Wesley Longhofer joined the Goizueta Business School in 2012 after receiving his PhD in sociology from the University of Minnesota. He is currently the Executive Academic Director of Goizueta's Business & Society Institute, an academic research center that addresses complex challenges facing people and the planet through academic discovery and purposeful action.
Some of his published work on charitable organizations, environmental protection, and international law has appeared in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Administrative Science Quarterly, Nature Communications, Social Forces, Sociological Science, and Scientific Reports. His research on climate change and the energy sector has been funded by the National Science Foundation and featured in the Washington Post and Nature Climate Change.
Wes has received a number of awards for his teaching, including the 2018 Emory Williams Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award and the 2016 Marc F. Adler Prize for Excellence in Teaching. He was once named one of the 40 Best Business Professors Under 40 by Poets & Quants. His most recent co-authored book, Super Polluters: Tackling the World's Largest Sites of Climate-Disrupting Emissions, was published by Columbia University Press in 2020.
Education
University of Minnesota
PhD
Sociology
2011
Texas Christian University
BA
Sociology
2003
Areas of Expertise
Organizational Sociology
Business and Society
Social Enterprise
Philanthropy and Non-Profits
Climate Change
Human Rights
Publications
Contentions over World Culture: The Rise of Legal Restrictions on Foreign Funding to NGOs, 1994-2015
Social Forces
Patricia Bromley, Evan Schofer, and Wesley Longhofer
The last two decades have witnessed an unprecedented rise in government restrictions on foreign funding to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Often in the name of defending the nation from outside influences, over 60 countries have implemented laws limiting foreign funding to NGOs. We use event history analyses to evaluate domestic and global explanations for the adoption of these policies over the period 1994–2015. Prior work has argued that funding restrictions result from real or perceived threats to political regimes, especially in countries with competitive elections. We add to this story by situating it in a larger global and cultural context: new funding laws are part of a growing backlash against the liberal international order, which has long sponsored international and domestic NGOs devoted to issues such as human rights and the environment. In an era of increasing resistance toward globally linked civil society groups—the primary carriers of liberal world society—NGO funding restrictions are now diffusing widely across the international system. We argue that restriction policies will be most common among countries that are linked to illiberal or anti-Western organizations and discourses in the international community. Moreover, adoption will accelerate as more countries do it, representing a growing “wave” or backlash against the liberal international order. Findings support the prior literature as well as our new arguments regarding illiberal international organizations and global backlash.
The Changing Effectiveness of Local Civic Action: The Critical Nexus of Community and Organization
Administrative Science Quarterly
Wesley Longhofer, Giacomo Negro, and Peter Roberts
We examine changes in the effectiveness of local civic action in relation to changes over time in racial diversity and income inequality. Local civic action comprises situations in which community members come together—typically with support from local organizations—to address common issues. The collective orientation of local civic action makes it sensitive to changes in local social conditions. As these changes unfold, local organizations become differentially able to support civic action. Here, our core argument features the process through which community members associate with different local organizations and how mandated versus voluntary association results in distinct responses to increased social and economic heterogeneity. We test this argument using three decades of data describing local campaigns of the annual Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF program. A baseline model shows that within-county increases in racial diversity and income inequality are associated with diminished campaign effectiveness. Subsequent models that separate out campaigns organized by schools, churches, and clubs show that schools are relatively more effective mobilizers as racial diversity and income inequality increase, arguably due to the greater demographic matching that is induced by mandated school participation.
World Society, Legal Formalism, and Execution of Legal Procedures
Social Forces
Giacomo Negro and Wesley Longhofer
World society scholars have focused on how international organizations lead nation-states to adopt similar policies, procedures, and programs in order to signal compliance to prevailing rules and norms. In this study, the authors propose that integration into world society is associated with higher levels of legal formalism, which in turn can result in lengthening the execution of legal procedures. The empirical analysis of the study combines a dataset of country-level membership in international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) with a dataset on legal formalism and procedural duration assembled by the Lex Mundi Project. The data cover an unusually large set of countries for an extensive period. The analyses consider two typical settings for everyday contract disputes—check cashing and tenant eviction—and find evidence consistent with the authors’ claims.
