Thanks to a generous $5.4 million gift by Drs. Wayne [BSc(ME)/80, LLD/23] and Elanor Chiu, The Chiu Centre for Business Serving Community was announced on November 4, 2025. It will soon be established inside the walls of the Drake Centre.

“Wayne and Elanor Chiu are some of Canada’s most prominent philanthropists in sustainability,” said Bruno Silvestre, Dean of the I.H. Asper School of Business and CPA Manitoba Chair in Business Leadership. “We are truly honoured they chose to give back to the Asper School of Business, where we can continue to advance one of our greatest and oldest values: to keep community in business.”

(L-R) Dr. Bruno Silvestre, Dr. Wayne Chiu, Dr. Elanor Chiu, and Dr. Michael Benarroch

Doing well by doing good

The Chiu Centre aims to start important conversations about how firms can do well, not by making the most money, but by doing the most good.

The goal is to become a nationally recognized research centre that will address the social and ecological crises facing humanity by promoting business models that foster culture change in capitalism.

The Centre’s Inaugural director is Asper Professor and Norman Forhlich Professor in Business Sustainability, Bruno Dyck.

“With our current system, some research says that 95% of the financial gains of globalization have gone to the richest 5%.” Dyck told UM President Michael Benarroch on the podcast What’s the big idea?

“That’s unconscionable, we should not be able to sleep after we hear those things.”

The original purpose of business was not to make money, but to provide goods and services that help people. “What if the economy was about getting enough, instead of getting ahead and wanting more,” he said.

The centre will contemplate how businesses can be profitable through a purpose that helps people and creates community, care, and compassion.

The mission covers all sectors of business, and the purpose can mean anything from environmental issues like creating less harmful emissions, to supporting local businesses, to simply creating a better work experience for your employees.

“Research suggests that the world’s largest 1200 businesses create about $5 trillion of negative ecological externalities every year, which is greater than all their profits combined,” Dyck said.

The everyday work of the centre will foster new, purpose-driven opportunities in areas such as research and grants, thought leadership, experiential learning, career development and cross-faculty engagements.

Dyck looks forward to establishing the centre in the Asper School community and nationwide. He has already begun the work of having one-on-one meetings with scholars and businesses, spreading the vision and listening for opportunities.

Intertwining purpose and innovation

By donating $5.4 million to create the centre, Dr. Wayne and Elanor Chiu have encapsulated their lifetime of purpose-driven business and a commitment to its future.

As the founders of Calgary’s Trico Group, they created a business model that prioritizes support for families, new Canadians, and communities in need. In 2008, they expanded to solve greater societal issues by creating the Trico Charitable Foundation.

During their speech, they gave examples of other business models that had been true changemakers.

“Patagonia built a business model around protecting the planet” Wayne Chiu said. The company’s clothing is designed to be durable, reducing waste, and sources the most sustainable and environmentally friendly materials.

IBM uses AI to improve climate forecasting to help farmers adapt to changing weather.

DoorDash partners with local restaurants to help small businesses stay competitive in a challenging market.

Novo Nordisk, a global pharmaceutical company, innovated their diabetes strategy to focus not only on medicine, but also educating the public on how to prevent diabetes.

“Purpose gives innovation direction, and innovation gives purpose power.” Wayne Chiu said. “We’re entering an era where a company’s worth will be measured not by what it earns, but by what it contributes.”

Elanor Chiu said, “Doing well by doing good, it’s not a slogan. It’s a strategy for sustainable growth. It’s about aligning profit with purpose, about seeing social investment not as a cost, but as a source of competitive advantage and to enduring value.”

The announcement of the Chiu Centre for Business Serving Community filled our imaginations with a vision for what capitalism can be. Now, it’s time to make the first steps.
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Research from the Asper School of Business influences business and leadership in Canada and throughout the world. Explore our graduate research programs today, and learn more about how you can pursue opportunities at the Chiu Centre for Business Serving Community, and more of our world class facilities.

Asper School of Business PhD candidate Nazanin Khaksari studies consumer behavior, with a focus on sustainability. Originally from the massive city of Tehran, Iran, she comes from a Marketing background with a lifelong interest in psychology.

Lately, she’s been researching the gender gap in veganism.

