Douglas Schuler

Douglas Schuler is Associate Professor of Business and Public Policy. Dr. Schuler’s principal research interests are corporate political activity, public policy, corporate social responsibility, and non-profit organizations. Dr. Schuler also does research about the introduction of health technologies into low resources developing markets. His research articles have been published in many top academic outlets, including the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Business and Politics, Business Ethics Quarterly, Business & Society, California Management Review, Journal of Management, PLoS-ONE, and Strategic Management Journal. A member of the Jones School faculty since 1992, Dr. Schuler has taught many courses, most recently Business-Government Relations, Globalization of Business, Social Enterprise, and Social Entrepreneurship. He has received several teaching and service awards, including the 1997 JGS Award for Teaching Excellence, 1997 Rice Graduate Students Association Teaching Award, and the 2006 Rice Graduate Students Association Faculty/Staff Service Award.

Dr. Schuler studied at the University of California, Berkeley (B.S., Business Administration) and the University of Minnesota (Ph.D., Strategic Management, School of Management). At Rice, Dr. Schuler serves on the Executive Committee for Rice 360 Institute for Global Health Technologies.

Teaching Interests: 

-Business and public policy
-Corporate political strategy
-Corporate social responsibility
-Social entrepreneurship

Research Interests: 

Doug Schuler primarily studies the political activities of companies (CPA). Among many questions, his articles explore the primary drivers of CPA, focusing upon both external and internal factors. His work also investigates the payoffs of political investments.

Dr. Schuler also examines facets of corporate social responsibility (CSR). His work describes the linkages between a firm’s CSR and consumer purchases – the CSR linkage to financial performance. Other work examines a firm’s CSR as practiced through voluntary organizations, such as industry self-regulatory governance mechanisms.

Dr. Schuler has written about non-governmental and non-profit organizations, especially critical about the business models they adopt to serve their clients.With a colleague, he is investigating such organizations in the context of food desert interventions in Houston.

With colleagues in engineering, Dr. Schuler also studies the introduction of technologies into low-resource emerging markets settings. He has recently created a containerized system for sterilizing medical instruments for health facilities that sit outside of a power grid such as in rural areas of developing countries.