Emerging as One of the Best

PROVO, Utah – Sep 25, 2019 – Hard work pays off for BYU Marriott associate professor of entrepreneurship Chad Carlos. Only six years into his research career, Carlos has been selected as one of the 2019 recipients of the Emerging Scholar Award at the annual Academy of Management Conference.

The Emerging Scholar Award is given each year to early career academics who have made outstanding research contributions in their fields and who have strong potential to continue making such contributions. Carlos was selected for the award by the Organizations and the Natural Environment (ONE) division of the Academy of Management for his work studying the intersections between entrepreneurship and sustainability.

The award came as somewhat of a surprise to Carlos as he had a slow start to his research career. “Over my first few years, I faced rejection after rejection. It was discouraging,” says Carlos. “For me, receiving the award is evidence of the power of persistence.” The other key lesson he learned was that research is a team sport, and he is grateful for the co-authors and mentors he has worked with throughout his research and academic careers.

Carlos originally graduated from BYU Marriott with a MAcc in 2003. After spending a few years working in Silicon Valley for KPMG as a senior consultant, he decided to return to school, this time at Cornell University, to earn his PhD in order to follow his passion for teaching and research and to pursue a career with more flexibility. During his time studying at Cornell he became drawn to environmental sustainability research. He became part of a close community of academics focusing their studies on sustainability in the business world.

 “As soon as I started to look into sustainability, I saw it was a fascinating area with opportunities for innovation,” says Carlos. It was within this community Carlos met his future research partner and friend Ben Lewis, assistant professor of strategy at BYU Marriott.

Carlos and Lewis’ latest paper focuses on studying the effects of environmental rankings and certifications on companies. Together with Lewis, Carlos found that in some cases higher rankings can penalize rather than reward the recipient. The pair has worked on two papers together and is currently working on a third.

Lewis says he and Carlos make a good research pair because of their complementary skills.  While Lewis describes himself as fiery, he says Carlos is more even keeled, a dynamic that has gotten them out of a few sticky situations and helped them gain favor in the research world. “Together we do better research than we would each do individually,” says Lewis. “I can trust that he knows exactly what he’s talking about.”

Carlos also won Best Published Article from International Association for Business and Society in 2018, the Outstanding Paper Award from the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability in 2016, and Best Paper Award from the Organizations and the Natural Environment division of the Academy of Management in 2015. He was also awarded the Kauffman Foundation Dissertation Fellowship from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which includes a $20,000 reward.

Carlos plans to continue teaching and is currently working on further research with Lewis and other colleagues. His current studies look at how corporate regulations impact charitable giving. He is also working on entrepreneurial projects in Africa, studying how those projects affect sustainability and can be used to help individuals alleviate poverty.

“Chad is doing excellent work. I think every one of his published papers has won some sort of research award, some have even won multiple,” says Lewis. “He’s doing incredibly impactful work that’s making a difference, and I think people recognize that.”