While it may differ from country to country, an overwhelming majority of vegans tend to be women.

“There’s a lot of literature about how guys see their masculinity by eating more meat and steak and burgers and all of those things” she says.

“A buddy comes and says, ‘I’m vegan’ – they make fun of him.”

Veganism, and by extension, sustainability, is often associated with feminine traits.

“Sustainability is all about caring. Caring, it’s traditionally a feminine characteristic – as a mother, as a woman, you should care and be nurturing and kind and empathetic” says Khaksari.

Changing the Gendered Narrative on Veganism

All the thinking that Khaksari has done about this topic is part of her PhD thesis that explores how marketers can help overcome this gender gap in the vegan space.

Khaksari doesn’t propose a full move to veganism overnight, but rather small steps that both men and women can take that result in big long-term differences.

“My study was about just trying a vegan restaurant – not going and being vegan. Just trying it,” she says.

Khaksari also shares that her research goes beyond the absolutes of traits and associated behaviours embodied by all men and all women. The issue isn’t that simple.

Instead, she looks at “how people represent their gender in society and the effects of that in their choices of consumption.”

There’s a difference between the “tough guy who drives an F-150,” and a man with a softer, more feminine side. The same goes for women who display varying degrees of feminine and masculine traits, and buy different things depending on these traits.

Khaksari found that in the case of men who display highly masculine traits, there is a “gender identity threat” that serves as a barrier to sustainable tendencies.

In the world of consumer behavior, an “identity threat” stops people from buying things that don’t align with who they see themselves as or want others to see them as. Brands that understand what consumers perceive as threatening, can reverse-engineer their marketing mix to effectively target this audience.

As it applies to veganism, marketers must ask what exactly is threatening about it to men that embody highly masculine traits.

“Some brands can be masculine, some brands can be feminine. So, it’s about different elements of the brand, like the fonts, the colors, all the ways they use their tools to communicate,” Khaksari says. “I try to figure out which way is best.”

Her PhD supervisor, Professor and F. Ross Johnson Fellow Dr. Namita Bhatnagar, says that Khaksari is innovating in marketing research: “Nazanin’s thesis expands on the work linking gender and sustainability, suggesting that softer feminine traits embodied by both women and men relate to eco-friendly outcomes.”

As the research is in progress, Khaksari can’t share all of her results yet. But we can’t wait.

How to be Sustainable in your Everyday Life

October is sustainability month, a great time to pick up habits that will benefit the planet for everyone. Khaksari emphasizes that sustainable habits can be genuinely fun.

Example #1: Thrifting

Thrifting is all upside. It saves money, saves the environment by recycling old clothes, and not to mention, it’s very fashionable.

“You buy brand new clothes, there is nothing to brag about. But when you find something from the 90s or 80s, it’s unique, and not everybody has that.”

She says that when you spend a lot of time looking and find something to show your style, “it gives you the feeling of treasure hunting.”

Example #2: Different modes of transportation

Khaksari encourages walking and biking whenever possible, which benefits the environment but also boosts your health and mood.

Taking public transport like buses is also a great way to be sustainable. But she says that the social stigma of using public transportation needs to change. “There are some memes on the internet that say, I saw a cute guy on the bus, but he’s also on the bus.”

“We can change the idea that being attractive and successful is not just being resourceful, but also how considerate a person is, for example,” Khaksari says.

Example #3: Try a vegan meal

To the skeptical guys out there—Khaksari wants you to know about this article she just read.

“It was about how women see and perceive men that are vegan or who adopt those sustainable behaviours. So women, they find those guys really attractive.”

“Part of it is about self-control. When you see that self-control or discipline in a man, it sends a good signal. It’s like a green flag,” she says.

“He’s not a cheater. You know he’s a kind and empathetic person.”

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Celebrate Sustainability Month with the Asper School of Business

Sustainability Management: Lessons from Research to Practice
Guest researchers and practitioners will lead a sustainability-focused presentation highlighting both local and global perspectives.

Friday October 17, 2025
10:30AM – 12:00PM
Room 106 Drake Centre

UM Campus Commute Survey Lounge
How do you commute to campus? Share feedback, exchange ideas and complete the commuter survey.

