“I have a special interest in different ways of shareholder engagement, and how they can be supported”, says Rieneke Slager. She has studied sustainable stock indices and coalition building in particular, and co-authored reports for e.g. the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS) or the Principles of Responsible Investments (PRI). "Although difficult to research, it's imperative that we study shareholder engagement as genuine dialogue, i.e. representing the views and communicative actions of  both the engager and the target company. As such it is a rich context for the communication constitutes organization (CCO) perspective on CSR."

As part of her Misum fellowship, she is working Emma Sjöström, Director of the Sustainable Finance Initiative, to explore concrete pathways to shareholder engagement success. One of the main objectives with this study design is to highlight the implications for practice (i.e. engagement professionals): "This configurational perspective on shareholder engagement, which categorizes engagement as different ''recipes'' or ''pathways'' aims to pick up the “management language” that relates to the modus operandi of engagement practitioners. So we eventually hope to inform them what engagement strategy could lead to success under which circumstances”, Rieneke Slager points out.

During the fellowship, Rieneke will engage in research seminars and other events or workshops on this topic at SSE, potentially via video if the current situation continues. “I am very excited about this fellowship and hope to visit Misum as soon as possible.” If you are interested to meet with Rieneke Slager during her fellowship, please do not hesitate to get in touch!