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Claudia Eger

Associate Professor

Subjects
Ethics Gender Equality Diversity Culture Religion

Primary research areas

Business ethics as practice

Adopting an ethics as practice perspective, I explore how organizational, socio-cultural and legal practices and norms intersect and shape sustainable organizing and ethical leadership.

Gender at work and organizational change

This research is focused on how gender is performed in organizations and how inequalities are maintained and challenged with the aim of informing policy–practice for more inclusive labor markets.

Localized diversity management

This research develops socially and culturally embedded DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) approaches examining how DEI interventions travel, and why they succeed or stall, with a particular focus on Muslim-majority settings.

Rethinking business for more sustainable and inclusive futures

My research examines how sustainability and diversity efforts are enacted, negotiated and legitimized in organizations, advancing socially embedded insights for responsible business practice and policy.

My research investigates how organizations enact and sometimes contest commitments to ethics, sustainability, and diversity, and how these commitments become institutionalized or performative within gendered, religious and cultural norms. Based on fieldwork across the Middle East and Africa, I develop context-sensitive theory on inequality, inclusion and organizational change, linking everyday business practice to wider regimes of legitimacy, governance, and labor-market organization. 

Currently, I lead a Carlsberg Foundation–funded project on women’s employment journeys in the Arab Middle East focusing on Saudi Arabia. The project examines how corporate diversity initiatives intersect with labor-market policies and cultural norms, and what this means for developing inclusive employment practices. I also contribute expertise to international organizations, including the World Bank on its public work programs in Egypt and the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development on its gender strategy. I serve on the editorial board of Business Ethics Quarterly.

Recent research projects

Women’s Employment Journey in the Arab Middle East

This project, funded by the Carlsberg Foundation (2024-2028), investigates women’s employment journeys with a particular focus on Saudi Arabia. It examines how women's careers are shaped by the interaction of corporate diversity initiatives, labor-market policies, and cultural norms to support the development of localized DEI practices and policies.
Project website

Critical Relationalities: Writing “With”

This writing "With" workshop, funded by ReNew in 2023, was aimed at developing more reflexive and collaborative ways of writing foregrounding critical relationalities as “writing with”. It brought together researchers to experiment with voice, method, and ethics in writing, which led to the co-edited Palgrave book “Critical Relationalities: With” (forthcoming 2026).

International Partnership Grant (7 universities)

This SSHRC Partnership Development Grant (2020-2022) supported the establishment of an international collaboration among academics from seven universities (three in Canada, three in Europe, and one in Japan) aimed at developing collaborative projects and strengthening long-term research capacity.

Environmental Sustainability of Hotels in Zanzibar

In collaboration with Peter Furu, Karin Schiøler, Arne Remmen, Adriana Budeanu, Bukaza Chachage, this Danida Fellowship Centre (DFC) project examined environmental sustainability in Zanzibar’s hotel sector from 2018 to 2025. It studied how sustainability initiatives are implemented on the ground, how local regulatory and socio-cultural conditions shape outcomes, and what enables more durable, context-sensitive sustainability practices.

Evidence for Policy: Labor Market Dynamics in Saudi Arabia

Supported by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) and in collaboration with Jennifer Peck, Thiemo Fetzer and Saleh Alodayni, this research (2017-2019) analyzed labor market dynamics in Saudi Arabia to inform policy and practice. The project connected institutional reforms and organizational behavior to lived employment experiences, generating actionable insights for inclusive and effective labor-market interventions.

Outside activities