Monday October 20, 2025
11AM – 1PM
Student Commons Area, Drake Centre

Asper Green Team Book Exchange
Bring new life to old reads! Discover something new to read, learn about sustainable resources, enjoy snacks and take part in a free book exchange that celebrates reuse and connection. Book donations can be dropped off in the Asper Dean’s Office, 3rd floor Drake Centre, between Oct 1-29.

Thursday October 30, 2025
2PM – 4PM
Student Commons Area, Drake Centre

This sustainability month, learn more about the Asper School of Business commitment to sustainability initiatives in our academic programs, research, community and beyond.

Minelle Silva, Professor of Supply Chain Sustainability and the Director of Sustainability at the Asper School of Business, has an answer to that question.

His article, Switching the Telescope Lens: A Sociomaterial Perspective of Sustainable Agricultural (Proto)Practices Transfer in an Agrifood Supply Chain, who he co-authored with Karina Santos and Susana Pereira of FGV EAESP in Brazil, and Linda Hendry of Lancaster University, was recently published in the FT50-ranked Journal of Operations Management.

Getting the article published in such a highly regarded journal was a homecoming for Silva. Despite understanding how challenging it is to get a qualitative article in, his team worked hard to get it there.

“I think we were a bit bold in trying to bring a different approach to this specific journal, but of course, it was accepted in the end. […] This paper is a bit special because it’s qualitative research with a different theory, in a different field,” says Silva.

The Sociomaterial Perspective

While most articles in this field focus on quantitative research and modeling, Silva’s is focused more on sociology-related theory. The distinct perspective employed by Silva’s team differentiated their article the majority of supply-chain-related pieces.

He and his team use a “sociomaterial” perspective as the lens for this article.

This perspective sees the supply chain not just as a group of things moving from one place to another, but also recognizes it as a group of people who move things from one link of the chain to the next, who inevitably create a web of social and emotional implications along the way.

“It’s bringing real life to those relations. […] we cannot just think about what is happening, but why is this happening? Who is the person carrying this?” says Silva.

Silva and his team analyze how Sustainable Agricultural Practices (SUSAPs) in the Brazilian Agrifood industry spread through the supply chain via people, social relationships and emotional attachments.

He zooms in on the example of how a caring and cruelty-free relationship between a farmer and chicken creates sustainability. “We had cases of farmers saying ‘Ok, I know them by heart, I know everything happening, I raised them.’ So there is some emotional elements, attachments and other things that are not usually there.”

These are big ideas, and it took a big amount of time to gather everything they needed and effectively communicate the ideas. Starting in 2019, they spent three years collecting data, a year-and-a-half writing and making revisions, finally being published in May 2025.

The Boomerang Effect

Their findings use the metaphor of the “boomerang effect” to explain how SUSAPs best work their way through the supply chain. They found that first-tier suppliers (the large organizations who manage farmers) have the most ability to make the supply chain more sustainable.

Theoretically, when first-tier suppliers make an intentional commitment to sustainability (throwing the boomerang) it becomes an infectious idea that works its way down the chain and comes back to them in the form of healthier business.

“Usually the literature says that the buyer [such as a grocery store] is the most important part of the supply chain because they have power and influence,” says Silva. “But we found here that if they don’t have a very good supplier in the first level, the products won’t flow in the way they want. The products won’t become as sustainable or healthy as expected.”

Don’t Look for the Easy Way

Getting published in Journal of Operations Management is an achievement Silva is “really proud” of. Publication here clearly shows that the paper brought something innovative to the sustainable supply chain story.

He plans to keep innovating: “I like the idea of bringing the subjective into an area that is highly objective,” says Silva.

When asked if he has advice for students doing their own research, he says, “Don’t look for the easy way. If it’s too easy, something’s wrong.”

And it’s true—Silva and his colleagues fought an uphill battle. They won.
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The Asper School of Business aims to expand global knowledge and engage in intellectual exploration to advance teaching, learning, and research. Our researchers’ scholarly work is regularly published in internationally renowned publications.

Be part of this flourishing research culture and learn more about research programs in management (MSc and PhD) at the Stu Clark Graduate School here.

Associate professor of supply chain management and newly appointed director of sustainability, Minelle E. Silva pursues research that mainly concerns supply chain sustainability and inter-organizational relationships. He is passionate about social and environmental justice and develops academic work that sheds light on problems in supply chains.

