Professor Mark Pagell, Chair in Global Leadership and Professor of Sustainable Supply Chain Management at UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and co-authors Frank Wiengarten (Universitat Ramon Llull, ESADE, Spain), Di Fan (Research School of Management, Australian National University, Australia) and Chris K. Y. Lo (Institute of Textiles and Clothing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong), have been awarded the Journal of Operations Management's 2019 Jack Meredith Best Paper Award for their paper Deviations from aspirational target levels and environmental and safety performance: Implications for operations managers acting irresponsibly.

The relationship between sustainable operations and a firm's financial performance has been an ongoing focus of operations management scholars. Previous literature has extensively explored the impact of acting responsibly on financial performance. In the award winning paper, the team applies the behavioral theory of the firm and prospect theory to assess the much‐neglected reverse relationship, exploring whether a firm's relative aspirational financial performance impacts its likelihood of acting irresponsibly. The Journal of Operations Management is a leading Operations and Supply Chain journal and part of the Financial Times list of journals used to rate business schools.

In addition, the Academy of Management’s Operations and Supply Chain Management Division (OSCM) have recognised Professor Mark Pagell as the 2020 Distinguished Scholar. The OSCM division of The Academy of Management promotes research on important and broad problems, with a focus on empirical research that is often cross-disciplinary. The Distinguished Scholar award offers an opportunity to highlight, define and honor scholars that emphasize this focus.

At the virtual event, Professor Mark Pagell, commented,

“I am honored to be recognised and would like to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues with whom I work and collaborate and all at UCD Smurfit School for their ongoing support.”