Cameron Conaway

Color portrait of Cameron Conaway

Instructor in Management & Organization

Department Management and Organization

Email Address csc164@psu.edu

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Cameron Conaway is a Teaching Faculty of Management in the Smeal College of Business at Pennsylvania State University, having joined Penn State in July 2025. He teaches MBA and undergraduate courses on ethical leadership, business ethics, and the role of social responsibility and environmental sustainability in business.

Before joining Smeal, Conaway spent 15 years balancing work as an educator, marketing leader, and international journalist. As an educator, he most recently taught talent management in the Enterprise MBA program at the University of San Francisco’s Masagung Graduate School of Management. As a marketing leader, he served as Head of Marketing at Cisco Networking Academy—one of the world’s largest and longest-running corporate social responsibility education programs. His journalism on global health and human rights has appeared in Newsweek, The Guardian, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, among other outlets, and earned him the Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Fellowship, awarded annually to one journalist.

Conaway has also published widely in business-related practitioner literature, with work appearing in Harvard Business Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Harvard Business Impact Education, where he delivered a webinar on feedback literacy to over 2,000 management professionals.

His current research centers on workplace feedback and its roles in driving innovation, enabling psychologically safe speak-up cultures, and shaping what he defines as employee feedback literacy.

Education

Executive MBA, University of San Francisco, 2020

MFA, Poetry (Creative Nonfiction), University of Arizona, 2009

BA, Criminal Justice, Pennsylvania State University, 2007

BA, English, Pennsylvania State University, 2007

Courses Taught

BA 342 – Res/Sustn/Ethc Bus (3)
Course examines actions taken by corporations that impact global citizenship, environmental sustainability, and the economic stability of international societies. It further looks at relationships, rights, and responsibilities between businesses, business decision-makers and their stakeholders. B A 342 Socially Responsible, Sustainable and Ethical Business Practice (3) Businesses and other large organizations have come to influence nearly all aspects of life in contemporary industrialized societies. The actions taken by businesspeople have major impacts on individuals and on society as a whole. Conversely, the expectations of citizens and their representative bodies (e.g., governments, communities, unions, interest groups) influence a wide range of corporate actions. Students of B A 342 will examine these relationships, rights, and responsibilities between businesses, business decision-makers and their stakeholders. As students enter their field of study, this course will introduced them to current ethical, social responsibility and sustainability issues that face business practitioners within their field and across related disciplines. Each business function – accounting, finance, marketing, risk, supply chain, human resource policies, etc. – has relationships and responsibilities within the larger social environment. This course considers commonalities across the business functions and teaches students to think broadly about how a business fits into a more complex web of relationships within society. The course begins with an overview of the corporation’s place and role in society as well as key concepts in understanding why knowledge related to corporate governance, ethics, sustainability and social responsibility issues is critical to professional managers’ responsibility and long-term career success. The stakeholder model is reviewed along with the study and application of ethical decision-making frameworks to current ethical dilemmas. Sustainability and global responsibility are introduced within the context of government regulation versus responsible stewardship. The closing section of the course provides thought and discussion on issues facing business practitioners across key business functions.

BA 804 – Ethical Leadership (2)
The objective of the ethical leadership course is to raise awareness of the key role played as a manager and leader in creating and maintaining responsible business conduct in work groups and organizations. The course is also intended to enhance the student's ability to deal with the complexities of ethical decision making in today's dynamic business environment by clarifying and applying personal values.

Selected Publications

Conaway C., "Regulating Skill Games: Worth the Gamble?." 2025, hbsp.harvard.edu/product/8819-HTM-ENG
Conaway C., "Reap the Benefits of Case Teaching—Without All the Prep.." 2024, hbsp.harvard.edu/inspiring-minds/reap-the-benefits-of-case-teaching-without-all-the-prep
Conaway C., "To Develop Career-Ready Graduates, Make Sure They’re Fluent in Feedback." 2024, hbsp.harvard.edu/inspiring-minds/to-develop-career-ready-graduates-make-sure-theyre-fluent-in-feedback
Conaway C., "Never Taught with a Simulation? Start Here.." 2023, hbsp.harvard.edu/inspiring-minds/never-taught-with-a-simulation-start-here
Conaway C., "The Right Way to Process Feedback." 2022, hbr.org/2022/06/the-right-way-to-process-feedback

Honors and Awards