Credentials

PhD (York University); MSc (Norwegian School of Economics); MSc (HEC Paris); BCom (University of Victoria)

Biography

Kam Phung (he/him) is an Assistant Professor of Business & Society at the Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University, where he researches and teaches courses on business and sustainability, including Business in a Sustainable Society (BUS275), Sustainable Innovation (BUS453), and Management Practices for Sustainability (BUS489) in the BBA program, as well as Sustainability (BUS692) in the Indigenous Business Leadership Executive MBA program.

Kam is the recipient of multiple prestigious awards from international and national institutions, including the “Best Social Issues in Management Paper” and “Best Business Ethics Paper” awards at the Academy of Management. He has also earned several awards from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), including a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship – the most-prized doctoral scholarship offered by the Government of Canada – and a SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, and was also named a Top 25 Finalist in the SSHRC Storytellers research communications challenge. His research has also been recognized as “Business School Research with Social Impact - Top 100” by the Financial Times and has been funded my national research organizations such as Mitacs and SSHRC.

Prior to joining Simon Fraser University, Kam was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, Visiting Researcher at University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business, and Sessional Instructor at York University’s Schulich School of Business. Beyond academia, his professional experiences have spanned multiple social and environmental tech start-ups and a range of socio-economic development and sustainability focused consultancies and not-profits. Kam's understanding of the world and business has also been greatly shaped by his exposure to a diversity of ideas, practices, and ways of being whilst living in a range of rural and urban places in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America.

Kam grew up on the unceded traditional territories of the Syilx Okanagan and Secwépemc First Nations within the province that we know today as British Columbia, Canada. He is forever grateful to the original caretakers of the Lands on which he and his family have had the privilege to live, work, and play as uninvited guests.

Research Interests

Kam's research centers around the organizational and entrepreneurial underpinnings of innovation and change in the face of social and ecological injustices, and to date, he has studied such dynamics in the context of issues such as modern slavery, social stigmas, and climate change.

Kam's empirical research has covered an array of contexts, including the business models of modern slavery in the United Kingdom and their linkages to global supply chains and the exploitation of migrant workers in advanced economies. It has also examined the impact of disruptive technologies on stigmatized and marginalized communities in the context of Uber's entry and expansion into Canada's taxi driving industry. For his doctoral dissertation, he conducted a multi-year organizational ethnography to explore life on the ground behind efforts to design and implement solutions based on the emerging technologies – specifically blockchain – to address climate change and stimulate climate action.

Kam deploys a diverse range of methods in his research, but tends to embrace those that involve deep immersion in the field and engagement with communities. He currently holds two major grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC):

• Insight Development Grant (Principal Investigator) - Indigenous language revitalization organizations: A participatory case study of Splatsín Tsm7aksaltn
• Insight Grant (Co-Investigator) - The effectiveness of worker-driven alternatives to corporate social responsibility in governing global supply chains

Selected Publications

articles and reports

books chapters and monographs