Silva was appointed director of sustainability at the Asper School of Business effective July 1, 2024.

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Sustainability touches on so many important steps forward but also many complex, longstanding social and economic problems. What inspired your interest in sustainability, and what sustains your work?

“I started to think about sustainability during my undergrad, and for more than 15 years, I have been trying to understand different ways of pursuing sustainability in a world where capitalism is the main structure.

“When I first started studying, sustainability was a new issue; we were just starting to have these conversations. Today, it’s completely different. People are actively seeking out sustainability and looking for ways to implement sustainable practices in business.

“Much of my work focuses on complex, multifaceted problems, from environmental impacts to ethical (and unethical) labour in supply chains. I try not to focus only on the problem, but instead try to reflect on solutions. The reality is that supply chains can obscure problems, and if we don’t shed light on and face them with research, we won’t find answers.”

Silva joined the Asper School of Business in 2023 and immediately noticed how openly faculty and leadership discussed sustainability—an atmosphere that helped him say ‘yes,’ first to the associate professor role and again to the director of sustainability role.

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What do you hope to achieve as Asper’s director of sustainability? What is exciting for you about the role?

“I was very proud to be chosen for this role. I am excited about the challenge of taking research and theoretical work and turning my knowledge into real change for the School.

“I hope that I can contribute by making sustainability shine at the School and creating pathways for faculty and students to take this knowledge beyond our walls and engage with the community, all while collaborating with fellow directors Katherine [Davis] and Jieying [Chen] because all three portfolios—sustainability, Reconciliation, EDI—are interconnected.”

This collaborative spirit is something Silva brings to his work and life, explaining that he enjoys building networks between ideas, people, communities and disciplines and seeing what emerges from collaborations.

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How do you define yourself as a researcher? With so many questions to tackle, how do you decide what research questions to pursue?

“I think I am a pathfinder. I want to pursue work that we aren’t yet having conversations about or find a new element to discuss. If we don’t pursue new paths, those conversations will just go in circles. This approach pushes me to become a constant learner, and I try to bring this into the classroom as well.”

As the Asper School of Business’ first ever director of sustainability, Silva is certainly carving out a new path, though he is quick to acknowledge the work of colleagues, dedicated faculty and passionate staff members, who have been doing this work for years.

He looks forward to advancing the work of sustainability at Asper and seeing it flourish across departments and disciplines while reflecting on how much progress has been made so far.

As he explains, “There was a time when sustainability was just on the periphery and very distant from business, and I think it is time for it to be in the centre of the conversation.”

Learn more about the Asper School of Business’ commitment to sustainability in academic programs, research, community and more here. 

Produced by students and instructors at the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business, Beyond Profit: Seeking Sustainability showcases efforts by owners and managers at Tall Grass Prairie Bread Co., BUILD Inc. and Long Way Homestead to run businesses that give more to the community than they take.

“I’m a bit of a skeptic when it comes to sustainability in business, but I’m hoping to discover businesses that actually place people and planet ahead of maximizing profit, and see if that’s even possible,” filmmaker and business student Nick Ridley says at the beginning of the documentary.

To read the full story and learn how the Asper School of Business played a role in this movie, please visit the Winnipeg Free Press. 

Beyond Profit: Seeking Sustainability, a short documentary film directed by Ridley, had its Winnipeg premiere on June 12, 2024. Featuring an introduction from the film’s executive producer, Bruno Dyck (Norman Frohlich Professorship in Business Sustainability at the Asper School of Business) and a fireside chat moderated by Asper MBA alum, instructor and producer Rohan Shanker [MBA/23], the premiere welcomed community members, local business owners, students and faculty to connect over their passion for sustainable business.

Tall Grass Prairie Bread Company co-founder Tabitha Langel, Long Way Homestead co-owner Anna Hunter and BUILD Inc. director Sean Hogan (each featured in the film), answered audience questions after the screening, reflecting on the power of storytelling, their journey into sustainable business and the reasons they do things the way they do.

Production started back in 2022 when Dyck encouraged Ridley to use his background in film studies to apply for a UM Undergraduate Research Award project, spotlighting local firms classified as SET (Social & Ecological Thought) businesses.