NGOs and International Development: A Review of Thirty-Five Years of Scholarship
World Development
Jennifer Brass, Wesley longhofer, Rachel Sullivan Robinson, and Allison Schnable
Since 1980, the number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in developing countries has exploded. Published research on NGOs has paralleled this growth, yet there exists scant synthesis of the literature. This article presents a synthesis, while also introducing a collaborative research platform, the NGO Knowledge Collective. We ask four questions: first, who studies NGOs, and how do they study them? Second, what issues, sectors and places are studied when NGOs are the focus? Third, what effect do NGO activities have on specific development outcomes? And fourth, what path should the NGO research agenda take? To answer these questions, we conduct a mixed-method systematic review of social science publications on NGOs, which includes computer-assisted content analysis of 3336 English-language journal articles (1980–2014), alongside a close, qualitative analysis of 300 randomly selected articles. We find, first, that interdisciplinary journals dominate NGO publishing, that research on NGOs is more qualitative than quantitative, and that practitioners publish, but Northern academics create most published knowledge. Second, we find the literature is framed around six overarching questions regarding: the nature of NGOs; their emergence and development; how they conduct their work; their impacts; how they relate to other actors; and how they contribute to the (re)production of cultural dynamics. Articles also focus disproportionately on the most populated and/or politically salient countries, and on the governance and health sectors. Third, we find that scholars generally report favorable effects of NGOs on health and governance outcomes. Fourth, we propose a research agenda calling for scholars to: address neglected sectors, geographies, and contextual conditions; increase author representativeness; improve research designs to include counterfactuals or comparison groups; and better share data and findings, including results from additional, focused NGO-related systematic reviews. Implementing this agenda will help reduce bias in decisions by donors, governments, and other development actors, which should improve development outcomes.
Structural Pathways to Carbon Pollution: The Conjoint Effects of Organizational, World System, and World Society Factors on Power Plants’ CO2 Emissions
Sociological Science
Don Grant, Andrew Jorgenson, and Wesley Longhofer
Climate change is arguably the greatest threat to society as power plants, the single largest human source of heat-trapping pollution, continue to emit massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Sociologists have identified several possible structural determinants of electricity-based CO2 emissions, including international trade and global normative regimes, national political–legal systems, and organizational size and age. But because they treat these factors as competing predictors, scholars have yet to examine how they might work together to explain why some power plants emit vastly more pollutants than others. Using a worldwide data set of utility facilities and fuzzy-set methods, we analyze the conjoint effects of global, political, and organizational conditions on fossil-fueled plants’ CO2 emissions. Findings reveal that hyperpolluters’ emission rates are a function of four distinct causal recipes, which we label coercive, quiescent, expropriative, and inertial configurations, and these same sets of conditions also increase plants’ emission levels.
A Worldwide Analysis of Stranded Fossil Fuel Assets' Impact on Power Plants' CO2 Emissions
Nature Communications
Don Grant, Tyler Hansen, Andrew Jorgenson, Wesley Longhofer
2025-01-08
Will power plants emit less or more CO2 in anticipation of stronger climate policies that would strand fossil fuel reserves? Here, using a worldwide data source on individual power plants’ CO2 emissions and the value of countries’ at-risk fossil fuel assets, we show that between 2009 and 2018, plants emitted more CO2 in countries where more assets would be devalued under a 1.5 °C scenario, which we theorize is due to these countries’ regulatory leniency and plants’ vested interest in long-term fossil fuel contracts. Although the extra amount of carbon emitted each year trigged by imperiled assets is relatively small, it would exhaust a sizable portion of the electricity sector’s remaining carbon budget when added up over time. This is especially true in the U.S. and Russia where up to 16% and 12% of their budgets, respectively, could be spent within ten years due solely to the stranded asset effect.
