Alice Klettner is an Associate Professor at the UTS Business School with expertise in corporate governance and its regulation. She studies the rules and systems that determine how companies are directed and controlled, systems that are vital for ensuring accountability, building trust and promoting sustainable value creation. She engages with policy-makers and corporate leaders across diverse business types, to understand and find solutions to real-world governance challenges, such as how to balance the differing interests of shareholders, employees, customers and suppliers. Her research explores ways to motivate and guide boards of directors in developing a clear corporate purpose and integrating social and environmental considerations into their decision-making processes.

With an earlier career as a solicitor, first at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in London and then at a boutique firm in Sydney, Alice brings her legal background to bear in understanding the impact of regulatory changes on corporate governance dynamics and related organisational behaviour. She has tracked with interest the evolution of reporting frameworks to include issues such as gender diversity, modern slavery, climate and nature risks, exploring how the reporting cycle can alter management processes.

Her research is interdisciplinary, bridging the boundaries of law, management and finance with an underlying interest in human behaviour. Specific interests include: the role and responsibilities of boards of directors; regulation of corporate social responsibility; gender diversity in leadership; and business and human rights. Alice strives to maintain strong links with practice and has worked with a variety of government and industry partners to successfully explore governance issues, for example:
 

• Future-proofing the capabilities of company secretaries, with the Governance Institute Australia
• Models of stakeholder governance, with B Lab Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand
• Sustainable finance systems, with Climate KIC Australia and the EU Commission
• Gender diversity in leadership, with the Equal Opportunity in the Workplace Agency
• Board performance evaluation, with the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors

Alice has a first class honours degree in Natural Sciences (physiology & psychology) from Jesus College, Cambridge University; a Masters in International Law from Sydney University; and her PhD examined the effectiveness of soft law in regulating corporate governance. Whilst completing her PhD, she was a researcher at the UTS Centre for Corporate Governance where her work led to the award of a UTS Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.

Alice has won awards for her innovative teaching of business law and ethics. She uses her research insights to teach and supervise higher degree research students in the areas of corporate governance, corporate social responsibility and responsible business practice.