2025 Edition

SKEMA Business School and the SKEMA Centre for Sustainability Studies will host the 2025 Business and Society Research Seminar on the Sophia Antipolis Campus on 19th and 20th of June. For more information about this event visit its website.

Target audience

This event is designed for PhD students and emerging scholars in various research fields related to Business and Society. While the specific theme of interest for this year is “Business, Peace and Sustainability: Navigating Systemic Challenges”, all works addressing Business and Society questions and challenges can be submitted to the Research Seminar.

Theme of the 2025 edition: "How Can Organizations Create Meaningful and Impactful Societal Progress?"

To generate lasting and scalable societal impact, businesses must move beyond symbolic or compliance-oriented Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices. This shift requires reorienting sustainability efforts to be deeply embedded in organizations’ strategy, culture, and operational processes. By adopting a more proactive and integrative approach to sustainability, companies can contribute to social value that aligns with global sustainability goals. Such an approach positions businesses as key contributors to a sustainable, fair model of development—one that addresses societal and environmental challenges with tangible, long-term impacts. This seminar’s theme proposes to explore how organizations can integrate sustainability across their functioning to not only reactively mitigate harm but also proactively contribute to societal progress by creating sustainable shared value.

We welcome contributions from various organization-related research fields (e.g., business ethics and philosophy, management and organization studies, strategy, marketing, accounting, finance, entrepreneurship, and sociology) and research methodologies (qualitative, quantitative, mixed, and conceptual) exploring how organizations can evolve their approach to CSR and sustainability to make a lasting, meaningful difference.

Keynote speakers:

David A. Jones, Ph.D., John L. Beckley Professor of Management at the Grossman School of Business (GSB), University of Vermont. Professor Jones will address the theme of the seminar through a talk entitled:“CSR research and shared value creation: A micro-level perspective”

Flore Bridoux, Ph.D., Professor of Stakeholder Management, Business-Society Management Department at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Professor Bridoux will address the theme of the seminar through a talk entitled:“A multi-stakeholder approach to value creation: What do we know and where do we go from here”

Stuart Hart, Ph.D., Professor in Residence, Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, University of Michigan Distinguished Fellow, Grossman School of Business, University of Vermont S.C. Johnson Professor Emeritus, Johnson School of Management, Cornell University. He will address the theme of the seminar through an online talk entitled:“Beyond Shareholder Primacy: Remaking Capitalism for a Sustainable Future”