Christof Brandtner
Appointment
CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar 2023-2025
Innovation, Equity, & The Future of Prosperity
About
Christof Brandtner studies how urban social innovations—new practices meant to help local communities transition toward social, economic, and environmental sustainability—emerge, diffuse, and are implemented. His guiding question is why some communities are more effective in addressing such societal challenges as climate action, social integration, and equitable access to social services than others. He combines quantitative and qualitative methods to show that disparities between organizations are the key to understanding why not all places are equally sustainable. His work shows that mission-driven organizations and firms with social responsibility play a crucial role in bringing social innovations to cities.
Awards
- SER Best Paper Award, Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, 2020
- Dissertation Award (Honorable Mention), American Sociological Association, 2020
- Dornbusch Award for a Contribution to the Understanding or Solution of a Social Problem, Stanford Sociology, 2019
- Fellow, Summer Institute on Organizational Effectiveness (Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences), 2016–17
Relevant Publications
- Brandtner, C. (2022). Green American City: Civic capacity and the distributed adoption of urban innovations. American Journal of Sociology, 128(3), 627-679.
- Brandtner, C., & Powell, W. W. (2022). Capturing the civic lives of cities: An organizational, place-based perspective on civil society in global cities. Global Perspectives, 3(1), 36408.
- Brandtner, C., & Bromley, P. (2022). Neoliberal governance, evaluations, and the rise of win–win ideology in corporate responsibility discourse, 1960–2010. Socio-Economic Review, 20(4), 1933-1960.