Speakers at ASAC 2023

‘Sustainability’ has recently become ubiquitous – so ubiquitous that this
movement has led to possible misconceptions and misunderstandings of its very meaning, at least in the context that it should be embraced. Of higher concern is the now apparent (mis)appropriation – and hijacking – of the entire concept and field, with the advent of trendy keywords and acronyms such as ‘ESG’ and initiatives such as the creation of the International ‘Sustainability’ Standard Board by the IFRS Foundation, which has naturally important implications for the international business community. This presentation will delve into these
concepts and insights and provide a clearer, broader and a more complete and accurate picture of this space and where we are (or should be) headed.

Charles H. Cho is Professor of Sustainability Accounting and the Erivan K. Haub Chair in Business & Sustainability at the Schulich School of Business, York University. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Accounting, a Master of Science in Accounting, and a PhD in Business Administration (Accounting Track) from the University of Central Florida. He also worked for KPMG LLP and other public accounting firms for several years in auditing and taxation. His research interests include Social and Environmental Accounting; Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR); and Accounting and the Public Interest. Professor Cho has published his work in leading academic journals such as Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, the European Accounting Review, and the Journal of Business Ethics. He currently serves as an Editor of Accounting Forum and the Accounting and Business Ethics Section Co-Editor of the Journal of Business
Ethics. He is actively involved in the academic community as a Council member of the Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research and Chair of its International Associates Committee, is regularly invited as plenary keynote speaker at international conferences and professional events, and solicited by the media. Recently, he was selected as one of the “Top 50 Academic and Research Support Project” from the Republic of Korea’s Prime Minister and Minister of Education; received the Honorable Knight Award from the University of Central
Florida’s Hall of Fame; and was recognized as one of the top 2% most cited scholars within discipline worldwide (34th in the world and 1st in Canada) in the Accounting field for 2019.

Join Dr. George Athanassakos as he argues that the hefty average nominal and real stock returns experienced over the last 30 years are not going to be repeated, or even come close to, in the next 30 years. Profit margins will be eroded going forward. Inflation will also be higher than what prevailed the last 30 years and so are interest rates. The effect of higher interest rates on stocks along with the erosion of profit margins will be predictably negative in contrast to the positive effect that lower interest rates and higher profit margins had on stocks over the last 30 years. The stock price of companies that enjoyed the fattest profit margins and benefited the most from low interest rates over that period, i.e., growth stocks, will face pressure. Value will outperform growth. Riding the ETF bandwagon will not work. Stock picking and fundamental analysis will be key to outperformance.

Dr. George Athanassakos is a Professor of Finance and the Ben Graham Chair in Value Investing at Ivey Business School, which he joined in July 2004. He is also the Founder & Managing Director of The Ben Graham Centre for Value Investing, which he launched in 2006, and the Founder and Managing Director of the Center for the Advancement of Value Investing Education, which he launched in 2008. He has a BA in Economics and Business Administration from The University of Macedonia, Thessalonica, Greece, and an MA in Economics, an MBA and a PhD in Finance from York University. The Financial Planning Standards Council has bestowed Dr. Athanassakos with the FP Canada™ Fellow distinction for his outstanding contribution to furthering FPSC’s mission and for advancing the financial planning profession. Dr. Athanassakos is also a Fellow of the Quality Shareholder Initiative at the Law School of George Washington University in Washington, DC. He is the only Canadian to receive this distinction. Dr. Athanassakos’ contribution to value investing was honoured by Woxsen University which has established the George Athanassakos Chair in Value Investing. Dr. Athanassakos has been ranked among the top 10 researchers in Canada by research published in Financial Management and among the top 10 Canadian professors by the Globe and Mail.   Dr. Athanassakos has published in numerous academic journals and is the author of three books, Derivatives Fundamentals (available through the Canadian Securities Institute), Equity Valuation: A Guide to Discounted Cash Flow and Relative Valuation Methods and Value Investing: From Theory to Practice – A Guide to the Value Investing Process. Dr. Athanassakos has also written articles for the Financial Post and MoneySense magazine and currently writes, as a guest columnist, about investments and economic and financial topics in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest daily newspaper, and the Canadian Investment Review.

The challenging experiences of the last few years including but not limited to a global pandemic, the Great Resignation, and events that led to the Black Lives Matter movement worldwide, have heightened the recognition of the need for organizations to focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, social innovation, and sustainability. Business and society do not exist in a vacuum, but influence each other, and thus the former must do its part to positively impact the latter. Often, to find the way forward, we must look to the past for context, information, and inspiration. This keynote will address cooperation as a strategic ​paragon that was historically utilized for business success among the Black community, and provide some insight about how cooperation can still be used in business to tackle contemporary organizational and societal issues, and to shape a better future for all communities. 

Simone T. A. Phipps, PhD, is a Professor of Management in the School of Business at Middle Georgia State University (USA), and a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School’s Centre for Social Innovation (UK). She is also a member of the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2021 and a winner of the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award. Her research interests include Management History, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Social Innovation, Social Sustainability, and relationships between the organization and society. Her research usually involves the exploration of gender, racial, and ethnic minorities, with the aim of highlighting their struggles and contributions, as well as finding possible solutions to improve the minority experience in business and society. She has published in a number of scholarly outlets including the Journal of Business Ethics, Academy of Management Learning & Education, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and the Journal of Management History. She and her co-author have been recognized by the Academy of Management for publishing “ground-breaking African-American Management History research,” and have also written a book entitled African American Management History: Insights on Gaining a Cooperative Advantage.

Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) have become the default solution for organisations, corporations, individuals and public bodies to settle cases of sexual misconduct, racism, pregnancy discrimination and other human rights violations. This default to an “exchange transaction” requiring the victim to protect the perpetrator / their employer or organization in order to protect themselves has serious consequences for victims and covers up the misconduct of the perpetrator and/or employer. NDAs are frequently pressed on victims who are told they must sign to protect the other party if they want a settlement. 

Data shows that this is now standard practice at most corporations and other organizations when dealing with workplace disputes. As it comes under increasingly scrutiny, management and human resources professionals are reconsidering how they use NDAs in their organizations. Legislation is being driven by a Model Bill developed by the campaign Can’t Buy My Silence – co-founded by Zelda Perkins and Dr Julie Macfarlane. Legislation banning NDAs for (for example) workplace sexual harassment complaints, racial and sexual discrimination and harassment cases, is progressing and has passed into law in a number of jurisdictions including Canada, the US, Ireland, Australia and the UK. 

it is important and timely for manager and HR specialists to consider their use of NDAs, and what steps should be taken now to anticipate and prepare for their restriction. 

Professor Julie Macfarlane is a Canadian law professor and Member of the Order of Canada who has spent her career researching, writing about and advocating for access to justice. She is Emerita Distinguished University Professor at the University of Windsor. 

Julie began her career in the UK where she did her legal education and training, moving to Canada in the early 1990’s. She has continued to work and speak regularly in the UK.

Julie is best known for her research and writing on the legal system and in particular the role of lawyers. Her book, The New Lawyer : How Clients are Transforming the Practice of Law (now in 2^nd edition, UBC Press 2017) is widely used in law schools and professional legal education in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia and other common law countries. A practising mediator for 25 years, she also edited a textbook on dispute resolution that is the standard text in Canadian and many US law schools. 

In 2013, Julie wrote a highly influential empirical report on the experiences of self-represented litigants, which explored ways in which the legal system could adjust to the growing and now established phenomenon of self-representation. This work led to the establishment the National Self-Represented Litigants Project, which Julie led from 2013-2022. 

Julie has also researched and written about misperceptions of and prejudice towards Muslim communities in North America (Islamic Divorce in North America: Choosing a Shari’a Path in a Secular Society (Oxford University Press 2012). 

Julie’s work has been recognized with a number of honours, including the Order of Canada (2020), named as one of Canada’s 25 Most Influential Lawyers (2017), the David Mundell Medal for Legal Writing (2016), the Scholar of the Year Award from the Institute for Social Policy Understanding (www.ispu.org) (2012), and the first-ever Canadian recipient of the International Academy of Mediators Award of Excellence (2005). 

