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Hons BA (Economics and English Literature), MBA, PhD (Strategic Management and Sustainability).
Barry Colbert is associate professor of Strategic Management in the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, and is the director of The Centre for Business and Sustainability at Laurier.
Professor Colbert leads MBA and BBA classes exploring sustainable strategic management, in which social and environmental issues are taken as the strategic domain for value creation. He also teaches a future-facing course in business ethics, which considers the ethical role of business in contributing to resilient, flourishing societies, and has led the Doctoral seminar on Organization Theory at the Lazaridis School. He has served as adjunct faculty and taught at the Copenhagen Business School (Denmark), Kedge Business School (Marseille, France), Audencia (Nantes, France), Dalhousie (Halifax), McMaster (Hamilton) and the Ontario College of Art and Design (Toronto). Prof. Colbert also serves as founding Board Chair of Sustainable Waterloo Region, a collaborative non-profit social enterprise focused on impacting sustainabiity transitions in energy, buildings, and mobility across Waterloo Region.
His writing has been published in the Academy of Management Review, Management Learning, Business & Society, Business Strategy and the Environment, and the Journal of Cleaner Production, along with several book chapters, including “The Business Case for CSR” in the Oxford Handbook of Corporate Social Responsibility and “A Complexity Perspective of SHRM” in The Sage Handbook of Complexity and Management. He is co-author, with Elizabeth Kurucz and David Wheeler, of the book Reconstructing Value: Leadership Skills for a Sustainable World (2013) from the University of Toronto Press.
Prof. Colbert's research is centred on societal learning for sustainability, and the means by which organizations align a vision for sustainability, corporate and business strategy, and organizational capabilities. Current research is focused on the scaling of multi-sector collaboration toward provoking sustainability transitions, and the role for pragmatic humanism in helping to shape policy and business practice. Current projects include the study of the role of intermediaries in sustainability transitions, and on advancing education and practice for sustainability.
2020 SSHRC Insight Grant - Catalyzing and Managing Sustainability Transitions. Principal Investigator - $125,899.
2019 SSHRC Connection Grant - Fostering transformational change towards cultures of strong sustainability. Co-investigator - $24,754.
2014 SSHRC SR Grant - Social learning toward resilience: The role of sustainability design labs. Co-Investigator - $126,150.
2009 SSHRC SR Grant - Carbon Neutrality: Collaborative Environmental Non-Profit Organizations as Institutional Entrepreneurs - $91,600
Available to supervise graduate students in research relating to business and sustainability, as well as graduate and undergraduate directed studies.
- Colbert, B. & E. Kurucz, 2023. Business and Multi-Sectoral Collaboration for Sustainability Transitions. In D. VanNijnatten (Ed). Canadian Environmental Policy and Practice. Oxford University Press. In Press.
- Luederitz, C., G. Caniglia, B. Colbert & S. Burch, 2021. How do small businesses craft strategies?The role of collective agency for integrating planned and emergent strategy making. Business Strategy & the Environment, 30:3376–3393. DOI: 10.1002/bse.2808.
- Ordońez-Pence, E., A. Clarke & B. Colbert, 2021. Collaborative Sustainable Business Models: Understanding Organizations Partnering for Community Sustainability. Business & Society, DOI: 10.1177/0007650320940241.
- McDermott, K., B. Colbert and E. Kurucz, 2019. Sustainability CoLab: Scaling Local Impact. (Teaching Case). Sage Business Cases: Sustainability Series.
- Colbert, B., J. Nicholson and E. Kurucz, 2019. Humanistic Leadership for Sustainable Transformation. In S. Steffen, S. Rappaport & S. Trevenna (Eds.) Evolving Leadership for a Sustainable Future: A Path to Collective Wellbeing, Emerald Publishing.
- McDermott, K., E. Kurucz, and B. Colbert, 2018. "Social Entrepreneurial Opportunity and Active Stakeholder Participation: Resource Mobilization in Enterprising Conveners of Cross-Sector Social Partnerships." Journal of Cleaner Production, In press.
- McDermott, K., E. Kurucz, and B. Colbert, 2017. "Collaborative civil society organizations and sustainable cities: The role of ‘mobilizing leadership’ in building the integral commons." Organization & Environment. DOI: 10.1177/1086026617723767
- Kurucz, Elizabeth C., Barry A. Colbert, Florian Lüdeke-Freund, Antony Upward, Bob Willard, 2017. “Relational leadership for sustainability: Practices and capabilities to advance the design and assessment of sustainable business models.” Journal of Cleaner Production, 140, 189-204. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.03.087
- Kurucz, Elizabeth C., Barry A. Colbert and Joel Marcus, 2014. “Sustainability as a provocation to rethink management education: Building a progressive educative practice.” Management Learning, 45(4): 437-457.
- Kurucz, Elizabeth C., Barry A. Colbert and David Wheeler, 2013. Reconstructing Value: Leadership Skills for a Sustainable World. 293 pp. UTP/Rotman Press: Toronto. ISBN 9781442611535
- Colbert, Barry A. and Elizabeth C. Kurucz, 2011. “A Complexity Perspective on Human Resource Management”, In P. Allen, S. Maguire, B. McKelvey (Eds.). The Sage Handbook of Complexity and Management, p.400-417. Sage: London.
- Marcus, Joel, Elizabeth C. Kurucz and Barry A. Colbert, 2010. “Conceptions of the Business-Society-Nature Interface: Implications for Management Scholarship”. Business & Society, 49(3): 402-438.
- Kurucz, Elizabeth C., Colbert, Barry A., and Wheeler, D. 2008. “The Business Case for Corporate Social Responsibility.” In A. Crane, A. McWilliams, D. Matten, J. Moon, D. Seigel (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook on Corporate Social Responsibility, p. 83-112. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
- Colbert, Barry A. and Elizabeth C. Kurucz, 2007. “Three Conceptions of Triple Bottom Line Business Sustainability and the Role for HRM”. Human Resource Planning, 30(1): 21-29.
- Colbert, Barry A., 2004. “The Complex Resource-Based View: Implications for Theory and Practice in Strategic Human Resource Management”. Academy of Management Review, 29(3), 341-358.
- Wheeler, David, Barry A. Colbert, and R. Edward Freeman, 2003. “Focusing on Value: Reconciling Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability and a Stakeholder Approach in a Network World”. Journal of General Management, 28(3), 1-2.
BU411: Business Strategy for Sustainability
BU701: Sustainable Value Creation
BU610: Management Consulting Projects
BU650: Business Ethics for Resilient Societies
BU808: Organization Theory
Contact Info:
F: 519.884.0201
Office location: LH4065 Lazaridis Hall
Office hours: By appointment.
Languages spoken: English