Biography
Professor Jeffrey G. York is an Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado Boulder. He received his PhD from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia in 2010. Professor York’s teaching and research are focused on environmental entrepreneurship, the simultaneous creation of ecological and economic goods. He teaches classes in business planning, entrepreneurial thinking and environmental ventures at both the undergrad and MBA level. Professor York’s research has appeared in the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management, Journal of Business Venturing and Journal of Business Ethics.
Education
- Ph.D. (Management), University of Virginia (2010)
- MBA, University of Tennessee
- B.A. (Journalism), University of Georgia
Research
Green Building Project
It’s Not Easy Building Green: the Interaction of Private and Public Institutions in the Adoption of Voluntary Standards
An emerging body of scholarship examines the role that voluntary certification standards play in encouraging socially beneficial practices among organizations. While some scholars have explored how the institutional context influences adoption of these standards, the interactive role of public institutions and private actors in influencing adoption and moderating the impact of the institutional environment has received less attention. In this paper, we develop a theory of institutional ecosystems that describes the relationship between government action, private actors, and the adoption ofvoluntary standards. Empirically, we study the impact of institutional change, and actions of private actors on the adoption of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for green building. The results demonstrate that overall adoption of voluntary standards is greater in the presence of localized public policy and private efforts to create legitimacy and support for the new standard. Our results suggest that the efficacy of government policies supporting adoption is positively moderated by private actors efforts. Taken together, these findings illustrate that the role of private actors in supporting public policy is acritical consideration for understanding the adoption of voluntary certification standards.
Building Green Industries: Exploring the Socio-Cultural Determinants of De Novo vs. De Alio Entry
The question of how institutional factors encourage entry of new firms to enter emerging industries has received a great deal of attention from strategy scholars. However, we still know little about how the socio-cultural environment, defined as the unwritten, decentralized “rules of the game”, influences founding rates in emergent industries; we know even less about how these non-economic factors differentially influence entry by new (de novo) firms versus diversifying (de alio) incumbent firms. Utilizing a unique dataset on entry in the green building industry we theorize and test the influence of the economic, political and socio-cultural environment exerts on entry by de novo firms versus de alio firms. We find that social movement organizations exert less influence on entrepreneurial entry than social norms. In addition, our findings suggest that that while economic and policy factors are highly correlated with de alio entry, the socio-cultural environment exerts a greater influence on de novo firms.
Publications
Forthcoming
Authors: Jeffrey G. York, Saras D. Sarasvathy, and Andrew C. Wicks
In traditional conceptions of rational choice, the fundamental behavioral assumption for human interaction has been one of opportunism. In economics and management, this is exemplified by Williamson’s work on transaction costs (1979). In particular, he defines opportunism as “self-interest seeking with guile” (Williamson, 1991: 79) and posits it as an essential behavioral assumption. Consistent with this assumption, Kivleniece and Quelin (K&Q) (2012) argue in their recent article that, from a private actor’s perspective, the value of public-private ties is restrained by: (1) opportunism by public partners in integrative partnerships (Proposition 8) and (2) stakeholder activism in autonomous partnerships (Proposition 9). Each of these propositions clarifies when private partners will receive less value in public-private partnerships, and thus, will likely forgo such opportunities (39). We seek to extend their contribution by showing how an alternate behavioral assumption – docility (Simon, 1993) - could relax these restraints and help private actors to avail of an expanded set of public-private partnership opportunities. Further, docility may fuel intersubjective interactions (Davidson, 2001) and expand the opportunity set in novel ways.
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Article
August 2011
Authors: Michael Lenox and Jeffrey G.York
Overall, the nascent environmental entrepreneurship literature has focused on a number of key questions. First and most fundamentally, under what conditions do entrepreneurs reduce environmental degradation? Stated another way: To what extent do entrepreneurs address environmental degradation in a manner distinguishable from that of governments, existing firms and social movements? Second, what are the motivations and processes involved in environmental entrepreneurship? Why do some entrepreneurs seek to establish environmentally relevant firms when others do not? Finally, to what extent do institutional conditions affect environmental entrepreneurship? How do existing private and public institutions impact the frequency and efficacy of environmental entrepreneurship? In the following sections we examine the existing literature on each of these questions. While much of the work in this area has been theoretical and prescriptive rather than empirical and descriptive, we seek to outline existing theories and provide linkages to empirical evidence. After our review, we turn to the future of the field and identify several gaps in the literature and offer potential research questions for future research.
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Article
April 2011
Authors: Desiree F. Pacheco, Jeffrey G. York, and Timothy J. Hargrave
In this research, we engage in an illustrative case study of the evolution of the wind power sector in Colorado, which confirmed the co-evolutionary nature of change in the industry. We subsequently conduct a quantitative analysis of the hypotheses derived from the case on a sample of the 48 contiguous U.S. states. In doing so, we apply a co-evolutionary perspective to the dialectical change processes that took place in the wind energy sector. We suggest that in the process of industry formation, not only do social movements impact the entrepreneurial activity in an industry (Sine & Lee, 2009), but that the growth of the industry itself also triggers fundamental changes in the structure of the social movement industry that lead to the creation of more specialized social movement organizations (SMOs). This process has very important implications for the types of institutions that are further developed in favor of the industry, the visibility that the industry enjoys, and the subsequent growth that it experiences.
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Article
September 2010
Authors: Jeffrey G. York and S. Venkataraman
We present a model outlining how entrepreneurial action can address fundamental factors of environmental degradation.
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Full Publication
Article
September 2010
Authors: William R. Meek, Desirée F. Pacheco, and Jeffrey G. York
We develop and test a model of the relationship between centralized and decentralized institutions on entrepreneurial activity.
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Article
March 2010
Authors: Desirée F. Pacheco, Jeffrey G. York, et al.
An agenda for incorporating entrepreneurship research into the study of institutional entrepreneurship.
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Full Publication
Article
February 2009
Authors: Simone de Colle and Jeffrey G. York
Current socially responsible investing offerings cannot accurately reflect the values and ethical beliefs they propose to represent.
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Article
February 2009
Author: Jeffrey G. York
Under a pragmatic approach to ethics, the choice for sustainability becomes self-evident for business performance and moral reasons.
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Research
June 2008
Authors: R. Edward Freeman, Jeffrey G. York, and Lisa Stewart
There is a revolution afoot in business; it is a revolution with “values” at its core. Companies that can deliver in this new competitive space are moving ahead of the competition.
Full Publication
Courses
Undergraduate: Fall 2010
An introduction to the entrepreneurial process. Exposure to the concepts, practices, and tools of the entrepreneurial world.
Syllabus
MBA: Fall 2010
Focused on understanding how and why business engages in creating environmentally sustainable products, services and markets.
Syllabus
Past Events
Event
January 17, 2012
5:00 pm
Koelbel Business Library (reception) and room 210 (competition)
An inspiring, exciting evening of emerging business ideas and plans await when you join us for this year's pitch night with the Leeds teams that have advanced to the final competition cut. Please see registration site to learn more and RSVP.