While minoring in management during completion of his BA, Ridley was inspired to pursue his BComm, drawn to the business of media. With a major in accounting, he plans to achieve his CPA designation after completing his BComm.

Ridley is also currently conducting research with Mingzhi Liu (Associate Professor in Accounting & Finance) developing pro forma financial statements for the newest course on business sustainability.

“Ultimately, I’m excited to contribute to the standards behind sustainability and ESG reporting,” he says. “One of the central ideas of the film is that we need to reconsider net income as being the sole measure for business excellence. We cannot afford to continue business practices that pollute and damage our own backyards for the sake of a share price.”

Dyck, with Asper colleagues and Associates Fellows Sean Buchanan, Chi Liao, Rajesh Manchanda and Kelsey Taylor, leads a SSHRC-funded research project, interviewing and studying SET firms across Canada. Asper alum, instructor and producer of the film, Savanna Vagianos [BComm(Hons)/19, MSc/22] has worked on this project as a research assistant since 2019, completing firm interviews and data collection. Her rapport with the firms made her a perfect fit for the film’s growing team.

In her view, the film’s Asper School of Business connections are the result of an environment where diverse students and faculty can connect over what they are passionate about, whether that’s a documentary about sustainable business or her own entrepreneurial pursuit: the Manitoba Local Business Alliance, a social enterprise that supports small local businesses and connects local business owners.

“With the premiere, I’m most excited to host an event that fosters a sense of community, bringing people who care about sustainability together to connect,” she said.

Fellow producer Shanker explains that this is the goal of the film itself. “Our purpose is to inspire others who want to pursue sustainability or who are on the fence. I think the film tells them that they are not the only ones looking to change or do something totally new,” he says.

The film makes a provocative case for rethinking the purpose of business and uses the concept of externalities to reimagine what profit, sufficiency or even a dollar really mean. “Externalities,” Dyck explains, “refer to those things a company does that are not reported in its financial statements. Some firms create positive externalities, such as providing jobs to those on the margins or using practices that regenerate the soil.”

A loaf of bread baked and sold by Tall Grass, for instance, contains about two-dollars-worth of positive externalities not found in grocery store bread because, among other things, they use local organic flour.

As Shanker notes, the numbers provide context, but it’s the stories that make an impact. The film received a Merit Award from the 2023 Canada Shorts Film Festival and was officially selected for the 2024 WILDsound Film Festival.

“The film tells human stories about real people who are doing this amazing work. That’s really what got me interested in the project,” Shanker says. “It’s been a thrilling journey to see our little film about Winnipeg-based firms go on to win accolades at Toronto- and Los Angeles-based film festivals.”

In his introduction before the screening, Dyck emphasizes this point further, taking a moment to pause and express awe of the people involved in the film, the event and the community.

It was, he explained, an evening of celebration—for everyone involved in producing the film, for the businesses interviewed and featured on screen and for “the larger community who ‘gets it’.”

“Businesses like these create the kinds of communities that we all want to be a part of,” he said. “They represent the best of us, and they bring out the best in us.”

Beyond Profit is a film about sustainability that makes you feel—it’s not the doom of complete climate cynicism, but not the bright (fleeting) assuagement of greenwashed marketing either. No, the film invites audiences to “let your heart break a little,” as BUILD Inc.’s Hogan quipped in the Q&A. It invites care because it offers community; it welcomes a little bit of fear and uncertainty because it fosters connection; and it inspires because it dares to imagine a better way forward.

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Learn more about the incredible work done by local SET businesses and hear from Asper School of Business faculty, students and alumni (and more!) by watching Beyond Profit: Seeking Sustainability here.

“At the Asper School of Business, we aim to encourage a sustainability mindset in our students, faculty and staff, and weave sustainability into our academics, business relationships and organizational culture. Approaching business challenges with a sustainability mindset offers a framework to generate economic growth, social justice and environmental stewardship,” says Silvestre.

Dean’s Office receives Green Office certification

The Asper School of Business Dean’s Office has received Green Office certification from the UM Office of Sustainability. The Green Office Program measures progress and impact across various operational areas such as waste, energy and social sustainability, while offering information and resources towards continuous improvement.

Whitney Crooks, acting director, Office of Sustainability, describes the goals of the program while recognizing Asper’s progress so far.

