Peter Roberts

Professor of Organization & Management; Academic Director of Specialty Coffee Programs, Business & Society Institute Emory University, Goizueta Business School

  • Atlanta GA

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Emory University, Goizueta Business School

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Biography

Peter is Professor of Organization & Management at Emory University and was the founding Academic Director of Social Enterprise @ Goizueta. He also serves as Academic Director of Specialty Coffee Programs for Goizueta's Business & Society Institute.

His research interests relate to how the behavior and performance of organizations evolve over time. Currently, he directs his interests in entrepreneurship and organizational performance toward topics in the field of social enterprise. His current projects focus on social entrepreneurs and accelerators, on microbusiness development, and on the global specialty coffee industry.

For the past several years, he has been cultivating several programs which focus on making markets work for more people, in more places, in more ways. This led to the establishment of the global Entrepreneurship Database Program, the Start:ME accelerator program, and the Transparent Trade Coffee and Grounds for Empowerment programs.

Peter's PhD is from the University of Alberta. Before taking up his current position at Emory University, Peter served on the faculties of Columbia University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Australian Graduate School of Management.

Education

University of Alberta

PhD

Organizational Analysis

1996

University of Alberta

MA

Economics

1989

Queen's University

BA

Economics

1988

Areas of Expertise

Micro-Business Development
Specialty Coffee
Entrepreneurship
Social Enterprise

Publications

Are We Accelerating Equity Investment Into Impact-Oriented Ventures

World Development

2020

To assess the effect of acceleration on outside equity investment, we analyze application and follow-up data from a matched sample of 1647 entrepreneurs who applied to 77 impact-oriented accelerators. Our main finding is promising. In the first follow-up year, accelerator program participants attract significantly more outside equity than their rejected counterparts. Further analysis suggests that this positive equity bump is not due to cherry picking obviously promising ventures during selection processes. Moreover, the effect is tied to the number of accelerated months in the follow-up year. Despite these promising observations, we find that the equity investment effect does not extend to ventures working in emerging markets, or to those with women on their founding teams. Thus, the benefits of accelerators for entrepreneurship-led development are not yet reaching the places and people that have the hardest time attracting capital on their own.

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The Changing Effectiveness of Local Civic Action: The Critical Nexus of Community and Organization

Administrative Science Quarterly

2018

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.

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A Comparative Analysis of Corporate and Independent Foundations

Sociological Science

2015

Notwithstanding some visible debates, systematic evidence about the implications of greater corporate involvement in the social sector is sparse. We provide some of this evidence by examining one channel of corporate influence within the nonprofit sector–company sponsorship of philanthropic foundations. Our analysis shows that corporate foundations raise more funds and distribute grants with lower overhead than similar independent (i.e., non-corporate) foundations. However, their grantmaking is also more dispersed and less relational, and they tend to be governed by more ephemeral groups of officers and trustees. These findings suggest that corporate foundations benefit from having access to the resources of the companies that sponsor them but are constrained by their additional market-based motivations. The findings also update and refine what nonprofits might expect from corporate foundations relative to their more traditional independent counterparts.

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Research Spotlight

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. Source:

Peter RobertsWesley Longhofer

In the News

The story behind the rise in coffee prices worldwide

The World  

2024-12-13

Climate change is a challenge for farmers everywhere. That includes coffee farmers. But climate change alone doesn’t explain the current uptick in prices. There’s another force at play. Peter Roberts, an academic director of specialty coffee programs at the Business and Society Institute at Emory University, helps demystify what’s happening in the market.

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What does the term "ethical coffee" actually mean?

Salon  online

2021-07-19

"How many sellers of roasted coffee will ever say, 'This coffee was not purchased on ethical terms?'" says Peter Roberts, a business professor at Emory University and the founder of a pricing-equity initiative called the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide. "If sellers want to brag, they will showcase a label indicating that others (e.g., certifiers) approve. But, how often do we hear, for instance, that fair trade prices are 'not fair?'"

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New Report Analyzes COVID-19’s Effect on Specialty-Coffee Purchases

Barista Magazine  online

2021-04-16

“To uphold our goal of improving and balancing the information environment related to how specialty coffee is transacted, it is critical that we share these insights with the marketplace of specialty-coffee sellers and buyers so that they, in their own ways, can optimize a challenging situation,” says Chad Trewick of Reciprocafé LLC, who worked with Peter W. Roberts of Transparent Trade Coffee, housed at Emory University, to produce both the report and the three Specialty Coffee Transaction Guides.

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