University of St Andrews

Ethics, Sustainability and Accountability (ESA) research covers practical and theoretical issues concerning the social and environmental consequences of, and the governance mechanisms for, organisations, industry and society.

ESA group members typically address issues related to corporate responsibility, pro-environmental behaviours and the management of the global environment using critical and interpretive approaches to management and organizational studies. They mix sociological, philosophical and historical approaches to explore a diversity of organisational settings ranging from contemporary large-scale international industries and markets (such as global marine fisheries, energy provision, financial markets, international shipping, the diamond industry to name a few) to more historically and locally situated entities including community-owned organisations, art organisations and alternative forms of organisation.

ESA members also share an interest in better understanding and contributing to international and national regulations, policies and practices (including community empowerment policy discourses, sustainability science, waste management, community water governance, wind energy management in Scotland and Child Support Enforcement Program in the US). They collectively engage in debates that challenge disciplinary boundaries, ‘successful’ concepts (for example, circular economy, sustainable development, corporate membership, employee participation, resource management, zero-waste) and technologies (including stock markets, account books, carbon accounting, post-normal technologies).

Research staff:

• Professor Jan Bebbington: sustainable development: social and environmental accounting.
• Dr Kais Bouslah: investment analysis and portfolio management; asset pricing; risk management; socially responsible investing; link between finance and social responsibility; empirical finance; financial institutions and markets.
• Dr John Desmond: history of marketing; construction of knowledge in marketing; consuming culture; morality and marketing; advertising and public policy.
• Professor John Ferguson: accountability and corporate governance, with a particular focus on the social and organisational impact of corporate governance regimes.
• Professor Robert Gray: social and environmental accounting, accountability, auditing and reporting; sustainability; education
• Dr Tobias Jung: philanthropy, especially foundations and trusts.
• Rhona McLaren: sustainable development; community benefits; renewable energy; public policy; public participation.
• Dr Samuel Mansell: business ethics and political philosophy.
• Dr Francois-Regis Puyou: critical approaches to management accounting practices; social and organisational impacts of accounting tools and practices.
• Dr Philip Roscoe: the role that markets play in contemporary organising; the moral issues that surround markets, and the discourses, valuations and justifications invoked in market settings.
• Dr Shona Russell: governance, accountability and accounting technologies for natural resource management, particularly water; collaborative and interdisciplinary knowledge production in the domain of environmental science and policy; organising sustainability transitions.
• Lorna Stevenson: the social, environmental and economic consequences of accounting, and the implications of these for both wider forms of accountancy and accountants' and managers' education.
• Dr Lucy Wishart: the governance of sustainable development within Scotland; waste and circular economy; policy processes.

The financial institutions and markets group has developed its research around seven themes:

• Corporate Finance: firm profitability; firm risk; mergers and acquisitions; corporate governance; corporate fraud; insider trading; corporate innovation; behavioural corporate finance; diversity and well-being at work.
• Empirical Asset Pricing: investment analysis and portfolio management; risk management; stock return predictability; asset price volatility; international financial market integration.
• Financial Institutions: industrial organisation applied to banking; productivity; credit unions; retail payments; governance mechanisms in banking; financial inclusion; risks of financial institutions and markets; real effects of banking agglomeration.
• Funding for Small Businesses: SME Funding issues; credit availability in growth-oriented SMEs; funding for start-ups; equity finance such as venture capital and business angel funding; alternative forms of small business lending such as crowdfunding.
• Household Finance: consumer behaviour; risk perceptions; life-cycle behaviour; saving and consumption decisions; individual investments.
• Law, Finance and Inequality: legal traditions and financial development; institutional and legal foundations of financial markets; judicial systems, law enforcement and economic activity; legal regulation, incentives and market behaviour; the political economy of legislative and regulatory processes; finance and inequality.
• Responsible Investments: carbon investment; microfinance; Islamic finance; pricing of green and responsible financial instruments and the assessment of the impact of investing in these instruments; the overall impact of responsible investing on portfolio performance.