“The Green Office Program supports units to incorporate green practices into their day-to-day operations that contribute to the achievement of UM’s sustainability and climate action goals,” says Crooks. “The Office of Sustainability would like to congratulate the Asper School of Business for becoming ‘Certified’ as a Green Office at UM.”

The Asper Green Office Team is an employee-organized group that provides sustainability resources for the Drake Centre. They have introduced office composting and personal protective equipment (PPE) recycling in the Dean’s Office, while providing general recycling information, organizing awareness events and holding fundraisers for environmental causes. The Drake Centre’s third floor study area bins now feature a compost slot where contents from smaller compost bins around the building can be disposed of with ease.

Alexa Harwood-Jones, Asper Green Office Team lead, inspires passion for sustainability while fulfilling her duties as a graphic designer.

“Since starting the team on my own, we have expanded to include representatives from various units at the Asper School of Business,” says Harwood-Jones. “My goal with the Asper Green Office Team has been to engage our community with sustainability, through events and initiatives like repurposing outdated Asper merchandise or starting up a Wednesday Walking Club for faculty and staff. It’s great to see how far we have come in a year and think about the progress we will continue to make.”

The plaque placed on the picnic table in front of the Drake Centre

SETing the table

A specially commissioned picnic table now sits in front of the Drake Centre, highlighting and celebrating sustainable business and the Social and Ecological Thought (SET) research group at the Asper School of Business. Nestled among the trees planted by the group over a year ago, the thoughtfully designed communal table brings visibility to sustainable business practices and research.

“It is my hope that students taking a break from their busy day, or colleagues in need of an informal meeting spot, can enjoy the outdoors and reflect on how they can have a positive impact in the world by prioritizing people and planet,” says Bruno Dyck, Norman Frohlich Professor in Business Sustainability.

The table was custom built by a local craftsman and features a plaque that underscores the Asper School of Business’ commitment to sustainability.

Keeping up with Asper sustainability

The Asper School of Business has launched a dedicated webpage to showcase sustainability, documenting eco-literacy academic programs, sustainability-focused research and green community initiatives. The Sustainability at Asper webpage captures the latest news articles and classroom and staff engagement activities, as well as the various awards and honours received by the School’s faculty and staff.

Highlights on the page so far include:

• The Asper Co-op program’s sustainability initiatives earning the Innovations that Inspire Award from AACSB
• Asper’s new Bachelor of Commerce curriculum, which includes a required course in sustainability
• Recent sustainability-focused academic publications by faculty members

Studying Patagonia’s business practices, supply chain and mission, Shourkaei observes how the brand fully integrates sustainability. “Patagonia has a holistic view of its operation, responsibility and impact,” he says. “Their initiatives are not piecemeal—all components fit and work together like a puzzle to create a unique, sustainable, global supply chain.”

In other words, sustainability permeates every facet of Patagonia’s supply chain—from the material (reducing textile waste), to the relational (developing mutually beneficial and trusting partnerships with suppliers, local NGOs and customers), and the discursive (sharing their pro-sustainability practices and mission internally and externally).

Shourkaei studied Patagonia, interested in how medium and large organizations can become more sustainable to create momentum for significant social change. While he demonstrates that large-scale change through medium and large corporations is vital, many of these corporations still pursue sustainability to maximize profit, which makes transformative change difficult.

He became interested in how small, local organizations might be able to take a completely different approach to sustainability and offer an alternative to profit-focused sustainable business.

A shift from global corporations to local organizations

Shourkaei’s thesis project explores how a holistic view of sustainability and placing people and planet ahead of profit can fundamentally change business structure, strategy and organizing. As such, his dissertation examines an alternative food network, initiated by Fireweed Food Co-op, a local nonprofit serving Manitoban food producers and consumers.

In his work with Fireweed, Shourkaei observes how the collaborative efforts of multiple actors engaged in the local food network can create an alternative food system. He is attracted to this case because the network resembles strong sustainability, which he defines as having three key features.

“Strongly sustainable organizations emphasize interconnectedness, which means that they seek collaboration over competition, and positive outputs to stakeholders rather than profits for shareholders,” he says. “They promote positive anarchy, decentralizing their operations and structure. And, they strive to work within the planetary boundary, recognizing that our resources are finite, pursuing sufficiency or ‘enoughness’ and seeking qualitative over financial growth.”

