SPECIAL LECTUREAfter Greenwashing: New directions on the symbol and substance of corporate greening

17. November 2014

The chair of sustainability and management is happy to announce a special lecture from our guest, Professor Dr. Frances Bowen, Queen Mary University of London (UK).

22. January 2015
18:00 – 19:30 pm
Room: Von-Melle-Park 9, S27
20146 Hamburg

After Greenwashing: New directions on the symbol and substance of corporate greening

Companies issue environmental reports, build green buildings, create new job titles, develop green technologies, adopt ecolabels or participate in government green schemes as signals of their environmental responsiveness. When are these symbols wasteful corporate spin, and when do they signal useful environmental improvements? In this lecture, Prof Frances Bowen will introduce ideas from her new book After Greenwashing to understand the drivers, dynamics and consequences of greenwashing. She will introduce a new concept of the 'social energy penalty' - the cost to society when powerful corporate actors limit the social conversation on environmental problems and their solutions. After a brief history of greenwashing she will present a set of tools to distinguish harmful greenwashing from symbolic corporate environmentalism that may have the potential to benefit society.

Frances Bowen is Professor of Innovation Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. She is a leading authority on when and how companies innovate in response to current and future environmental regulation. She is President of GRONEN, the Group for Research on Organizations and the Natural Environment, and is the Past Chair of the Organizations and the Natural Environment (ONE) Division of the Academy of Management.

For further information, please click here.