Charlene Zietsma

Faculty Director, Erb Institute

Max McGraw Professor of Sustainable Enterprise

University of Michigan: School for Environment and Sustainability
Ross School of Business

Charlene Zietsma is the Max McGraw Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at SEAS and at the Ross School of Business. She previously held appointments at Pennsylvania State University, York University (Toronto), Western University and the University of Victoria. She is an International Research Fellow of the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation and earned her doctorate at the University of British Columbia.

Professor Zietsma’s research focuses on social innovation: the individual, organizational and collective efforts to make (and resist) significant, large-scale change in the context of sustainability and social justice issues. She studies institutional work, institutional change processes, social and sustainable entrepreneurship, and social movements focused on grand challenges and wicked problems. She is interested in how business organizations move towards more sustainable practices, particularly through voluntary governance such as certifications, codes of conduct and cross-sector partnership agreements.

She has lectured extensively on these topics around the world and her work has been published in the top management journals, with several winning best article awards. She was awarded the Administrative Science Quarterly Scholarly Contribution Award for making a significant impact on the field of organization studies. Her work has been recognized for its societal impact by the Financial Times (Responsible Business Education for Academic Research), the Global Business School Network and EFMD Global’s Going Beyond Initiative, the Responsible Research in Business & Management Network, the Academy of Management Organizations and the Natural Environment and Social Issues in Management divisions.

Professor Zietsma has held editorial and guest editorial roles with several journals and serves on the editorial board for the Academy of Management Journal and the Academy of Management Review. She has organized a number of conferences and conference tracks. She held a Chair of Excellence at Universidad Carlos III, Madrid, as well as visiting appointments at the University Technology Sydney, University of Sydney, Queensland University, Queensland University of Technology, Nottingham University in Ningbo, China, Hebrew University, Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Liverpool.

Buchanan, S., Zietsma, C. & Matten, D. Settlement constellations and the dynamics of fields formed around social and environmental issues. Forthcoming, Organization Science. 

Malhotra, N., Zietsma, C., Morris, T. & Smets, M. (2021). Making the logics case to handle resistance to change: Leveraging individual level plurality to update logic settlements. Administrative Science Quarterly, 66(2): 475-520. 

Chrispal, S.A., Bapuji, H. & Zietsma, C. (2021). Caste and Organization Studies: Our silence makes us complicit. Organization Studies, 42(9), 1501-1515.  

Barberá-Tomás, D., Castelló, I., de Bakker, F.G.A. & Zietsma, C. (2019). Energizing through visuals: How social entrepreneurs use emotion-symbolic work for social change. Academy of Management Journal, 62(6): 1789-1817. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXEKCZJMZCE&feature=youtu.be. 

Zietsma, C., Toubiana, M., Voronov, M. & Roberts, A. E. (2019). Emotions in Organization Theory.  Cambridge Elements on Organization Theory book series. Cambridge University Press. 

Van Wijk, J., Zietsma, C., Dorado, S., de Bakker, F.G.A., Marti, I. (2019). Social innovation: Integrating micro, meso and macro level insights from institutional theory. Business & Society, 58(5): 887–918.

Zietsma, C., Groenewegen, P., Logue, D., Hinings, C.R., (2017). Field or fields? Building the scaffolding for cumulation of research on institutional fields. Academy of Management Annals, 11:1, 391-450.

Toubiana, M. & Zietsma, C.  (2017). The message is on the wall: Emotions, social media and the dynamics of institutional complexity. Academy of Management Journal, 60:3, 922-953.

Fan, G. & Zietsma, C.  (2017). Constructing a shared governance logic:  The role of emotions in enabling dually embedded agency. Academy of Management Journal, 60: 2321-2351. Finalist, IACMR-RRBM Award for Responsible Research in Management, 2020. 

Toubiana, M., Greenwood, R., Zietsma, C. (2017). Beyond ethos: Outlining an alternate trajectory for emotional competence and investment. Academy of Management Review, 42:3, 551-556.

Hinings, C.R., Logue, D., & Zietsma, C. (2017). Fields, governance and institutional infrastructure.  In R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, T.B., Lawrence & R. Meyer (Eds.). SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, 2nd edition, 163-189, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.  

Runner Up, 2022 Financial Times Responsible Business Education Award for Academic Research (for Chrispal, Bapuji & Zietsma, 2021). 

Finalist, 2021 Responsible Research in Management Award, International Association for Chinese Management Research and the Community for Responsible Research in Business and Management (for Barbera Tomas, Castello, de Bakker & Zietsma, 2019). 

Developmental Reviewer Award, Academy of Management Review, 2022.

Best Reviewer Award, Academy of Management Journal, 2021.

RISE Above Award, 2019-2020, Smeal College of Business, for commitment to Honor and Integrity through research, teaching and service. 

Finalist, ONE-SIM Outreach Award 2020. Academy of Management (for Barbera Tomas, Castello, de Bakker & Zietsma, 2019). 

Finalist, 2020 Responsible Research in Management Award, International Association for Chinese Management Research and the Community for Responsible Research in Business and Management (for Fan & Zietsma, 2017). 

Financial Times Top 100 Articles in Management for Social Contribution 2020, for Barbera Tomas, Castello, de Bakker & Zietsma, 2019 (47th). 

Lazaridis Award, 2019, for the Best Paper of 2018 published in the Journal of Business Venturing.

Nominee, Carolyn Dexter Award for Best International Paper, 2017 Academy of Management Conference, Atlanta, Georgia. 

Administrative Science Quarterly Scholarly Contribution Award, for the paper published in 2010 which most substantially shifted the field of organization studies (awarded in 2016).