In the last 5 years, Julie’s work has focused on advocacy for change in how the legal system treats survivors of sexual violence. Her most recent book (Going Public: a Survivor’s Journey from Grief to Action Between the Lines Press, 2020), the winner of the Huguenot Society Award, describes her personal experiences of sexual violence, her efforts to use the legal system for change, and her first-hand experiences of institutional cultures – churches, schools, and universities – that tolerate and suppress sexual violence. 

Most recently, Julie has been campaigning internationally (with Zelda Perkins) to end the widespread use of non-disclosure agreements or NDAs (Can’t Buy My Silence). She and Zelda are currently working with lawmakers, lawyers, educators, trade unionists and others in Canada, the UK and Ireland, to introduce legislation to ban NDAs that cover-up discrimination, harassment and other abuse.

While much entrepreneurship teaching and research remains focused on the sources and consequences of new venture creation, there has been growing attention to conceptualizing and studying entrepreneurship in broader ways. Lounsbury and Glynn recently argued that a productive focus for cultural entrepreneurship scholarship is the study of entrepreneurial possibilities that emerge and develop in complex institutional fields—before there are opportunities to be identified and exploited. In this talk, I will discuss and elaborate on the implications of the notion of entrepreneurial possibilities for entrepreneurial research and teaching. For instance, one important implication is to unpack the earliest stages of how the orientation of individuals begins to shift towards seeing themselves as entrepreneurs. While this involves identity (re-)construction, it also involves an emancipatory process where intellectual, psychological, economic, social, institutional, or cultural constraints/barriers are overcome. With regard to teaching, I argue that to realize the full potential of entrepreneurship to enhance socio-economic well-being, address grand challenges, and foster inclusivity, I argue that entrepreneurship education ought to be reimagined as a core liberal arts domain that can broaden traditional approaches to management in a way that substantively embraces disciplinary knowledge across the social sciences and humanities.

Michael Lounsbury is the Roger S. Smith Professor of Business and Academic Director of the eHUB Entrepreneurship Centre at the University of Alberta School of Business.  His research focuses on the relationship between organizational and institutional change, entrepreneurial dynamics, and the emergence of new industries and practices.  In addition to serving on a number of editorial boards, Professor Lounsbury is the series editor of Research in the Sociology of Organizations. He has previously served as Chair of the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management. His Ph.D. is in Sociology and Organization Behavior from Northwestern University.

We examine the role of community entrepreneurship, in particular, craft entrepreneurs as they work to leverage the rich reservoir of traditional craft practices embedded in place. Using the view of tradition-as-resource, we study entrepreneurs in the role of custodians – actors who are invested in the continuity of traditions, and who engage in official and unofficial roles to guide, adapt, and protect them (Montgomery & Dacin, 2020; Dacin, Dacin & Kent, 2019; Dacin & Dacin, 2008; Soares, 1997). Our focus is on examining the elements, including place, that underlie the revival and maintenance of craft traditions. Our work draws on ideas from cultural traditions and place. Traditions are institutionalized practices curated and maintained by individuals who have a stake in their existence (Dacin & Dacin, 2008; Dacin, Munir, & Tracey, 2010; Soares, 1997). Over time, as traditions become elaborated across generations, they take on new meanings and new cultural elements (Trevor-Roper, 1983). However, we also find that due to their trans-temporal nature many traditions that evolve over time without ongoing custodianship, enter dormancy. Curation by individuals, such as entrepreneurs in a custodial role, maintains the “rootedness” of traditions in the face of shifting actors, agendas and interests and supplies the social and cultural glue that bind members to both place and to one another. The context for our study encompasses the craft traditions on an outport island off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. We specifically focus our work in the community of Tilting, a registered heritage district off the eastern tip of Fogo Island. Through a series of semi-structured interviews we trace the evolution of community entrepreneurship in the heritage craft sector. We focus mainly on endangered craft, which is at risk of no longer being practiced. This allows us to focus on an extreme context where custodianship is not only needed, it is critical. Our findings suggest a number of important conditions for the role of craft entrepreneurs working as custodians in saving craft and place.

