Are We Listening? Using Conflict Analysts to Manage Corporate Political Risk

In the fourteenth public lecture of this series, Professor Witold Henisz, Deloitte & Touche Professor of Management in Honor of Russell E. Palmer, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania will deliver the lecture titled, "Are We Listening? Using Conflict Analysts to Manage Corporate Political Risk"

In an increasingly volatile geopolitical environment, firms are often exposed to conflict through their supply chains, workforces, customers, and regulatory environments. This lecture discusses why political-risk strategies centred on avoidance are becoming less effective and presents approaches that account for the socio-political dynamics underlying conflict escalation.

Introducing a conflict-listening framework, the lecture demonstrates how geolocated, multilingual measures of intergroup sentiment and issue salience can provide early warning of escalation and reveal how businesses become implicated in local grievances. Drawing on evidence from multiple studies, it pinpoints key drivers of sentiment toward firms and outlines practical implications for political-risk assessment, due diligence, and stakeholder engagement.

This is an online lecture that will be held over Zoom.

📆 Conference details: 
Lecture date and time: Tuesday, 8 September 2026 | 15:00 - 16:30 CEST (21:00 – 22:30 SGT)
 

📍Conference location: 
Zoom

The NBS-PRI-ECGI Public Lecture Series is a global joint initiative between Nanyang Business School (NBS), Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) to facilitate the knowledge exchanges between academics, practitioners, and policymakers in sustainable business.  

The series provides monthly in-person or online public lectures. Each lecture will feature a leading academic to present cutting-edge research of a specific topic, and an industry expert to moderate the session, sharing insights from the field and also tailoring audience questions in a way to better enable bridging the gap between research and practice.