Shayan Ali Khan

Title of Dissertation:
Corporate Sustainability, R&D intensity and Risk

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Philipp Schreck
University: Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg (MLU)
Scholarship: KSG Scholarship
Cohort: 7th Cohort, since 2020
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• Short Abstract

  With rising climate change concerns corporations are now being increasingly put on spot to support transition to more sustainable ways in accordance with international charters of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Paris Climate Agreement, the UN 2030 Agenda. Against this backdrop, project aims to study the strategic mechanism through which businesses undertake sustainable and “socially responsible” transition to their advantage – specifically through the risk-mitigation channel. To do so, I first conducted a systematic review of the relevant literature and summarized the latest state-of-the-art. This helped me carve out two empirical chapters namely: “Pseudo Responsibility or Muddling through: Securities fraud in US companies”, and “Strategic-fit between CSR and Firm risk outcomes with multi-level institutional framework: a configurational perspective”.

  First empirical study, as the name indicates, seeks to answer two important and interrelated research questions: Does firms’ CSR engagement activities effects the financial fraud likelihood? And subsequently, does the ex-ante CSR overtures from fraudulent firms effect the likelihood of receiving enforcement actions from government (regulators)? To this effect, I develop and test two competing hypotheses of risk-mitigation and rent-seeking on an original longitudinal dataset of US publicly listed companies during 2002-2018. To examine the premise of these competing perspectives, a novel utility-based strategic methodology is implemented which unlike other traditional approaches accounts for the expected utility of ex-post actions.

  Second empirical chapter, on the other hand, provides a configurational account of the comparative institutional and risk-management perspectives. Specifically, study examines the underlying strategic mechanism through which businesses align their socially responsible activities pertinent to key stakeholder groups (e.g., employees, shareholders, and climate-change) to not only lead the “sustainable transition” but also to strategically navigate country-specific institutional pressures for financial risk premiums. Cornerstone of this perspective is the typology of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) engagement strategies that effectively maps firm’s stakeholder-centered responses as conformative and distinctive to the local institutional expectations – i.e., by strategic prioritization of locally important and neglected stakeholders.

  Both studies, in their own respective ways, yield valuable insights for both theory and practice.

• Research Interests

  • Corporate Sustainability and CSR
  • Innovation and strategy
  • Digital Transformation

• Education

  • 2020, Master in Management, National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), Russia
  • 2017, Bachelor in Electrical Engineering, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (NUCES), Pakistan

• Professional and Academic Career

  • 2020, Research Trainee, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) / Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Brussels, Belgium
  • 2019, International Summer School in Human Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
  • 2019, WFI International Summer School ‘Firms in Society’, The Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
  • 2017, RAN and Operations Engineer, ZTE Corporation, Islamabad, Pakistan

• Publications

  • Shayan A.K., Mariia K. “Digitalization of Job Market.” Master diss., National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), 2020

• Conference Contributions: Talks

  • 2019, Analytics for Management and Economics Conference (AMEC), “Determinants of Sustainability Reporting in Russian Companies”, Saint Petersburg, Russia.(https://amec.hse.ru/mirror/pubs/share/320114166); ISBN 978-5-90363-339-5

• Conference Contributions: Posters

  • N/A

• Memberships

  • WCGE – Wittenberg Center of Global Ethics
  • BEMA – Friede springer chair of Business Ethics and Management Accounting
  • IDLAB – International Laboratory of Intangible-driven Economy