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Professor Tima Bansal has worked at the intersection of corporate strategy and sustainability for decades. The visiting professor shared this knowledge with CBS.
Visiting Professor Tima Bansal has spent the autumn of 2021 in Denmark with researchers and staff at the Centre for Organisation and Time, as well as with some of the partners associated with the centre. She is a researcher who has contributed extensive knowledge about how business leaders can translate strategy with different time horizons into sustainable solutions. The Centre for Organisations and Time (COT) at Copenhagen Business School wanted to have this knowledge within reach and therefore applied to the Otto Mønsted Foundation for a visiting professorship, which resulted in a three-month stay for Tima Bansal.
A great support for researchers
The purpose of inviting Tima Bansal to CBS was to draw on her extensive expertise and experience as associate editor of the Academy of Management Journal, which many researchers strive to get articles published in. In addition, Tima Bansal has developed a network of 800 companies through her work, and COT wanted to gain insight into her experience of connecting real-world actors around the big issues. Tima Bansal is also a partner in COT’s own fund-supported research project Actionable Futures, which is working to map how companies must work in both the short and long term to achieve climate goals.
“Her visit has more than lived up to our expectations. She has interacted with colleagues, not only at COT, and has taken an active part in seminars and workshops, as well as being accessible to younger researchers and an important support for our postdoc students,” says Tor Hernes, Professor of Organisation Theory and Head of COT.
And the benefits were obviously mutual, says Tima Bansal.
“Spending time with Tor Hernes’ group exceeded my expectations. Especially the more peripheral conversations have enriched my own understanding of the world and hopefully had the same effect in the other direction. What started as a three-month agreement has given me and CBS the opportunity to nurture a lasting collaboration for the benefit of both partners,” she says.
What have you experienced as the biggest difference between the university environment in Denmark and in Canada?
“The biggest difference is definitely the orientation towards the big ideas in Denmark. I really enjoyed the conversations with the researchers, as they seemed to have room to explore big problems and the philosophical basis. Many of the people I met were interested in big societal issues like climate change and the impact of their work on society. They often questioned the assumptions being made and sought to create space for debate and dialogue,” Tima Bansal experienced.
And the stay in Denmark outside the walls of CBS? Tima Bansal was very enthusiastic about it all, she says.
“There’s a community culture in Copenhagen that you don’t find in cities like my own. There are children, people pushing prams, friends walking or cycling everywhere. The public gathering points create a sense of caring imbued with positive energy.”
Facts:
Tima Bansal has been working for decades on the impact of organisations on their surroundings. She is Professor of Strategy at Ivey Business School in London, Ontario and founded the university’s Centre for Building Sustainable Value, which she still directs. In 2002, she founded the Network for Business Sustainability, which publishes evidence-based sustainability communications for business leaders and has 35,000 followers. In 2019, she established the Innovation North research lab involving 25 of Canada’s largest organisations, and in her home country, she holds a number of significant positions on prominent expert panels and boards concerned with the sustainability agenda.