At the 2025 Academy of Management (AOM) Annual Meeting in Copenhagen, Hartwell was awarded the Business & Society Best Paper Award 2024 for his co-authored paper, “A Responsibility to Whom? Populism and Its Effects on Corporate Social Responsibility”, written together with Timothy Devinney. This highly topical study examines how populist governments influence corporate behaviour—specifically in the realm of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Analysing over a thousand firms across 13 countries from 2012 to 2020, the authors find that populist regimes, particularly anti-business ones, significantly reduce firms’ engagement in CSR. Their findings raise important questions about how political ideology can reshape corporate priorities and redefine the boundaries of social responsibility.

Just weeks earlier, Hartwell was also recognised at the European Academy of Management (EURAM) Conference 2025 in Florence, where he received the Best Paper Award for “Obstacles to collective action during a crisis: A meta-organizational perspective”, co-authored with Thomas C. Lawton and Ishmael Tingbani and published in the European Management Review. This paper explores why meta-organisations—such as the European Union—often struggle to act decisively during crises. Using the EU's delayed response to air travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study, the authors highlight the institutional and structural frictions that can hinder coordinated action.

Together, these awards underscore Hartwell’s versatile and impactful research spanning both organisational crisis response and the evolving role of business in society. They also affirm the ZHAW School of Management and Law’s strong presence on the international academic stage—at the intersection of applied research and pressing global challenges.