Seminar series for PhD students working on corporate responsibility/ business ethics. Study stipends available.

Background
Corporate responsibility has become a crucial issue in modern societies and an emerging field in social sciences and humanities. Due to an ongoing process of globalization along with the lack of national regulatory mechanisms, questions of how to avoid “bad” corporate behavior and how to foster “good” business practices have increasingly risen. The debate on business ethics in recent years has clearly shown that corporate responsibility has to take into account both “das Menschengerechte” as well as “das Sachgerechte”. Thus, we must not overemphasize one or the other, but must seek an adequate balance between the Scylla of ethical application in business practices and the Charybdis of moral philosophical justification. Consequently, business ethics and the findings for corporate responsibility must be interdisciplinary-oriented and integrate management and economics as well as social, cultural, and philosophical perspectives.

Concept
The Transatlantic Doctoral Academy on Corporate Responsibility brings together PhD students who are dealing with questions of corporate responsibility/ business ethics in their doctoral theses. TADA is interdisciplinary and open to PhD students of all academic disciplines, especially from German, Canadian, and Swiss universities.

The PhD students will work twice a year in six-day-seminars on issues regarding corporate responsibility. These seminars include:

• student presentations about their work, followed by critically discussions,
• readings and discussions on crucial issues in the context of responsible corporate actions with international distinguished scholars
• meetings with managers and politicians to discuss and reflect on concrete problems

Language of instruction and debate is English.

Stipends and sponsors
Successful applicants are invited to participate at TADA for two years (see schedule and location below). Travel costs (economy flights and train rides), costs for accommodation and food as well as costs for materials are covered by TADA. There are no tuition fees or other costs for the PhD students.

The Transatlantic Doctoral Academy on Corporate Responsibility is supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Canadian Business Ethics Research Network (CBERN), the Centre canadien d’études allemandes et européennes, Université de Montréal, the Institute for Business Ethics, St. Gallen University and other sponsors.

Schedule

• TADA VI: 11-16 October 2011 in Montreal, Canada (please save already the date)
• TADA VII: May 2012 in Berlin, Germany
• TADA VIII: October 2012 in Montreal, Canada
• TADA IX: May 2013 in St. Gallen, Switzerland

Application procedure

Applicants should:

• undertake a PhD theses in the field of corporate responsibility/ business ethics,
• have very good English language skills,
• be interdisciplinary-oriented and open-minded to innovative approaches, and
• be interested in both theoretical and practical questions.

The Academy will review applications that include all of the following documents:

• a letter of motivation,
• a current Curriculum Vitae, including a list of publications,
• an exposé of your planed PhD thesis (maximum: 3 pages), and
• this form.

Please submit all documents in English, German or French no later than July 15 2011 to:

Further information and contact

TADA is supervised by Prof. Thomas Beschorner (Universities of St. Gallen and Montreal), Prof. Emmanuel Raufflet (HEC Montreal), and Prof. Matthias Schmidt (Beuth Hochschule, Berlin).

TADA has its own homepage at: doctoral-academy.net/

Please contact us for any further questions by email:

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