the world, and months of lockdowns fundamentally shifted the ways in which we live and work.
Throughout all of this change and more, CBOS members have been responding to real-world events in their research, seeking to achieve impact through engagement with business and society.
Here are some of the key moments and papers from CBOS’ history – so far...
Increasing focus on CSR
Brammer, S., & Millington, A. 2008. ‘Does It Pay to Be Different? An Analysis of the Relationship Between Corporate Social and Financial Performance’. Strategic Management Journal, 29(12): 1325-1343.
“It was a paper motivated by the confusion in research and practice regarding whether being a ‘good’ firm paid off financially. Our paper sought to distinguish more precisely what ‘doing good’ meant at the firm level by identifying those firms that made higher, or lower, levels of charitable donations than is implied by their size, industry, profitability, etc.
“We then used this classification to explore whether those that gave more than expected performed better financially, showing that both those with unexpectedly high and unexpectedly low donations tended to outperform other firms.
“We argued that this reflected a differentiation hypothesis in which firms needed to ‘go big or go home’ with their CSR or simply save their money. Being stuck in the middle was the worst outcome.”
- Professor Steve Brammer, Dean of the School of Management
2007-2008 great financial crisis
Grosvold, J., & Brammer, S. 2011. ‘National Institutional Systems as Antecedents of Female Board Representation: An Empirical Study’. Corporate Governance: An International Review, 19(2): 116-135.
“The paper was written at the time when the topic of corporate board gender diversity was gaining traction. This was partly driven by Norway’s decision to introduce a quota of 40% female representation on the boards of public companies in 2005, and the now infamous quote by Christine Lagarde that had Lehman Brothers been Lehman Sisters, the bank would never have collapsed.
“Board gender diversity started to form part of a global conversation, but whilst we knew that the share of board seats that women held across countries differed, we had little insight into why. We therefore set out to understand more about what could cause these systematic national differences. The paper was cited in a number of policy documents, suggesting that this research impacted policy formation and practice.”
- Dr Johanne Grosvold, CBOS Deputy Director
2015 European migrant crisis and the Brexit referendum
Dawson, C., Veliziotis, M., & Hopkins, B. 2018. ‘Understanding the Perception of the “Migrant Work Ethic”’. Work, Employment & Society , 32(5): 811-830.
“The ‘migrant work ethic’ was a common phrase thrown around when it came to Central and Eastern European workers operating in the UK.
"We wanted to test whether this was something innate about these migrant workers or whether it could be explained by simple economic models – and it turns out that it could.
“Migrant workers from these (at the time) poorer countries received positive income shocks in the UK and therefore worked harder, as standard economic theory predicts. Moreover, as they acclimatised to wages in the UK, their perceived stronger work ethic disappeared.”