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Aline C. Gatignon

Assistant Professor of Management

The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

My research explains how companies collaborate with NGOs and governments to solve societal challenges in Emerging Markets.

About Me

About

I am a multinational management scholar studying partnerships between businesses and nonprofit organizations aimed at solving societal challenges. I seek to better understand how companies and nonprofits can jointly address strategic issues of mutual concern like weak regulations, insufficient education, and inadequate infrastructure. I focus primarily on emerging market settings, where social problems significantly impact business development, government responses are often lacking, and organizations facing resource constraints have had to innovate through cross-sector collaboration.

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About

My research is situated at the intersection of nonmarket strategy and multinational management. It explains how firms can collaborate with nonprofit organizations and/or governments to solve ESG and sustainability issues of mutual concern.

My research emphasizes how cross-sector partnerships can enhance both firm performance and the broader institutional environment, diverging from traditional firm-centric approaches. It centers on two main streams:

Creating Public and Private Value: Exploring how partnerships improve public goods vital for business while amplifying the voices of less powerful stakeholders.
Institutional Influences: Investigating how societal expectations, regulations, and external shocks shape the formation and sustainability of these collaborations, offering a dynamic perspective on firms' political and social activities.

To address the complexities of these partnerships, my work focuses on three themes:

Examining multi-level relationships to uncover interdependencies and trade-offs in partnership governance.
Building unique datasets in underrepresented settings.
Employing diverse methodologies—from qualitative to large-scale statistical analysis—to provide nuanced insights into underlying mechanisms.

My fieldwork spans three continents, supported by fluency in four languages and a multidisciplinary background in political science and development economics. The datasets I’ve developed cover diverse industries and include notable studies on CSR in India, health clinics in Sub-Saharan Africa, and corporate relationships in Brazil.

My scholarship has been recognized with prestigious awards and published in top journals like Strategic Management Journal and Organization Science. I actively collaborate with junior scholars, mentor doctoral students, and engage with academic and professional audiences globally.

Aline Gatignon is an Assistant Professor of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a PhD in management from INSEAD and a Master’s in development economics from the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po). She studies the design, implementation, and impact of cross-sector partnerships between multinational firms and nonprofit organizations across three continents. Her research explains how firms can leverage such collaborations to address nonmarket strategic issues (e.g., incomplete regulations, undereducated labor force, limited physical infrastructure) of mutual concern and how such efforts are contingent upon institutional conditions in emerging markets. The empirical settings for her work range from cross-country comparisons of corporate disaster response to regional studies of supply chain development in Brazil, CSR implementation in India, and access to healthcare across Sub-Saharan Africa. Aline is the 2023 recipient of the ARCS Emerging Sustainability Scholar Award and is listed on the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2025 and INSEAD’s “50 years, 50 Women, 50 Ideas” series. She sits on the editorial review boards for the Strategic Management Journal and Organizational Science and is a guest editor for the Academy of Management Perspectives’ upcoming Special Issue "Making it Better by Working Together”.

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About

My research emphasizes how cross-sector partnerships can enhance both firm performance and the broader institutional environment, diverging from traditional firm-centric approaches. It centers on two main streams:

​

Creating Public and Private Value: Exploring how partnerships improve public goods vital for business while amplifying the voices of less powerful stakeholders.

Institutional Influences: Investigating how societal expectations, regulations, and external shocks shape the formation and sustainability of these collaborations, offering a dynamic perspective on firms' political and social activities.

To address the complexities of these partnerships, my work focuses on three themes:

Examining multi-level relationships to uncover interdependencies and trade-offs in partnership governance.

Building unique datasets in underrepresented settings.

Employing diverse methodologies—from qualitative to large-scale statistical analysis—to provide nuanced insights into underlying mechanisms.

​

My scholarship has been recognized with prestigious awards and published in top journals like Strategic Management Journal and Organization Science. I actively collaborate with junior scholars, mentor doctoral students, and engage with academic and professional audiences globally.