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Dr. Sheila Cannon

Associate Professor (Trinity Business School)
BUSINESS SCHOOL (INTERIM)
      
Profile Photo

Dr. Sheila Cannon

Associate Professor (Trinity Business School)
BUSINESS SCHOOL (INTERIM)

 cannonsh@tcd.ie

 3531896 3850


Sheila Cannon is Associate Professor in Social Innovation at Trinity Business School. She conducts research on and teaches about social enterprises, nonprofits, and civil society organisations. Her research contributes to knowledge on how organisations influence and respond to socio-cultural change. So far, she has studied contexts including peacebuilding, LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, digital disruption, just transition, rural development, and nature based enterprises. Sheila has published in top journals in her field, such as Human Relations, 4-star and ranked 10th by the Financial Times (FT50), as well as the highest ranked nonprofit journal, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (ABS3). Her doctoral research, "Surviving the Peace: Processes of organisational identity work in response to deinstitutionalisation of Irish Peacebuilding," received the 2015 Rudney Memorial Award for Outstanding Dissertation in Nonprofit and Voluntary Research. She subsequently served as Chair of said committee in 2016 and 2020. She won a Research Excellence award from TBS in 2018 and Teaching Excellence Awards in 2018 and 2023. She disseminates her research through The Conversation, Council on Business and Society, World Economic Forum, Newsweek, and others, making academic research accessible to a wider audience. Sheila teaches social entrepreneurship to undergraduates and graduate students. She runs the Social Enterprise company project on the Trinity MBA; 12 social enterprises work with teams of MBA students each year on a project that is beneficial to the organisation, and provides applied learning experiences in social innovation. She uses learner-centred methods to help students engage with new ways of understanding often challenging contexts. She supervises student research at Masters and Doctoral levels. Sheila contributes to the Trinity community as well as the wider community in several ways. In 2021 she won the Trinity Civic Engagement Award for her work with Social Enterprises. She serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of Shuttle Knit CLG social enterprise, an organisation employing Traveller women to design, create, and sell knitwear with the dual goal of empowering women and changing negative attitudes towards Travellers. In Trinity, she served as Director of the Global Business Undergraduate degree programme (2020-2023), as well as Chair of Business Student of the Year Committee, and Foundation Scholarship Examiner (2020-23). Sheila helped to design and create the Centre for Social Innovation, a TBS centre of expertise, and was appointed Associate Director responsible for engagement with practitioners in 2019. She connects research and teaching with practitioners in the third sector. For example, she has organised workshops on social impact in February 2021 and May 2019. She is member of Academic societies in her field of research, and participates in international research conferences by presenting papers, chairing sessions, and advising doctoral candidates in her field. She also provides policy advice to government on social enterprise as well as business and human rights. As well as research and teaching, Sheila has expertise in project development and management, grant writing, and facilitating groups of practitioners. Before returning to academia, Sheila worked in the nonprofit sector in peacebuilding organisations for over 12 years, in the Balkans and in Ireland. She was Director of Development at the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, and Programme Director at the Centre for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe. She was Research Assistant in the Centre for Nonprofit Management at TCD from 2011 to 2015. She has a Bachelor's degree in The Classics from Vassar College.
  Innovation in Nonprofit Organisations and Systems   Nonprofit organisations   Peacebuilding   Social Enterprise & Social Entrepreneurship   Social Movements
Project Title
 Value-Oriented Organising: Legitimising Social Change for Climate Adaptation
From
07/09/2020
To
06/09/2021
Summary
