Faculty and Research

Chris Marquis is an Assistant Professor in the Organizational Behavior unit at the Harvard Business School and is affiliated with the HBS Social Enterprise Initiative.  He teaches the MBA elective Commerce and Society: Business and Creation of Social Value and a doctoral course on Organizational Theory.  He has previously taught Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LEAD) in the required MBA curriculum, and in a number of executive education programs.

Professor Marquis’ current research is focused on the topic of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and in particular how historical and geographic processes have shaped firms' CSR strategies and activities.  He has published papers on how local businesses influence the growth of different types of non-profit organizations in US communities, and is currently working on a number of projects that assess how organizations can be designed to maximize both business and social value.  He has also published a series of HBS cases focused on the organizational design of CSR activities.   This  research builds on Marquis’ earlier work that analyzed how firm behavior is shaped by broader contexts such as embeddedness in geographic communities and how environmental conditions during founding periods leave a lasting imprint on organizations.  This earlier research examined the effects of these processes in the contexts of community-based social networks and the evolution of the US banking industry.

Marquis’ research has won a number of national awards including the 2006 William H. Newman and Louis R. Pondy Awards from the Academy of Management, 2003 James D. Thompson Award from the American Sociological Association and the 2005 State Farm Doctoral Dissertation Award. He was a finalist in the 2004 INFORMS/Organization Science Dissertation Proposal Competition.  He has published in Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, American Sociological Review, Journal of Management Inquiry, Organization Science, and Social Networks as well as a number of edited collections. He is a member of the editorial boards of Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science and Strategic Organization.

Marquis received a BA in History from Notre Dame, MA in History and MBA in Finance from Pitt, and MA and PhD in Sociology from Michigan. Prior to his academic career, he worked for 6 years in the financial services industry, most recently as Vice President and Technology Manager for a business unit of Bank One Corporation (now J.P. Morgan Chase).