PhD defence: Anna Kirkebæk Gosovic

Today’s business world is increasingly characterized by demands from shareholders and civil society to manage businesses in a responsible and ethical way. Sometimes, companies’ efforts to comply with these demands materialize into ‘ethics programs’ that are put in place to ensure ethical conduct within companies. With empirical point of departure in one such ethics program in a biopharmaceutical company, and based on a multi-sited, longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork, this study investigates what happens when an ethics program travels to business units abroad and how it is interpreted within these new national contexts. The study further explores business ethics as a practical endeavor within different ‘vocational communities of practice’ in the company and investigates how the ethics program is interpreted and enacted within these communities.

Primary Supervisor:
Professor Anne-Marie Søderberg
Department of Management, Society and Communication
Copenhagen Business School

Secondary Supervisor:
Professor Andreas Rasche
Department of Management, Society and Communication
Copenhagen Business School

Assessment Committee:
Professor Lars Thøger Christensen (Chair)
Department of Management, Society and Communication
Copenhagen Business School

Professor Fiona Moore
Department of Human Resource Management and Organisational Studies
University of London, Royal Holloway

Professor Rebecca Piekkari
Department of Management Studies
Aalto University

Thesis:
The thesis is available here


*Please note in connection with the online defence that the microphone and camera of all spectators must be turned off!