The technical expertise and scientific knowledge already exist to mitigate the climate crisis. The barrier to an effective response has been socio-cultural beliefs, values and assumptions that legitimise how we organise. Climate crisis response focuses on national and international climate policies, business practices, technological solutions, and individual behaviour. Meanwhile, social purpose organising, including research and practice of nonprofit, nongovernmental, and civil society organisations, has been surprisingly fragmented, diluting the global civil society efforts to legitimise sustainable ways of organising, such as regenerative food systems, sustainable agriculture, green urban planning, circular economies, and transitioning to renewable energy. VOLSOCA will synthesise the different approaches to organising with social and environmental purposes, including civil society, third sector, social enterprise, and sustainable development studies, to deliver new theory and frameworks on value-oriented organising (VOO), a new concept that I have developed to test and refine in this project. VOO is the process of creating, capturing and sharing social, environmental and economic value, a trivalent nested model. Great efforts by many third sector organisations have developed new ways to create sustainable value, but they have not scaled. VOLSOCA will kick start the scaling up of civil society sustainability initiatives by delivering a new framework for the value they create, but also how they actually influence, or legitimise, what is valued. This project opens up new horizons to address the challenge of legitimising climate adaptation, the social changes that underpin successful change required to reduce the negative impact of human activity on the natural environment as well as adapt to climate change. With my multidisciplinary team, I will use key case studies and action research to create a new theoretical framework to illustrate how the process of organising to create value influences or legitimises what is valued, and thus influences social change. This will lead to new areas of research in the socio-environmental sciences and a fundamentally new understanding of climate adaptation.
Funding Agency
Enterprise Ireland
Programme
ERC Grant preparation
Project Type
Grant preparation
Person Months
2
Project Title
 Viet Nam Ireland Bilateral Exchange (VIBE)
From
January 2017
To
December 2019
Summary
Sharing knowledge and resources on teaching and studying social enterprise and social innovation. We wrote a case book of social enterprises. We created a National Mapping project for Viet Nam, and a plan for one in Ireland.
Funding Agency
Irish Aid
Project Type
Engage, exchange of knowledge, research
Project Title
 Value Creation in Social Enterprises: A Case Study of the Fanad Head Lighthouse, Donegal
From
February 2023
To
September 2025
Summary
A case study of one historic, community-owned social enterprise provides insight into how organisations create different types of value for different stakeholders. This project consists of conducting qualitative data and includes empirical work by one doctoral researcher. Firstly a comprehensive literature review was conducted, followed by data gathering at the lighthouse and with wider stakeholders. The data and findings will be written up and submitted as conference and journal articles.
Funding Agency
TCD Arts and Social Sciences Benefactions Fund
Project Type
Original research
Project Title
 New Forms of Civic Engagement
From
September 2019
To
December 2019
Summary
Across Canada and in many other countries, a 'new wave' of civic engagement is emerging (Molenveld, et al., in press; Edelenbos et al., 2018; Voorberg et al., 2014) in which communities, whether geographic or social, are working together to create major social change and provide services in different ways. This research project integrates several genres of literature to better understand how citizen initiatives succeed in social change and community building. It focuses on Ireland where major social change has occurred in recent years, notably related to women's reproductive rights and attitudes toward homosexuality. Situated at the Centre for Social Innovation, Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, the project will also contribute to ongoing collaborative linkages of the Centre with the Masters program in Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership (MPNL) at Carleton University - the only program of its kind in Canada. Alexandra Lamb conducted research at the Centre for Social Innovation in Trinity Business School as part of her Master's degree at Carleton University, under the co-supervision of Sheila Cannon (TCD) and Paloma Raggo (Carleton). The research focussed on the women's reproductive rights movement in Ireland that resulted in the 2018 referendum successfully repealing the 8th amendment of the Irish constitution, which had effectively outlawed abortion since 1984. We identified a new approach to issue framing, responsive framing, where activists worked together to understand and respond to public opinion. The results of this research form Alexandra's master's dissertation, a conference paper at ISTR (International Society of Third Sector Research) in Montreal, July 2020, and subsequently a peer reviewed publication.
Funding Agency
Mitacs Globalink, Canada
Programme
Research Award
Project Type
Master's research supervision
Project Title
 Preparation Support for H2020 Grant proposal
From
July 2014
To
January 2015
Summary
This project consisted of designing and writing a grant proposal for EU funding H2020 Excellent Science, for a project entitled: Social Innovation and Social Enterprise (SISE).
Funding Agency
Enterprise Ireland
Programme
Proposal Support
Project Type
EU Grant preparation: Innovation Training Network