Tina Dacin is the Stephen J.R. Smith Chaired Professor of Strategy and Organizational Behavior. She is the Principal Investigator of the Community Revitalization Research Program at the Smith School of Business. Tina’s current teaching is in the areas of AI, bias and ethics, Strategy, social impact and inclusive leadership. Tina is former Chair of the Principal’s Innovation Fund at Queen’s University and former Director of the Centre for Social Impact at the Smith School of Business. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge and the Winspear Scholar at the University of Victoria.

Inanimate, human or influencer brand, Dr. Levesque has been studying the phenomena of influencer marketing for years. This is a subject that draws attention because, mirroring social interactions and personal identity, social media fulfills emotional and information needs, such as obtaining advice or recommendations. In fact, ninety per cent of consumers trust the opinion of a person they consider to be reliable over that of an official media source. Why do influencers have so much sway?

According to the engagement measurement scale that Dr. Levesque has developed, namely influencer engagement on social media, the engagement of followers is measured cognitively, affectively, and behaviorally. What is interesting is the aspect that is not necessarily visible by likes or shares. Some followers wonder, in a dilemma: “what would my influencer do in my place?” That says a lot and a little at the same time. Hence, Dr. Levesque offers to demystify and deepen the often-hidden aspects about influencer marketing, but the most relevant for all those who waltz on social media. Participants will learn about:

– How to identify a relevant influencer?

– Why partner with a tiktokeur?

– What are the dangers for consumers/brands?

– What is the future of influencer marketing?

Dr. Nataly Levesque holds a PhD in marketing from the Faculty of Business Administration at Laval University. Her expertise is based on human branding and influencer marketing. More specifically, she studied the engagement relationship between a follower and an influencer on social medias. She has several publications on this topic, including one that will appear shortly in the Journal of Marketing Management. In addition, she is frequently asked to comment on news related to influence marketing.

Her research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Fonds de recherche du Québec-Société et culture (FRQSC). Nataly holds a Master of Science in Marketing from the ESG-UQAM School of Management and a bachelor’s degree in Communication from the University of Montreal.

She has been teaching for 6 years at Laval University in business administration at the undergraduate and graduate levels and she supervises students in their final MBA activity. Nataly also gives MBA courses in Algeria to business leaders, and she has developed training for professionals on influence marketing for the Carré des affaires FSA ULaval-Banque Nationale. Involved in the community, she is co-president of the marketing division of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada.

Recently, she is coordinator of the very first Center for Case Studies at the University of Sherbrooke. Furthermore, she has solid experience as a director of marketing communications in the damage insurance and financial services industry. Additionally, Nataly founded her digital marketing agency and planned the execution of influencer campaigns for various start-ups.

_____________________________________________________________________

Dre Nataly Levesque est titulaire d’un doctorat en marketing de la Faculté d’administration des affaires de l’Université Laval. Son expertise est basée sur la marque humaine et le marketing d’influence. Plus précisément, elle étudie la relation d’engagement entre un follower et un influenceur sur les médias socionumériques. Elle a plusieurs publications sur ce sujet, dont une qui paraîtra prochainement dans le Journal of Marketing Management. De plus, elle est fréquemment sollicitée pour commenter l’actualité liée au marketing d’influence.

Ses recherches sont soutenues par le Conseil de recherche en sciences humaines (CRSH) et le Fonds de recherche du Québec-Société et culture (FRQSC). Nataly est titulaire d’une maîtrise ès sciences en marketing de l’ESG-UQAM et d’un baccalauréat en communication de l’Université de Montréal.

Elle enseigne depuis 6 ans à l’Université Laval en administration des affaires au premier cycle et aux cycles supérieurs et elle encadre des étudiants dans leur activité finale de MBA. Nataly donne également des cours de MBA en Algérie à des dirigeants d’entreprises, et elle a développé une formation pour les professionnels en marketing d’influence pour le Carré des affaires FSA ULaval-Banque Nationale. Impliquée dans la communauté, elle est coprésidente de la division marketing de l’Association des sciences administratives du Canada.

Depuis peu, elle est coordonnatrice du tout premier Centre d’études de cas de l’Université de Sherbrooke. De plus, elle possède une solide expérience à titre de directrice des communications marketing dans l’industrie de l’assurance de dommages et des services financiers. De plus, Nataly a fondé son agence de marketing numérique et a planifié l’exécution de campagnes d’influence pour diverses start-ups.