Post-Doctoral Fellows

Visiting Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise

Marlene’s program of research is centered on the processes of social innovation that address the social, environmental and economic sustainability challenges facing society. She is interested in how social systems change and how market forces can address these sustainability challenges. Marlene is particularly intrigued by the processes that pattern the creation, capture, conversion and distribution of value in new forms of hybrid organizing. She examines these processes using longitudinal data, primarily in the health and social services context. There are two very promising new arenas that she has been studying: cross-sector partnerships between nonprofit and for profit organizations and hybrid organizations that are market-oriented yet have a common good social-mission. Her work has been published in Business & Society, Organization and Journal of Business Ethics. Marlene completed her PhD in Business Administration (Strategy) in August 2010 at the Richard Ivey School of Business, The University of Western Ontario and is a SSHRC- supported (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in Canada) postdoctoral fellow at Erb. Marlene came to the PhD program with a wealth of experience as a leader and change agent in the Canadian health care system. Her interest in social innovation stems from her earlier roots in health care/health research management and in mental health and community nursing. Marlene holds degrees in MScN(A) and BScN from The University of Western Ontario.

Arnab Mitra is an applied microeconomist with emphasis in environmental & resource economics and experimental economics. His work focuses on the politics of environmental enforcements for the Clean Air Act in the United States. In particular, he examines how the political affiliation of a local Congressman or state Senator impacts the enforcement of the Clean Air Act in his/her jurisdiction. His experimental work examines whether a perceived norm based off of peers’ behavior influences individual decision making in strategic situations, in absence of any monitoring or social sanction. He is currently conducting follow-up experiments in the United States and India. He graduated from the University of Arizona with a doctoral degree in economics in May, 2010. Prior to that, he attended the Jawaharlal Nehru University (India) for his Masters' and M. Phil degrees in Economics. He also worked at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations and in economics projects sponsored.

Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise

In her work, Sara develops an organizational politics approach to corporate sustainability. Thus, she studies how individuals within organizations mobilize others, develop coalitions, and access key decision makers when they are trying to implement sustainability initiatives. Further, she studies individual and organizational responses to the ambiguity and uncertainty that surrounds sustainability, such as making sense of emergent issues, prioritizing and agenda setting, and balancing multiple goals. This requires a keen attention to multiple levels of analysis: how micro-level actions aggregate into macro-level outcomes and how pluralistic institutional pressures influence organizational reactions to sustainability issues. To address these multi-level questions, her dissertation and current research draws on multiple theoretical areas, including social movements, social influence, institutions, and networks. Empirically, she uses multiple methods – qualitative, quantitative and simulation. Sara completed her PhD at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Her dissertation, “Processes of Agenda Change in Organizations” received the 2011 Academy of Management, Organizations and the Natural Environment Division Best Dissertation Award. Sara worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company serving retail and financial services organizations and led a business transformation team in post-merger activities at The Auto Club Group, a AAA umbrella organization. She holds MSE degrees in Chemical and Environmental Engineering and a BSE degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan.