Kate Cooney

Kate Cooney is Senior Lecturer in Social Enterprise and Management and director of the Inclusive Economic Development Lab. Cooney’s research uses institutional theory to study the intersection of business and social sectors. Current work focuses on the cross-country comparisons of new social business legal forms, corporate supply chain transparency, social return on investment methods, and inclusive economic development strategies in the American city. To understand how hybrid organizations are shaped by commercial and institutional isomorphic pressures, she has studied commercialization in the nonprofit sector, social enterprise, workforce development programs, and the emergence of new social business legal forms. She has also written broadly about market-based approaches to poverty alleviation the negotiation of competing institutional logics in social enterprise organizations. Projects underway include CitySCOPE podcast, a series examining inclusive economic development in American cities, and a MacMillan Center funded grant titled “Consumer Activism and Supply Chain Transparency: Anti-Slavery Movements in the United Kingdom and the United States.”

Prior to joining the faculty at Yale School of Management, Cooney was on the faculty at Boston University teaching courses on nonprofit management, urban poverty and economic development, and community and organizational analysis. Cooney currently serves on the board of directors of Dwight Hall at Yale, Center for Public Service and Justice.