Research staff:

• Dr Pejman Abedifar: financial intermediation; risk management and stability; diversification in banking; bankruptcy and resolution; Islamic finance and finance-growth nexus.
• Dr Kais Bouslah: investment analysis and portfolio management; asset pricing; risk management; socially responsible investing; link between finance and social responsibility; empirical finance; financial institutions and markets.
• Dr Ross Brown: entrepreneurship; high growth entrepreneurship; entrepreneurship and public policy; funding for SMEs (including alternative forms of funding such as crowdfunding); innovation policy; employee ownership.
• Dr Dimitris Chronopoulos: banking; productivity; empirical asset pricing; mergers and acquisitions.
• Dr Laurence Lasselle: macroeconomics with imperfect competition; general equilibrium models; economic dynamics; heterogeneous beliefs; issues on globalisation and education.
• Dr José Manuel Liñares-Zegarra: banking; payment economics; financial markets; consumer and household finances; microfinance and financial inclusion.
• Professor Duncan Maclennan: development of cities, the renewal of neighbourhoods and the economics of housing.
• Dr Linh Nguyen: empirical banking; financial inclusion; financial sector stability.
• Dr Louis Nguyen: corporate finance, banking, law and economics.
• Dr Daniel Oto-Peralias: law and finance; economic development; institutions; inequality.
• Professor Bert Scholtens: corporate social responsibility; socially responsible investing; energy finance; financial institutions (banks, pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, etc.); international finance; financial intermediation; financial systems; environmental economics.
• Dr Manouchehr Tavakoli: finance and industrial economics; insider trading; company performance; advertising; television viewing choice; health economics, especially in waiting time and economic evaluations.
• Professor John Wilson: European banking; credit unions and industrial organization.

Knowledge and practice is an interdisciplinary research group that focuses on the relationship between knowledge and practice in various areas of work, including technical, creative, professional and policy settings.

Researchers working in diverse areas are linked by common interests in understanding knowledge and practice, informed by a range of theoretical approaches to knowledge in organisational settings.

Particular areas of focus include public policy and the sustainability agenda, education, the third sector, philanthropy and public good, healthcare, the music industry, careers and the professions. Members of the group also engage actively with practitioners, policy makers and the media.

Research staff:

• Dr Cinla Akinci: decision making; intuition; cognition; top management teams; organisational and managerial learning; organisational change and development.
• Professor Kirstie Ball: surveillance; privacy; employee monitoring.
• Dr Alina Baluch: employment relations in voluntary sector organisations; HRM and employee wellbeing; philanthropy and the voluntary sector.
• Professor Jan Bebbington: sustainable development: social and environmental accounting.
• Dr Ross Brown: entrepreneurship; high growth entrepreneurship; entrepreneurship and public policy; funding for SMEs (including alternative forms of funding such as crowdfunding); innovation policy; employee ownership.
• Dr Shiona Chillas: graduate labour market; employability; sociology of professions; knowedge work and workers.
• Professor Huw Davies: healthcare policy and management; policy design and implementation; organisational dynamics and performance; public accountability.
• Martin Dowling: organisational change and HR strategy; partnership working in organisations; skill development.
• Professor John Ferguson: accountability and corporate governance, with a particular focus on the social and organisational impact of corporate governance regimes.
• Dr Lisi Gordon: leadership; workplace learning; education; transitions (including educational, life and organisational transitions).
• Dr Gail Greig: how practices produce and reproduce our everyday world and us as practitioners; how organising practices relate to other practices, e.g. in medicine and healthcare, craft / making, and research; practice theory; activity theory; process theory.
• Professor Paul Hibbert: collaborative and relational processes of organising and learning; interpretive and interdisciplinary research; management and leadership education, in theory and practice.
• Professor Jeff Hyman: employee participation, the future of work and work-life balance.
• Dr Tobias Jung: philanthropy, especially foundations and trusts.
• Dr Laurence Lasselle: macroeconomics with imperfect competition; general equilibrium models; economic dynamics; heterogeneous beliefs; issues on globalisation and education.
• Charles Lovatt: social policy; practice of entrepreneurship; marketing; innovation; governance and enrichment.
• Professor Duncan Maclennan: development of cities, the renewal of neighbourhoods and the economics of housing.
• Professor Sandra Nutley: understanding and improving research use and impact in public policy and practice contexts; performance management systems, with a particular focus on public service audit and inspection regimes.
• Professor Kevin Orr‎: organisational theory; public administration; political studies.
• Dr Francoise-Regis Puyou: critical accounting; visualisation; phenomenology.
• Dr Sandra Romenska: leadership development; collaborative and shared leadership; leading virtual and distributed teams; innovation; complexity.
• Dr Shona Russell: governance, accountability and accounting technologies for natural resource management, particularly water; collaborative and interdisciplinary knowledge production in the domain of environmental science and policy; organising sustainability transitions.
• Lorna Stevenson: the social, environmental and economic consequences of accounting, and the implications of these for both wider forms of accountancy and accountants' and managers' education‎.
• Dr Juliette Summers: the intersection of work, identity and democracy, and in particular on employee ownership and participation, worker and community identity development, and political consultation and participation strategies.
• Dr Lucy Wishart: the governance of sustainable development within Scotland; waste and circular economy; policy processes.