He explains how these features work together to create a supportive network of individuals working with nature to sustainably address a need. “It is not just the human actors who have agency; the environment—weather, plant and animal life—is an active part of this network,” says Shourkaei.

The decision to do a second PhD

Shourkaei is hopeful that sustainable business practices can aid in the protection and restoration of the environment. Growing up in rural Iran, he witnessed how unsustainable practices draw the life from once-green places. He found a passion for sustainability and hope that he could make a positive impact through his work.

While working on his first PhD at the University of Tehran, Shourkaei took this passion to industry, hoping to change large organizations from within. “I worked at a leading company in edible oil production,” says Shourkaei. “I suggested to the CEO that we should be more responsible for nature and minimize environmental damage but was told that this was not our role; that’s for the government to enforce.”

Pondering this inconvenient reality in the business world, he sought another way to make change and decided to pursue a second PhD focused on sustainability and business. He chose Asper as a school that prioritized this field and now works under the supervision of Bruno Dyck, Norman Frohlich Professor in Business Sustainability.

His former CEO’s response demonstrated a core issue in the pursuit of sustainability: if large organizations and government ultimately hold the most power, how far can individual efforts really go? Shourkaei rethinks this question, drawing on his role as an instructor at Asper and his hope to one day become a professor teaching business sustainability.

“Of course, change may not be possible with individual efforts alone; government and business should be responsible for making significant changes,” he says. “But, I think, ‘who will work in government, who will run businesses in the future?’ They’re students in my classroom or people that are reading my research. They will work in roles where they can make an impact. So, I believe that cultivating a sustainability mindset and sharing this knowledge can contribute to creating a better world.”

In his research and teaching, Shourkaei is documenting how a sustainability mindset prompts a reimagination of how businesses look, function and serve their communities. He is also observing how a holistic mindset rooted in interconnectedness allows us to rethink what it means to be an individual in the natural world, challenging the limitations of individualism and inspiring collective action.

Each year, the Academy of Management recognizes original and provocative articles that make a substantial contribution to the field of management. Buchanan and co-authors’ paper “Commercializing the Practice of Voyeurism” explores how different industries generate value through transgressive or taboo acts of voyeurism.

Recognizing the value in transgression

“It’s a great honour to receive this award,” says Buchanan. “If you had told me back when I was a PhD student that I would even get published in this journal, I would be thrilled. But to win best paper? It’s just a huge honour and very exciting.”

Buchanan and his co-authors develop a theory about why morally grey, or even outright transgressive, acts seem to reliably generate value and viewership. From sports like mixed martial arts (MMA) and media like reality TV, to erotic webcams and travel trends like slum tourism, they observe a balance between commercial success and transgressive media.

Diving into theories of authenticity, emotion and transgression, the paper explores how, for instance, the violence of MMA needs to seem real enough to get a response from viewers while being mainstream enough to grow a larger audience.

Pulling from all these ideas, the paper also encapsulates what inspires Buchanan as a researcher.

“You find yourself in strange places as an organizational theorist,” he says. “No matter what I’m working on, I end up learning about a bunch of things that are outside the discipline, and that’s really one of the best parts of being an academic.”

Buchanan’s most recent publication, appearing this year in Organization Science—another FT50 journal—seems vastly different from his work on voyeurism. As he explains, however, there is a through-line.

“I’m interested in how business responds to social issues. That can take you to voyeurism and how it is commercialized, and it can also take you to how issues like climate change and working conditions are difficult to properly address,” says Buchanan.

A different kind of looking: transnational oversight of sustainability

In another paper, Buchanan and co-authors Charlene Zietsma and Dirk Matten explore how different private regulatory agreements or certifications work together to guide how firms respond to social and environmental issues. Buchanan and team refer to these groups of agreements as “settlement constellations.”

Their work helps explain why firms committed to sustainability and social change struggle to make progress on these issues. A certification related to sustainable forestry, for instance, needs to be strict enough to seem legitimate while still appealing to more firms by not becoming too inconvenient to follow.

