University of Florida management professor’s paper awarded for excellence

Robert Emerson received the Jackson-Lewis Employment Law Award and top-ranked publication for his article on franchising and independent contracting in the changing world economy.

Robert Emerson, Huber Hurst Professor in the Department of Management at the University of Florida Warrington College of Business, received the Jackson-Lewis Best Paper Award from the Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB), the world’s oldest, largest society of professors in business law and legal studies. The award-winning paper, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Franchising Has a Joint Employment and Independent Contracting Problem, has just been published in the NYU Journal of Law & Business, a top-ranked business law journal.

“I feel tremendously honored,” said Emerson. “It is always satisfying to be recognized by my peers and to contribute findings and proposals for consideration by policymakers in government and in private industry.”

The article considers the legal uncertainties of franchising and whether in fact a franchisee as well as even the franchisee’s employees, may be considered the employees of the franchisor. Emerson takes the approaches found in U.S. state law and in the law of many countries, and puts forth uniform tests, fresh methodologies, and legal presumptions that should foster fairer, stronger and more efficient franchise networks.

Emerson came to the Warrington College of Business in 1988. In addition to his professorship at Warrington, Emerson is an Affiliate Professor with the Center for European Studies in the University of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

His research interests include comparative law, franchising, ethics, attorneys, contacts and dispute resolution. Emerson is Advisory Editor of the American Business Law Journal, and previously served in various editorial board positions, including its Editor-in-Chief, for five years. He has published several dozen articles in the top-tier law journals, written many books and book chapters, presented at hundreds of conferences and guest-lectured and visited at dozens of universities worldwide, and has testified as an expert in numerous legal proceedings and before Congress.