This is a special recognition: his paper was selected as one of the top four out of a record 659 submissions. The OMT division is one of the largest within the Academy of Management, which hosts the world’s biggest meeting of management and organisation scholars each year.

Social enterprises are resilient

The nominated paper was co-authored with Timothy Hubbard (University of Notre Dame) and Magdelena Plesa (University of Liverpool). Their paper, Ghosts of forms past: Structured attention and social enterprise performance, looks at how social enterprises – organisations that aim to create both social and economic impact – can perform in the long run. Using a large UK dataset, the study shows that 'born-hybrids' (new ventures started as social enterprises) are both profitable and resilient. This goes against the common idea that social enterprises are financially fragile.