Cybersecurity and issues related to environmental, social and governance (ESG) are hot topics in contemporary board rooms. To promote thought leadership around these topics, the Neel Corporate Governance Center (CGC), housed in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Haslam College of Business, has appointed Neeraj Bharadwaj and Daniel Pienta as its two newest research fellows.
Lauren Cunningham, director of research for the CGC and the Keith Stanga Professor of Accounting at Haslam, says, “We’re very excited about the opportunity to add Dan and Neeraj to our group of corporate governance research fellows. Corporate directors are currently grappling with how to bring cybersecurity and ESG expertise to their boards and how to advise managers on risks related to these issues.”
Neeraj Bharadwaj: Environmental, Social and Governance Research
Bharadwaj is the Proffitt’s Professor in Marketing and the Charlie and Carolyn Newcomer Faculty Research Fellow at Haslam. His current research addresses sustainability, innovation, branding and livestream retailing, and his published articles appear in many leading outlets. He has received numerous awards and recognitions for his research and teaching.
Bharadwaj is the founding member of the Sustainability Research Network, an interdisciplinary community of scholars who strive to understand the business implications of firms’ ESG initiatives. He also chairs the American Marketing Association’s Sustainable Marketing and Innovation Special Interest Group (SUSTSIG).
Cunningham says, “Neeraj Bharadwaj has a long-standing history of contributing to marketing-related thought leadership in Haslam, and his recent focus on environmental and sustainability marketing issues perfectly aligns with the ESG issues that corporate directors are grappling with.”
As investors, customers, employees and other stakeholders become more interested in ESG, many boards are taking on responsibilities for ESG oversight. In this way, Bharadwaj says, boards can provide corporate leaders with strategic guidance around ESG topics.
“[Boards] can guide executives to articulate and pursue the environmental, societal and/or employee-related issues that are relevant to a firm’s mission, vision and/or purpose. An insurance company, for instance, may not find carbon emissions reduction as central to their strategic pursuits as a manufacturer or logistics provider,” he explains. “In addition, boards can help corporate leaders become more accountable in the eyes of their stakeholders. Companies that are able to demonstrate the short- and long-term business impact of their ESG initiatives will take a forward step toward not only building the business case for ESG, but also avoiding claims of green-washing or woke-washing.”
Daniel Pienta: Cybersecurity and Board Expertise
Before transitioning to academia, Pienta spent 15 years in industry, first as a user experience designer and later consulting on due diligence and cybersecurity risks for some of the nation’s largest financial institutions.
His cybersecurity research areas include corporate social responsibility, information technology innovation, characteristics of IT versus non-IT executives and compensation structure. In the context of boards of directors, he also looks at monitoring, data breach expertise and post-breach strategy. In addition, he studies societal-level problems under the cybersecurity umbrella, such as leveraging artificial intelligence for emergency response systems and the influence of domestic extremism.
Cunningham says, “Dan Pienta was recently hired by the accounting and information management department to teach in the Master of Science in Business Cybersecurity program, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to benefit from his cybersecurity research expertise as well.”
Pienta says he is grateful to join the Neel CGC Research Fellows. “This opportunity allows me to work with outstanding academics and professionals, broadening the scope of my research in cybersecurity. The interdisciplinary nature of the Neel Center provides me with diverse perspectives for studying cybersecurity governance issues that modern organizations face.”
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Stacy Estep, writer/publicist, sestep3@utk.edu
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