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Dow Chair of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce
Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy
Professor of Environment and Sustainability
Director, Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise
Thomas P. Lyon holds the Dow Chair of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce at the University of Michigan, with appointments in both the Ross School of Business and the School of Environment and Sustainability. He is President of the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS), and Director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan. He earned his BSE from Princeton University, and MS and PhD degrees from Stanford University. Professor Lyon is a leader in using economic analysis to understand corporate environmental strategy, especially in the energy industry, and how it is shaped by emerging government regulations, non-governmental organizations, and consumer demands. His book Corporate Environmentalism and Public Policy, published by Cambridge University Press, was the first rigorous economic analysis of this increasingly important topic. Lyon is a Senior Editor at Organization & Environment, and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy and the Journal of Regulatory Economics. His current research focuses on the impacts of information disclosure, the role of private governance mechanisms (especially ecolabeling) in solving environmental problems, the factors motivating regulatory compliance, and the role of corporations in shaping government policy.
Professor Lyon has been a Visiting Professor at the Scuola Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy (Fulbright Grant), the University of Chicago (Olin Foundation Fellowship), Resources for the Future (Gilbert White Fellowship), Stanford University, the University of Paris, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the University of Basel, the University of Bonn, UCLA, and the University of California at Santa Barbara. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, the InterAmerican Development Bank, the Alcoa Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation, and the Environmental Protection Agency. He has served as an expert witness for a variety of organizations, including the Michigan Attorney General’s Office, the Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control, AT&T, and Cogentrix. He has also consulted for a wide range of organizations, including US Foods, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), KPMG, Consumers Power, Huron Consulting Group, Industrial Economics, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the Department of Energy.
Awards
"Professor Lyon is an economist and a leading light in corporate sustainability, both for the lines of research he has opened up and the organizations he has led that create professional opportunities in the corporate sustainability space. He has written path-breaking papers on self-regulation, regulatory preemption, voluntary environmental programs, greenwashing, astroturfing, and corporate political responsibility, which have been cited more than 10,000 times. As President of the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS), he created new avenues for scholarly success in the area of corporate sustainability, and helped numerous emerging scholars secure tenured positions in this field. As Director of Michigan's Erb Institute, he has helped hundreds of MBA students find career paths that combine business success with their passion for protecting the natural environment. He coined the phrase 'corporate political responsibility' (CPR) in an influential article, and created a CPR Taskforce that is bringing this idea into the world of business practice"
Featured Books
Corporate Political Responsibility
Behind closed doors, many large companies quietly use their political clout to influence public policy on social and environmental issues – often in a negative direction. This book seeks to create a new norm for responsible political behaviour by corporations. It brings together leading scholars of corporate political responsibility with leading organizations that have been working to support companies in adopting more responsible political practices. The contributors present new evidence on what motivates firms to become more responsible and how markets view corporate 'dark money' spending. They also explain how activists have pressed companies to play a more responsible role in politics. With a particular focus on climate change and the important role of corporate lobbying in supporting or blocking climate policy, this volume leads the way forward for researchers, activists and citizens who seek a future in which corporate political influence is transparent, accountable and responsible.
Featured Stories
CSR Needs CPR: Corporate Sustainability And Politics
As featured on the CPRT Resource List
Winner of the Best Article of 2019 in CMR
Featured Presentations
The Past and Future of Nonmarket Strategy Research
Dr. Thomas Lyon: Corporate Sustainability Initiatives
Recent Podcasts
Beyond Corporate Sustainability: Can the Free Market Be Environmentally Responsible?
Is Business Broken?
We've watched companies wrap themselves in green branding, issue elaborate corporate sustainability reports, and promise a future where capitalism and conservation march hand in hand. But is corporate sustainability truly about saving the planet, or is it a substitute for accountability and regulation?
In the last episode of our three-part series inspired by BU Questrom’s Beyond Corporate Sustainability conference, host Curt Nickisch unpacks the myths of market-driven solutions and the critical role of governance with conference co-organizers Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University, and Tom Lyon, professor of business, economics, and public policy at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.
Listen to this episode of Is Business Broken? here
122: Tom Lyon. We’re going backwards on corporate environmentalism
Pi2 - Private Innovation In the Public Interest
Professor Tom Lyon has been studying corporate environmentalism for decades, and he thinks that, unambiguously, we’re going backwards. The blast of greenwashing over the past five to seven years was the result of the tremendous incentives and pressures on companies to respond to ESG investing. Now that the world has awakened to the fact that very few companies are pure-play environmentalism, what’s now vividly clear is that we need better regulations and public policy to resolve market failures in pollution, R&D, and experimentation. The biggest issue is that the barriers to accomplishing this require political reform particularly in the US, particularly around the role of money in elections and lobbying.
Listen to this episode of Private Innovation In the Public Interest here.
Beyond ESG - Corporate Political Responsibility
On Corporate Counsel Business Journal's podcast - In House Warrior
In this episode of In House Warrior, Thomas Lyon, the Dow Chair of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce, with appointments in both the Ross School of Business and the School of Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) at the University of Michigan and author of Corporate Environmentalism and Public Policy, speaks with host Richard Levick of LEVICK about how ESG and CSR fail to fully measure a company’s social brand. In an age of increased transparency, this alignment is becoming critical to a company’s reputation, brand, resilience and share price.
Listen to this episode of In House Warrior here.
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