Current Research and Scholarly Interests

Professor Bennett’s current research aims to identify, understand, improve, and catalyze novel business models and innovative systems of global economic governance. Her aim is to generate knowledge that empowers businesses, policy makers, non-profits, unions, social enterprises, and social movements to set and attain ambitious sustainability and human rights objectives. Ultimately, her goal is to improve the outcomes that business generates in society.

This research engages the questions:

• How, to what extent, and under what conditions do novel business models and governance innovations include traditionally marginalized groups in high-level decision-making?
• In what ways, for whom, and at what cost do novel business models and governance innovations promote human rights and sustainable outcomes?
• How have novel business models, governance innovations, and the outcomes they generate, influenced people’s perceptions of the relationship between markets and sustainability?

Current Projects

1- Living wages in global supply chains

This project examines whether and how voluntary sustainability certifications (like Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade) promote living wages in global supply chains. It draws on interviews and standards documents from 16 certification organizations, a longitudinal, within-case study and cross-case analysis of five sustainability certifications’ approaches to living wages, and a field-level study of living wage initiatives for global supply chains. The research aims to identify the pathways and processes through which businesses and NGOs can move from performative sustainability claims to substantive change.

This research is particularly timely for two reasons: First, the European Union and several individual countries are currently developing new regulations about the responsibilities corporations have for promoting sustainable development and protecting human rights in their supply chains. Second, private actors (e.g., Unilever) are increasingly committing to pay living wages.

Research from this project has been supported by Harvard and Rutgers Universities, the American Philosophical Association, and several NGOs. Early findings have been published in Sustainable Development and included in several book chapters. More recent work is under review, and is being developed into a book manuscript provisionally titled: Bold Claims, Low Wages: How sustainability standards paved the way for living wages in global supply chains.

2 – Ethical shopping as a public education?

For 30 years, people living in many parts of the world have been inundated with opportunities to “shop for change” or work for businesses that “do well while doing good.” This project aims to move beyond surface-level descriptions of how this context has “raised awareness” by answering the question: What, exactly, have everyday people learned?

This project investigates people’s understanding of “moralizing markets” by studying their efforts to make the newly legalized Oregon cannabis (marijuana) market more moral, sustainable, ethical, or fair. This is a novel application of the methodological approach of “authentic assessment” in which a student’s knowledge is tested by asking them to apply it to a new situation. In the US, the people creating ethical interventions for cannabis are almost always “everyday people”—as opposed to seasoned experts—because most NGOs, the US federal government, and corporations will not engage a sector that remains federally illegal. Indeed, the findings show that sustainable/fair initiatives in the cannabis sector are being creatively fashioned by people with no prior experience, knowledge, or training in market moralization

This research draws on structured visits to half of Portland, Oregon’s dispensaries in 2016 and 2019 (65 and 89 dispensaries, respectively), participant observation at dozens of events, and interviews with almost two hundred retail workers, business owners, policy makers, activists, and growers.

The findings have implications for those interested in educating the public about how to re-shape businesses, economic governance, and consumption to support democratic values and sustainable outcomes. They have been published in Environmental Politics, Agriculture & Human Values, and several edited volumes, with additional work under review.