Taking on Super Polluters to Reduce Greenhouse Gases
If just the top five percent of carbon-emitting plants in the U.S. reduced emissions to the average intensity of all plants, overall emissions from the electricity sector would fall 22 percent. A new book co-authored by Wesley Longhofer, associate professor of organization and management at Goizueta Business School, offers new insights into a persistent problem—how to curb carbon emissions from top-polluting power plants around the world.
In Super Polluters: Tackling the World’s Largest Sites of Climate-Disrupting Emissions (Columbia University Press), Longhofer and co-authors Don Grant and Andrew Jorgenson argue that reducing pollution from fossil-fueled power plants should start with the dirtiest producers.
From data they gathered over eight years on the carbon emissions of every power plant in the world, they found that a small number of plants contribute the lion’s share of pollution. For instance, if just the top five percent of carbon-emitting plants in the U.S. reduced emissions to the average intensity of all plants, overall emissions from the electricity sector would fall 22 percent.
The book also questions claims that improvements in technical efficiency will always reduce greenhouse gases.
“It’s the paradox of efficiency,” Longhofer says. “Just because a plant produces power more efficiently doesn’t mean they’ll pollute less. It just becomes cheaper to produce.” As sociologists, the authors are the first to put the problem into context, investigating global, organizational, and political conditions that explain super-polluter behavior. They demonstrate energy and climate policies most effective at curbing power-plant pollution and show how mobilized citizen activism shapes those outcomes.
“Climate change is fundamentally an organizational problem. Even if you think about the Paris Accords, it’s the power plants and the cars within those states that produce the emissions, not the states themselves,” Longhofer says. “What do we do with what we already know? How do we develop policies to help us achieve our climate goals?” If you’re a journalist looking to speak with Wesley Longhofer about his book or discuss big pollution and how to cut carb emissions then let us help. Simply click on his icon now to arrange an interview today.
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1 min
Focus on extreme polluters
In recent years, several scholars have recommended that countries reduce their energy-related CO2 emissions by setting carbon intensity targets for their electricity generating plants. Other research suggests that countries could substantially cut their emissions simply by focusing on lowering the carbon emissions of the most extreme polluters. Using a unique international data source on power plants, researchers Don Grant (U. Colorado); Wesley Longhofer, assistant professor of organization and management; and Andrew Jorgenson (U. Utah) inform this issue by analyzing the distribution of CO2 emissions and intensities within the electricity sectors of 20 countries. They find that the dirtiest 5 percent of power plants are responsible for huge shares of their sectors’ total emissions, noting that “if these plants continued generating the same amount of electricity but met particular intensity targets, the world’s total electricity-based CO2 emissions could be reduced by as much as 44 percent.”
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1 min
The impact of corporate vs. independent foundations
Debate continues as to whether corporate or independent foundations are more impactful, despite the shared interest in supporting charitable services. In research from Justin Koushyar, doctoral candidate in organization and management (2017), Wesley Longhofer, assistant professor of organization and management, and Peter Roberts, professor of organization and management, the trio determines that the answer is mixed. They used data from a matched random sample of corporate and independent foundations that operated across the United States in 2005 and 2009. With deeper pockets, corporate foundations were able to raise more funds than their nonprofit counterparts. Company sponsorship of a philanthropic foundation also meant that they could operate with lower overhead. However, Koushyar, Longhofer, and Roberts found that corporate foundations are “more dispersed and less relational, and they tend to be governed by more ephemeral groups of officers and trustees.” Simply put, corporate foundations have fewer longterm attachments to the charitable organizations they support. Additionally, “market-based motivations” may influence how they give. Corporate foundations do tend to provide smaller individual grant amounts than independent foundations. These “stakeholder effects” are even more dramatic for the foundations linked to larger publicly traded companies.
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In the News
Why some ads for the new movie ‘Migration’ are promoting a nonprofit bird rescue
Fast Company online
2023-12-19
Ahead of the film’s December 22 release, NBCUniversal’s Creative Impact Lab partnered on a campaign with the International Bird Rescue.
