Andrew (Andy) John Hoffman (born 1961) is a scholar of environmental issues and sustainable business. He is the Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan, with joint appointments at the Ross School of Business and the School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS). He has also served as Faculty Director and Associate Director of the Frederick A. and Barbara M. Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, and as Education Director at the Graham Sustainability Institute. Prior to the University of Michigan, he completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and served on the faculty of the Boston University School of Management (now the Boston University Questrom School of Business). Before entering academia, he worked as a compliance engineer for the US Environmental Protection Agency, Region 1; a project engineer for Metcalf & Eddy Consulting; a project superintendent for T&T Construction and Design, and; an analyst for the Amoco Pipeline Company.

Work and life

Hoffman was born in Easton, Pennsylvania. He grew up in Norwood Massachusetts, went to Norwood High School, earned his BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, his MS in Civil & Environmental Engineering from MIT, and his PhD in both Management and Civil & Environmental Engineering from MIT. For his PhD, he studied under John Ehrenfeld, Fred Moavenzadeh, David H. Marks, Willie Ocasio, William F. Pounds and Robert Thomas. He has held visiting positions at the University of Victoria, INCAE Business School, Simon Fraser University, Harvard University Center for the Environment, University of Cambridge, MIT Sloan School of Management, Concordia University, Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of St. Gallen, ETH Zurich, University of Cyprus and Reykjavik University. For the 2023-2024 academic year, he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Study of Business in Global Society at the Harvard Business School.

Research and writing

Hoffman's academic work is in the area of corporate strategy and organizational behavior. The disciplinary focus of his research is devoted to theoretical questions surrounding institutional and cultural change; the empirical focus is directed towards the topic of sustainability, the natural environment, and climate change. This work centers on several sub-themes. Institutional Theory, Change and Power: He uses a sociological perspective to understand the processes by which environmental issues both emerge and evolve as social, political and managerial issues, focusing on the expansion of institutional theory, the shifting nature of organizational fields, and the role of power and politics in these dynamics. Market and Business Implications of Sustainability: His work explores how corporations struggle to understand the implications of climate change for their market strategy. Resistance to Climate Science: Another strand of Hoffman’s work has sought to understanding why a social consensus has failed to emerge on climate change, focusing on the ideological preferences, personal experience, values, worldviews and social groups that influence individual decision making. The Social Implications of the Anthropocene: Where physical scientists debate the scope of human activity on the natural environment, Hoffman (with P. Devereaux Jennings) has explored how that shift manifests itself in the culture and institutions of society, what is referred to as “Anthropocene Society,” and involves a change in the intellectual, cultural and psychological conceptions of who we are as humans, what the “natural environment” is and how the two are related and inter-connected. Academic Engagement in Public and Political Discourse: Hoffman’s work has advocated for an examination of the changing context of academia and the emergent role of the engaged scholar. Reinvigorating the Training of Future Business Leaders: His work has also advocated for a rejuvenation of business education pedagogy and curriculum to properly address the systemic problems of climate change and inequality. Hoffman has served on several committees for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, including America’s Climate Choices: Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change, the Sackler Colloquia on Science Communication, Climate Change Education: Preparing Future and Current Business Leaders and Contributions of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Towards Understanding Climate Change. He has published eighteen books and over one-hundred articles and book chapters.

Teaching

His teaching includes courses on Strategies for Sustainable Development, which have been offered at the graduate and undergraduate levels, along with a specialized course on Strategies for Sustainable Development in Iceland, which won the 2017 Ideas Worth Teaching Award, from the Aspen Institute and an Honorable Mention from the 2018 Page Prize for Sustainability Issues in Business Curricula. He has taught a joint course between the Ross School of Business and Ford School of Public Policy called Business in Democracy: Advocacy, Lobbying and the Public Interest which won the 2019 Page Prize for Sustainability Issues in Business Curricula. His course called Management as a Calling was funded by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations and helps students discern a vocation or calling in business that serves society. His course Reexamining Capitalism examines the basic tenets of capitalism, helping business students understand its basic foundations, ways in which it has stayed true and deviated from those foundations, its variants around the world, and ways to amend and improve it to address the great challenges of the 21st century. His course Green Development was a cross-listed offering between three schools – Business, Environment and Architecture – and won the 2009 Page Prize for Sustainability Issues in Business Curricula. Aside from these courses, Hoffman also teaches courses in Negotiations and Bargaining and Managing Organizational Change.

Books

Awards and Honors

The Aspen Institute awarded Hoffman the Faculty Pioneer Award in 2016 and the Rising Star Award in 2003. The Organizations and Natural Environment Division of the Academy of Management awarded him the Outstanding Teaching Award in 2020, Distinguished Faculty Award in 2018 and Distinguished Service Award in 2013. In 2009, he was selected as the All-Academy Chair for the Academy of Management Annual Meeting. The American Chemical Society named him a National Award Winner in 2016. The Ross School of Business Awarded him the Victor L. Bernard Teaching Leadership Award in 2023. Boston University awarded him the Broderick Prize for Service in 2003. In 1995, MIT awarded him the Klegerman Award for Environmental Excellence. From 2011-2012 he was an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow at Stanford University. His research articles won the Best SO!apbox Essay Award Winner from Strategic Organization in 2016; the Best Paper Award from Organization & Environment in 2014; the Maggie Award for Best Feature Article in a trade journal from the Western Publishing Association in 2013; the Breaking the Frame Award Winner from the Journal of Management Inquiry in 2012 (with P.D. Jennings); and was a finalist for the Best Paper of the Year Award from Academy of Management Review in 2003 (with K. Wade-Benzoni, L. Thompson, D. Moore, J. Gillespie and M. Bazerman).