On March 11th, we’ll be joined by Dr. Cécile Feront & Dr. Stephanie Bertels to discuss their paper, “With Privilege Comes Responsibility: Why some privileged insiders transform institutions for societal benefit.” Why do some privileged insiders engage in prosocial institutional change, transforming the very institutions that currently benefit them, while others do not? Why is it important to engage with rather than distance ourselves from the injustices and institutional contradictions we experience? In researching privileged insiders, Dr. Feront and Dr. Bertels learned that those who embark on prosocial institutional change grappled with their growing moral discomfort and shifted from questioning the system to themselves. In this paper, they share how people can navigate their discomfort triggered by moral emotions by taking small pragmatic actions given their proximity to levers, resources, networks, and allies.
Cécile Feront & Stephanie Bertels
Dr. Cecile Feront is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Post Graduate Diploma in Development Finance at UCT Graduate School of Business, a research fellow at the Stellenbosch University’s Centre for Sustainability Transitions, a collaborator at the Embedding Project, and an associate at the Sustainability Institute. She has gained broad experience in strategy and management through her past roles in the software industry and renewable energy sector.
Dr. Stephanie Bertels is the VanDusen Professor of Sustainability and the Director of the Centre for Corporate Governance and Sustainability at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business. She is the Founder of the Embedding Project which brings together leading global firms across a broad range of industries to help them embed sustainability across their operations and decision-making and contribute to positive systems change. Dr. Bertels’ research and teaching examines how companies understand their reliance on the environmental and social systems where they operate and how they embed sustainability into their operations, strategy, and governance systems.
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