Provocative ads use voting law to target Coke on labor, obesity
Atlanta Journal Constitution online
2021-08-11
Wesley Longhofer, a professor at Emory’s Goizueta Business School focused on the intersection of business and society, said some organizations like Greenpeace have found success using provocative ads to force major changes at companies. They’ve done this by compiling compelling evidence and working with corporations to clean up their supply chains, he said. “But if you’re too antagonistic it’s easy for a corporation to either ignore you or play defense,” he said. “That tends to be less effective than getting corporations to engage in the kinds of change that you’re calling for.”
Coca-Cola is at the center of a debate over corporate social justice, with an anti-affirmative-action activist threatening to sue over its supplier diversity program
Business Insider online
2021-05-08
Wesley Longhofer, a professor of organization and management at Emory University Goizueta Business School, said Coca-Cola is no stranger to taking stances on racial-justice issues, going back to 1964, when it got white Atlantans to turn out for an event in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. He said the company’s cachet can make it a focus for activists. “Social-movement organizations oftentimes will target these iconic brands because they know these brands care about reputation, but also just to raise awareness,” he said.
Markets are actually holding companies accountable for human rights violations
Quartz online
2021-01-12
"'Corporations have an obligation to respect human rights,” says Longhofer. “Over the last 10 years, more companies are trying to develop HR frameworks that follow the UN guiding principles,' a non-binding 2011 international framework asserting companies must respect and protect human rights, and offer remedies for parties if violations occur. Companies such as Unilever, for example, now have extensive human rights policies and report on their compliance with the UN principles (pdf)—albeit with mixed success."
Opinion: This long-standing tenet of American capitalism must change - now
Ensia online
2020-09-24
"To be sure, companies need profits to survive, and our current stage of capitalism has delivered wealth and innovation to many. But at what cost? It has lifted millions of people around the world out of poverty just to put so many of them on the brink of falling back into it and irreparably damaged Earth in the process."
"Forget the genie in a bottle. For Wesley Longhofer, it’s all about the “Gini” in the smokestack. An associate professor of organization and management in Emory’s Goizueta Business School, Longhofer has adapted the Gini index — which usually measures wealth distribution — to evaluate the disproportionality of carbon emissions across a nation’s power plants. The higher the number, the fewer the plants accounting for the bulk of that country’s emissions."
This could be a completely different strategy for tackling the world’s carbon emissions
Washington Post online
2017-07-07
He and two colleagues, coauthors Wesley Longhofer of Emory University and Don Grant of the University of Colorado at Boulder, decided to focus on the electricity sector, given its massive contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions. They drew on a database of nearly 20,000 fossil fuel-burning power plants — relying on coal, gas or liquid fossil fuels — in 161 nations around the world.
As we approach Earth Day 2021, the world continues to struggle to address climate change and its causes. Goizueta Business School professor Wes Longhofer says there are ten coal-burning power plants worldwide that are major causes of global warming. He labels these “super polluters” and suggests that targeting these plants for change can have a significant impact.The top ten polluting plants are in Taiwan (#1 and #8), South Korea (#2, #3, #5, #6), Poland (#4), Germany (#7), India (#6), and South Africa (#10). Pollution isn’t just an economic or an engineering issue. Plants pollute at extremely high levels and rates due to a host of interconnected social structures such activism, political-legal systems, and social conditions.Longhofer can discuss the energy and climate policies that can most effectively combat power-plant pollution.It’s important to shift the conversation from consumers of carbon items and services to their producers, in much the same way that cancer caused by smoking was originally attributed to individuals’ lack of self-control, but later attributed to cigarette companies themselvesNone of the Top Ten plants are in the US, but our coal burning power plants are still a major contributor of carbon emissions. Plants that operate “more efficiently” can see a “backfire” effect where they actually emit more pollution.More at http://cup.columbia.edu/book/super-polluters/9780231192170.