“In class, I explore this with my students. I’ll ask them to look at their notebooks, which are usually certified as products of sustainable forestry,” he explains. “There are two competing sustainable forestry certifications: the Sustainable Forestry Initiative and the Forestry Stewardship Council. The first is less stringent, but the average consumer likely doesn’t know the difference. They even purposely make the certifications sound similar so that people confuse them and attach more meaning to the less stringent one.

“These certifications are a bit like a race to the bottom; they are designed to satisfy the least progressive participating firm. You need collective action on a really large scale to address these problems, and private agreements don’t quite get us there,” he says.

In the same way that previously transgressive acts find a mainstream audience by pulling the right levers between authenticity and taboo, approaches to business that once seemed alternative—sustain-centric, socially responsible—do have the capacity to move into the mainstream as norms of business change and sustain-centric firms as well as sustainability activists and theorists push this change.

Buchanan’s work, whether he is studying reality TV or standards of sustainable forestry, takes this capacity for change seriously, approaching business as a dynamic and responsive field and pursuing individual phenomena with curiosity and a willingness to acknowledge, critique and learn.

Exploring sustainable supply chains

Kelsey Taylor, Asper assistant professor of supply chain management

Kelsey Taylor is an assistant professor of supply chain management at Asper. Her recent publication in the Journal of Supply Chain Management with co-author Eugenia Rosca explores how social enterprises use their relationships with suppliers, beneficiaries or customers (social capital), to navigate and balance the tensions between their mission and their financial viability.

For Taylor, one of the more exciting takeaways of this work is uncovering further evidence that profit is not the only language organizations need to speak to pursue their mission and build mutually beneficial relationships.

“Sometimes all that mattered for these organizations was that they spoke the same ‘language’ as their potential partners. They could find partners who had similar missions and values and collaborate through their shared understanding and purpose,” she says.

Social or purpose-driven enterprises subvert earlier business models by placing their mission above profit; they don’t ignore profit, but they do reprioritize it.

“The organizations I spoke to understand that the numbers have to make sense—they need to be able to keep their doors open and pay their people—but their goal was always to get closer to achieving their mission rather than trying to squeeze an extra dollar out of a transaction,” she explains.

Taylor and Rosca’s work demonstrates that by using social capital, social enterprises can maintain the delicate balance between social impact and viability without losing sight of their original purpose.

Marketing practices beyond profit

Rajesh Manchanda, Asper professor of marketing

Fellow Asper faculty Bruno Dyck and Rajesh Manchanda, as well as co-authors Savanna Vagianos [BComm(Hons)/19, MSc/23] and Michèle Bernardin [BComm(Hons)/21], also explore firms that are rethinking traditional business approaches in their paper, published this year in Business and Society Review.

This paper is part of a larger project in which they study around 60 firms. They discuss two exemplar firms here, including Winnipeg’s Eadha Bakery, examining their marketing practices and contributing to the emerging field of sustain-centric marketing.

Their work begins with the premise that triple bottom line (TBL) approaches to business are not sufficient for combatting the social and ecological crises that profit-first business and widespread consumerism have produced.

They focus instead on sustain-centric approaches to business, where social and ecological well-being—people and planet—come before profit. In Dyck and Manchanda’s work, reprioritizing profit also creates an opportunity to redefine it.

“I think the crux of the issue becomes what profit or money actually means to different companies, regardless of size. In sustain-centric firms, profit is a means for them to do good, to better the lives of their employees, suppliers or customers. Profit is not for the firm itself, and profit is not the sought after outcome. It is a means to help the entire ecosystem flourish,” says Manchanda.

Replacing profit with purpose, inspiring possibility

Sustain-centric business models engage creative and entrepreneurial thinking—expanding understandings of value and outcome beyond profit, and in so doing, asking future business professionals to be more intentional, more creative in their pursuits.

From supporting local farmers and rewilding soil, to uplifting marginalized communities or simply making excellent sourdough, sustain-centric businesses are redefining the field, and Asper researchers are recording this progress and inspiring more possibility.

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Read Kelsey Taylor and Eugenia Rosca’s paper, “Sink, swim or drift: How social enterprises use supply chain social capital to balance tensions between impact and viability” here.

Read Bruno Dyck, Rajesh Manchanda, Savanna Vagianos and Michèle Bernardin’s paper, “Sustainable marketing: an exploratory study of a sustain-centric, versus profit-centric, approach” here.