Page 1 of 2
Details Date
Member of Policy Advisory Committee on Social Enterprise to the Department of Rural and Community Affairs 2019
Member of Project Advisory Group for Vantastic Mobility Services Social Return on Investment Analysis June 2018
Faculty Advisor to Enactus Ireland, supporting student social entrepreneurship 2020, ongoing
TCD representative to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, United Nations Implementation Group for Business and Human Rights. 2019
Language Skill Reading Skill Writing Skill Speaking
English Fluent Fluent Fluent
Greek Medium Medium Fluent
Details Date From Date To
Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) 2010 ongoing
European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) 2010 ongoing
Academy of Management 2024 ongoing
Social Economy Research Network of Ireland (SERNI) 2019 ongoing
Emergence of Social Entrepreneurship in Europe (EMES) 2019 ongoing
International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) 2009 2020
Cannon, Sheila M. & Concepción Galdón, Promise, Pitfalls, and Potential of Social Entrepreneurship. Positive Change Unleashed, 1st, Routledge, 2024, 1-146pp, Book, PUBLISHED  URL
Roomer, Eline; Sheila M. Cannon; David Coffey, Socio Critical Corporate Environmentalism: A systematic literature review, Innovating for the Future - Policy, Purpose, and Organizations, Academy of Management Conference, Chicago, Illinois, August 2024, 2024, pp1 - 38, Conference Paper, ACCEPTED
Coffey, David; Sheila M. Cannon, Social value creation in social purpose organising, Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, 53rd Annual Conference, Washington DC, November 2024, ARNOVA, 2024, pp1 - 24, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Coffey, David; Sheila M. Cannon, Exploring instrumental and expressive dimensions of social value creation in a rural social enterprise, Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, 53rd Annual Conference, Washington DC, November 2024, ARNOVA, 2024, pp1 - 4, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Coffey, David & Sheila M. Cannon, Understanding how organizations intentionally create value: Critical realism, value co-creation, and social enterprises, 9th EMES Conference, Act Locally, Change Globally: Social enterprises and cooperatives for more resilient economies and societies, Frankfurt, September 2023, 2023, pp1-28 , Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Cannon Sheila, Byrne Danielle, Donnelly-Cox Gemma, and Rhodes Mary-Lee, Institutional influences on social enterprise types in the Republic of Ireland, The Irish Journal of Management, 2023, p1-16 , Journal Article, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI
Moriarty Roisin; Tadhg O'Mahony; Agnieszka Stefaniec; Jean L. Boucher; Brian Caulfield; Hannah Daly; Diarmuid Torney; Sheila Cannon; Nessa Cronin; Brendan Dunford; Danielle Gallagher; Liam Heaphy; Ian Hughes; Rob Kitchin; Conor McGookin; Niamh Moore-Cherry; Susan P. Murphy; Tara Quinn; David Robbins; Jamie Rohu; Iulia Siedschlag; Lyndsay Walsh, Ireland's Climate Change Assessment: Volume 4: Realising the Benefits of Transition and Transformation, Environmental Protection Agency, 2023, p1 - 284, Notes: [We see the publication of ICCA as a real innovation for Ireland and as a resource for understanding climate change in an Irish context across the underlying science, mitigation and adaptation measures, and opportunities. It is a starting point for further dialogue on the findings and their utility for policymakers, practitioners, researchers, research funders and people. This engagement phase should continue far beyond the publication of this Assessment and support climate action in Ireland.], Report, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  URL
Sheila M. Cannon; Gemma Donnelly-Cox; Richard Hazenberg, Teaching Social Innovation through University Projects: The role of double agents in creating collaborative value, 38th Colloquium, European Group for Organization Studies (EGOS), Vienna, Austria, 7 July 2022, 2022, pp25 , Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Eline Roomer; Sheila M. Cannon, Corporate Climate Adaptation Discourses: A systematic literature review and future agenda, 38th Colloquium, European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS), Vienna, Austria, 7 July 2022, edited by Zlatko Bodrozic; Ana Maria Peredo; Christopher Wright , 38, EGOS, 2022, pp11 , Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Sheila M. Cannon; Raymond Dart, The Emergence and Evolution of Digital Social Ventures in Dublin, Ireland, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 2022, p19 , Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI  URL
  

