Grant opportunities

To support and encourage academic research on responsible leadership and leadership development.

The Principal Investigator must be a tenured or tenure-track faculty member at UBC Sauder.

The purpose of this initiative is to support early-stage and innovative research examining the topics of responsible leadership and leadership development. Responsible leadership refers to managing an organization’s interactions with its multiple stakeholders in ways that can positively impact economic, social, and environmental outcomes. Whereas corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to the organization’s response to achieving these conditions, research in responsible leadership development refers to understanding how the leaders themselves foster these outcomes and navigate these waters. 

Although society has an expectation that today’s leaders demonstrate responsible leadership, how leaders actually do this is not well defined or understood. Moreover, responsible leadership and leadership in general is not something that necessarily comes naturally to all people. Thus, research on what constitutes responsible leadership and how to develop leaders is needed. 

The purpose of the Centre is to advance understanding of responsible leadership and leadership development. Our goal is to use research to help leaders develop themselves to better manage their responsibilities to legitimate stakeholders. This includes the leaders’ capacity to address issues regarding equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), and to demonstrate competencies in stakeholder relations, self-awareness, systems thinking, and change and innovation, all built on a foundation of ethics and values. The Centre will aim to support UBC Sauder as a business school that fosters responsible leadership, and strengthen the school’s global reputation as an academic authority in an area growing in importance in business and leadership education. Importantly, the Centre aims to honor its benefactors, Dana and John Montalbano.

The grant amounts can range from $3,000 to $10,000.

The proposals will be reviewed by a committee and decisions will be based on:

• The quality of the application: Priority will be given to projects that the reviewers deem to have a high likelihood of leading to published research and/or additional grant funding. 
• Relevance and impact of the research: Preference will be given to topics that appear to be business- and societally-relevant and that are strongly linked to the theme of responsible leadership and leadership development.

Applicants should provide a brief summary of the proposed research, including the research question, methodology, and theoretical and practical implications. Where relevant, the proposal should clearly outline the role of the graduate student and discuss the specific training/experience that the research project will provide. The proposal should be no more than two double-spaced pages (12-point font). The deadline is by 5pm on February 3, 2025.  

Please email your application to Jonathan Evans at jon.evans@sauder.ubc.ca

Decisions will be made by a review panel and the results will be announced on a rolling basis. 

Successful applicants will need to provide an annual report detailing their progress.