Busines Ethics

PhD Scholarship in Normative Business Ethics on the Diversity of Organizational Forms

Business firms and other market organizations can take many different forms depending on their structure of ownership, their modes of governance or their values. Yet, the corporation is the predominant type of organization in most advanced capitalist economies. I am looking for a student who would like to undertake a PhD in administration on this topic and reflect upon the ethical issues associated with the lack of organizational diversity in the market. The project could address questions such as the following:

• Can we criticize the mainstream theories for the predominance of the corporation, as they are defended by Henry Hansmann, Frank Easterbrook and Daniel Fischel and other important figures of the law & economics literature?
• Is organizational diversity important from the standpoint of social justice?
• Should we promote the existence of cooperatives or so-called hybrid organizations?
• Does the predominance of the corporation create problems for the liberty of association in society, worker empowerment or even economic efficiency?
• Can we achieve a better distribution of wealth in mixed regimes of political economy, such as property-owning democracy? Do we have an ethical obligation to promote these mixed regimes?

I will post an official call for application in a few weeks. The successful candidate will be expected to start his PhD program in September 2020 at the latest. Feel free to contact me if you want more information.