Page 1 of 4
Concepción Galdón; Sheila M. Cannon, Más allá del propósito: Verdades incómodas sobre liderar con impacto, Harvard Deusto, 353, 2025, p1 - 4, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Cannon, Sheila M; Susan P Murphy; Lyndsay Walsh, What's the Beef? how to Make a 'Just Transition' in Farming to Meet Climate Targets, Council on Business and Society: Global Voice Magazine, 24, 2022, p99 - 101, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Cannon, Sheila M; Susan P. Murphy; Lyndsay Walsh, False dichotomy has been established between beef farming and environmentalism, Irish Times, 2022, p1-3 , Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Cannon, Sheila M, Nostalgia and Innovation, Irish Times, 13 June, 2022, p1-3-, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Cannon, Sheila M., Long airport queues show environmental impact of air travel is not a top priority in post-lockdown era, Irish Independent, 30 May, 2022, p1 - p3 , Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Cannon, Sheila M., The MBA Social Enterprise Projects: Supporting Social Enterprises through Teaching, Regions for Social Economy Business Development - RESET, Support to Social Economy Business Development Workshop, Dublin, Ireland and online, 2 November 2021, European Union, 2022, pp20 , Oral Presentation, PRESENTED
Páramo Ortiz, Sergio; Cannon, Sheila M., Dimensions of Social Innovation: Radical versus Instrumental Approaches in Social Entrepreneurship, Centre for Social Innovation, Research Seminar, Trinity College Dublin, 17 November 2021, Trinity Business School, 2021, pp25 , Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Cannon, Sheila M., Teaching and Learning the Process of Social Entrepreneurship, National Forum for Teaching and Learning, National Forum Seminar Series, Carlow Institute of Technology, Ireland, 23 April 2021, 2021, pp20 , Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Cannon, Sheila M., Civic Engagement: The MBA Social Enterprise Projects, Trinity Business School, Trinity Centre for Social Innovation, Trinity College Dublin, November 2021, 2021, pp1-20 , Oral Presentation, PRESENTED
Conception Galdon; Sheila M. Cannon; Edgard Barki; Adrian Zicari; Paula Cardenau, The Paradox of Our Times and a Key Role for Social Enterprise, Council on Business and Society, 2020, Journal Article, PUBLISHED

  


Page 1 of 2
Award Date
Trinity Teaching Excellence Award, School level 2024
Trinity Civic Engagement Award 2021
Financial Times, Research Impact Award, Honorable Mention 2023
Teaching Excellence Award, Trinity Business School 2023
Gabriel G. Rudney Memorial Award for Outstanding Dissertation in Nonprofit and Voluntary Action Research 2015
Mitacs Globalink Research Award 2019
Research Excellence Award, Trinity Business School 2018
Teaching Excellence Award, Trinity Business School 2018
Performance Excellence Award, Trinity Business School 2021
Sheila is a social scientist, who uses qualitative methods to contribute to organisational theory. Sheila's research focuses on social purpose organisations: social enterprises, nonprofits, and civil society organisations. Her research contributes to knowledge and literature on neo-institutional theory, organisational theory, and organisational identity work. She focuses on how organisations influence and respond to social change, particularly in the social change associated with responding to the climate crisis. So far, she has studied contexts including peacebuilding, LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, digital disruption, nature based enterprises, and corporate activism. Sheila has published in top journals in her field, such as Human Relations, 4-star and ranked 10th by the Financial Times (FT50), as well as the highest ranked nonprofit journal, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (3-star). Her doctoral research, "Surviving the Peace: Processes of organisational identity work in response to deinstitutionalisation of Irish Peacebuilding," received the 2015 Rudney Memorial Award for Outstanding Dissertation in Nonprofit and Voluntary Research. She subsequently served as Chair of said committee in 2016 and 2020. She achieved a Research Excellence award from TCD in 2018. She presents research at international conferences. She publishes in The Conversation, making academic research accessible to a wider audience.