Dear all,
The Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam, invites registrations for the 2026 edition of the PhD course "Sustainability in Management Research".
More details about the course and the registration process are available below and here.
The deadline for registrations is Wednesday, April 22, 2026. The course will take place between May 6-8, 2026.
Should you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact us by emailing v.g.scalera@uva.nl.
Best regards,
Arno Kourula and Vittoria Scalera
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Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam
Ph.D. Course "Sustainability in Management Research"
Coordinators: Prof. Dr. Arno Kourula & dr. Vittoria G. Scalera
Contact hours: 18 hours
ECTS: 5 ECTS
Schedule and location:
9.30-12.30
14.00-17.00
9.30-12.30
14.00-17.00
9.30-12.30
14.00-17.00
Address: Building REC M, Plantage Muidergracht 12, 1018 TV Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Registrations: Registrations for the course are open until Wednesday, April 22, 2026. You can find more information at https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=zcrxoIxhA0S5RXb7PWh05aTBxaxZWEJGkb3VRbb4721UMzVZTkVRRllaNUNUUU9UMTJZWVNDWVVOTi4u&route=shorturl
External PhD students not affiliated with the UvA, RMS, or VU need to pay a registration fee to enroll in the course. Participants are expected to make their own travel and accommodation arrangements.
Learning goals: By the end of this course, students should be able to:
- Understand the rationale, opportunities, and challenges for sustainability research in the management field
- Describe appropriate theoretical approaches and research design to study sustainability-related research questions in the management field
- Recognize the appropriateness of different methods and their tradeoffs in addressing sustainability-related research questions in management research
- Gain insight into doing sustainability research, including data collection, analysis, and reporting of such research
- Describe the challenges associated with publishing sustainability strategy research and how to overcome those challenges
Teaching method and contact hours: Paper discussion and presentations, lectures, and invited speakers.
Course summary: This course is intended to provide graduate students with an understanding of key sustainability research topics in the field of management. The key objective of the course is to uncover the opportunities and challenges of sustainability research in management by evaluating the classic pillars and examining current and future research avenues. Students will be provided with an overview of core thematic issues, theoretical approaches, and the most appropriate methodologies to address the social and environmental grand challenges and integrate sustainability into organizational strategy formulation and implementation. At the end of the course, students will be able to identify a roadmap for future work in sustainability research by understanding the assumptions, theories, and methods that underpin sustainability research in the management field.
Assessment: Research proposal inspired by at least one of the session topics (70%) + in-class presentation of assigned papers (30%).
Conditions to pass the course:
- The score for the final essay must be 5.5 or higher
- Attendance is mandatory for at least 5 of the 6 sessions
- Students who miss more than one class will not be allowed to hand in a final essay
- In the case of a resit, only the final essay can be retaken. The grade of the in-class presentation will remain valid also for the resit.
Course material: The course material will mainly consist of journal articles covering both classic and recent sustainability research in the field of management. The course material will also feature presentations from external speakers. The analysis of this material will enable students to appreciate the theoretical and empirical work in the field, understand what it takes to publish sustainability research, and see where the field is going.
The course material will be available via a shared folder accessible to all participants
Class format: The course will be taught using a seminar style. Students share responsibility with the instructor for discussing the readings and identifying key points for discussion. Students are expected to complete all required readings for the session and come prepared to discuss them in each class. The format for the class will usually entail introductory remarks by the main lecturer(s), followed by a group discussion of the papers' analysis. The analysis of the papers will be focused on the research question(s), conceptual framework and hypotheses, methods, sample and measures, strengths and weaknesses, main conclusions, contributions to the literature, and relationship to other topics and disciplines. For each reading, one small group of participants will serve as the discussion leader and provide a summary and developmental review of the paper, as appropriate. This review, as well as the class discussion that follows, should go beyond offering a summary of the paper to relate it to other research, underscore implications for the field, critique it, and identify questions that may follow.
The last session will be a workshop in which speakers will present a research agenda on current and future topics in sustainability research.
Overview of Sessions
Session 1 – Sustainable firm innovation and strategies (session leader: Arno Kourula)
Topic selection: Environmental strategy and performance, sustainable business models, sustainable innovation
External speaker: Prof. Florian Lüdeke-Freund, ESCP Business School (*online)
Session 2 – Sustainability in international business (session leader: Vittoria Scalera)
Topic selection: CSR and social responsibility across countries and global value chains
External speaker: Prof. Valentina Marano, D'Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University (*online)
Session 3 – Stakeholder and strategy perspectives (Session leader: Arno Kourula)
Topic selection: stakeholder theory, grand challenges, systems thinking
External speaker: Prof. Flore Bridoux, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University
Session 4 – Micro-level sustainability and sustainable organizing (session leader: Vittoria Scalera)
Topic selection: Corporate Social Responsibility inside the organization, Strategy and Ethics
External speaker: Prof. Frank de Bakker, IESEG School of Management
Session 5 – Sustainability and marginalization (Session leader: Arno Kourula)
Topic selection: Firms, institutions, and marginalized groups
External speaker: Prof. Rashedur Chowdhury, Essex Business School
Session 6 – Workshop on current and future sustainability research (session leader: Vittoria Scalera)
Three one-hour sessions featuring two presentations on current research projects and thematic roundtables led by each speaker.
Confirmed speakers:
- dr. Ana Aranda, Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam
- dr. Ana Mićković, Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam
- dr. Almasa Sarabi, Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam
- dr. Carina Thuerridl, Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam
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Hakan Ozalp
Associate Professor
University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam
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