Thomas Lyon

Thomas P. Lyon will spend his fellowship year writing a book on Beating the Greenwashers: How Authentically Green Companies Can Get the Credit they Deserve (Stanford University Press) with Professor Wren Montgomery (also a CASBS fellow), synthesizing the insights from their numerous papers on greenwashing in form accessible to a wide audience and seeking to drive change in the world of practice.  

Lyon holds the Dow Chair of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce at the University of Michigan, with appointments in both the Ross School of Business and the School for Environment and Sustainability. His research covers self-regulation, regulatory preemption, voluntary environmental programs, greenwashing, astroturfing, and corporate non-market strategy. He coined the term Corporate Political Responsibility in the 2018 article CSR Needs CPR: Corporate Sustainability and Politics, chosen as the Best Paper in California Management Review that year, and he recently published Corporate Political Responsibility (Cambridge University Press, 2023), which expands upon the concept. 

Lyon was a founder of the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS), hosted its first conference, and served as its president.  He received the World Sustainability Award in 2023, and the 2022 Distinguished Scholar Award from the organizations and the natural environment division, Academy of Management.