Research within organisations and society focuses on the role of organisations in shaping society and the role of society in shaping organisations. This inter-relation is examined from a range of theoretical perspectives in a variety of empirical locations by adopting a range of qualitative and quantitative analytical approaches. Accepted ideas about organisation and orthodoxies of managerial practice are thoroughly interrogated.

At the heart of the group is a concern with the sociological and psychological nature of organisational behaviour, and with the ethical and political context and consequences of organisations.

Research staff:

• Dr Cinla Akinci: decision making; intuition; cognition; top management teams; organisational and managerial learning; organisational change and development.
• Professor Kirstie Ball: surveillance, privacy and security.
• Dr Alina Baluch: employment relations in voluntary organisations; HRM and performance in voluntary and public sector organisations; deviant workplace behaviour.
• William Barlow: creative marketing; advertising and marketing communications.
• Dr Boyka Bratanova: sustainability and the effects of economic conditions on psychology and behaviour; the effect of wealth and inequality on people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
• Dr Ross Brown: entrepreneurship; high growth entrepreneurship; entrepreneurship and public policy; funding for SMEs (including alternative forms of funding such as crowdfunding); innovation policy; employee ownership.
• Dr Eleanor Burt: charities in the 'Information Age'; charities as ethical institutions; charities and the regulation of campaigning; 'democratic voice'.
• Dr Shiona Chillas: graduate labour market; employability; sociology of professions; knowledge work and workers.
• Professor Huw Davies: healthcare policy and management; policy design and implementation; organisational dynamics and performance; public accountability.
• Martin Dowling: organisational change and HR strategy; partnership working in organisations; skill development.
• Professor John Ferguson: accountability and corporate governance, with a particular focus on the social and organisational impact of corporate governance regimes.
• Dr Lisi Gordon: leadership; workplace learning; education; transitions (including educational, life and organisational transitions).
• Professor Robert Gray: social and environmental accounting, accountability, auditing and reporting; sustainability; education.
• Dr Gail Greig: collective knowing and learning in work and organization; activity theory and practice-based approaches; relations between the dialectical and dialogical aspects of practice in musical work settings; craft and craft working practices.
• Professor Paul Hibbert: collaborative and relational processes of organising and learning; interpretive and interdisciplinary research; management and leadership education, in theory and practice.
• Dr Tobias Jung: philanthropy, especially foundations and trusts.
• Professor Brad MacKay: strategy development; execution and implementation; contingency planning; scenario planning; the political economy of strategy-making.
• Dr Samuel Mansell: business ethics and political philosophy.
• Diane McGoldrick: organisations, management and society.
• Rhona McLaren: sustainable development; community benefits; renewable energy; public policy; public participation.
• Professor Sandra Nutley: understanding and improving research use and impact in public policy and practice contexts; performance management systems, with a particular focus on public service audit and inspection regimes.
• Dr Juliette Summers: the intersection of work, identity and democracy, and in particular on employee ownership and participation, worker and community identity development, and political consultation and participation strategies.
• Professor Ruth Woodfield: gender differences and inequalities in the context of work and education.