Karim Ginena

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Management (Organizational Behavior and Ethics) at the University of Virginia, Darden School of Business with prior management experience in the banking and courier industries. I study the impact that relational ties have on the thoughts, feelings, and actions of organizational members as individuals maneuver moral decisions and pursue meaning in their work. In brief, my research interests revolve around: (1) loyalty and loyalty tensions; (2) ethical decision making; (3) meaningful work; (4) artificial intelligence.

I'm honored to have been named: a) an Emerging Scholar by the Society of Business Ethics; b) a Young Policy Professional by Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law and Policy; c) a nominee for the 2019 William H. Newman AOM All-Academy Award; d) winner of the 2019 AOM Best Dissertation-Based Paper Award (OB Division); and e) a finalist for the 2020 Society of Business Ethics Best Dissertation Award (final decision pending). Comments on my research from the AOM award-granting committee (plus a cool photo of me in firefighting gear!) can be found under the Research tab.

I'm on the job market during the 2019-2020 academic year.

My attempts to generate new theory often lead me to study professionals who work in traditional corporate settings, as well as those who work in non-traditional contexts where organizational phenomena are notably salient (e.g., firefighters’ experience of loyalty tensions and Hollywood stunt performers’ experience of professional culture change). I use qualitative methods to understand phenomena from the perspective of organizational members who experience them, and experimental studies to explore causal mechanisms in depth. Primarily, I am a qualitative field researcher.

My dissertation is grounded in 120 one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with 40 full-time career firefighters over an 18-month period, 60 hours of observation, field notes, and archival documents as data sources. Using these sources, I develop process theory for loyalty tension management. The model helps explain how organizational members experience and manage loyalty tensions – an important case of right-vs-right ethical dilemmas – and the effects of members’ instinctive and deliberative cognitive practices and behavioral strategies on substantive individual, interpersonal and organizational outcomes.