Mary-Hunter McDonnell

Professor Mary-Hunter (“Mae”) McDonnell received her Ph.D. in Management and Organizations from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a B.A. in Philosophy from the UNC Chapel Hill. She is an Associate Professor of Management in the Organizational Behavior subgroup. Previously, she served as an Assistant Professor of Strategy at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and as a Visiting Professor of Business Law at Northwestern University Law School.

Professor McDonnell studies organizational behavior within challenging institutional contexts, such as contentious social environments and uncertain regulatory environments. Her research draws on organizational theory and political sociology to explore political interactions between corporations and their myriad stakeholders. In particular, she is interested in how a company’s interactions with its stakeholders shape corporate social activity and non-market strategy. Her work also sheds light on the mechanisms that stakeholders use to enforce social norms for corporations and to punish corporate transgressions. She has published articles in leading peer-reviewed scholarly journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, the American Sociological Review, Organization Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Psychological Science, as well as law reviews including the Cornell Law Review and the Harvard Human Rights Journal. Her dissertation won the Best Dissertation Prize from Oxford University’s Centre for Corporate Reputation, and her work was also awarded the Best Paper Prize at the 2014 Strategic Management Society annual conference. She currently serves on the Editorial Boards of Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, and the Academy of Management Journal.

Research Interests: organizational theory (political sociology, institutional theory); nonmarket strategy; corporate governance; corporate misconduct and punishment

Awards and Honors

• Wharton Teaching Excellence Award, 2020
• Organization Science Outstanding Reviewer Award, 2017
• Academy of Management Journal Best Reviewer Award, 2017
• Organization Science Outstanding Reviewer Award, 2017
• Stakeholder Strategy Best Proposal Award at the 2017 SMS Annual Meeting in Houston, TX for “Co-opting Contention: Field-level Effects of Firm-NGO Alliances” (with Kate Odziemkowska), 2017
• Organization Science Outstanding Reviewer Award, 2015
• Winner, Best Conference Paper Award at the 2014 SMS Annual Meeting in Madrid, Spain for “Blacklisted Benefactors: The Political Contestation of Nonmarket Strategy.”, 2014
• Winner of the Best Dissertation Award, Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation, 2014
• Organization Science Outstanding Reviewer Award, 2014
• People’s Choice Best Presentation Award, Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS) Annual Conference, Johnson School of Management, Cornell University, 2014
• Honorable Mention, Art Stinchcombe Dissertation Prize in Organization Studies, 2013
• Winner of the Best Paper Award at the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS) PhD Academy for “If You Can’t Beat them, Join Them: Corporate Sponsorship of Social Movement Boycotts”, 2012
• Finalist in INFORMS/Organization Science Dissertation Proposal Competition. Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), 2012
• Winner of the Williston Contract Drafting and Negotiation Competition (Annual competition open to all first year students at Harvard Law School), 2008