Dr Sylvia D'souza
International Lecturer in Business ManagementResearch Overview
My key research interests include ethics, phronesis, embodiment, and difference. I adopt a highly interdisciplinary approach in my work, drawing from influences in philosophy and sociology. My main aim in simple terms is to embed what are generally seen as universal categories (e.g., ethics) into embodied and culturally specific categories through a practice-based lens.
My interest in practice necessitates taking a complex view of phenomena. It has led me to interrogate how macro-social and meso-organisational aspects interact, shape, modify, and orient individual embodied stances towards choice and action—particularly the ethical dimension—in diverse social worlds. This links to my concern with organisational technologies such as performance management, which have the power to reconfigure local modes of being by rewiring goals, values, interests, and so on to an instrumental logic in market-driven economies.
The broader goal of my work is to surface culturally situated modes of being, seeing, knowing, and in this sense, reclaim these modes from the universalising logic of dominant epistemologies and representations. This is also to say that I have an interest in the question of difference/otherness, and the performativities that go into the production and maintenance of difference/otherness (including the underlying politics).
My research approach is qualitative, and I am interested in the innovative use of qualitative research methods including arts-based methods to express embodied/affective experience.
Current Research
My current work builds on the practice-theoretical perspective to develop a more nuanced understanding of ethical decision-making in practice. I also aim to further a sociological understanding of ethical decision-making/action in the Indian socio-cultural-historical context (this is an empirical counterpart of what I am doing theoretically).
Research Interests
Key interests: ethics, morality, practical wisdom/phronesis, embodiment, difference, performativity
Theoretical approaches/interests: practice theories (particularly Bourdieu), existential phenomenology, Aristotle’s virtue ethics, Levinasian ethics, postcolonialism
Qualifications
PhD (Lancaster), MA, BCom
Career Details
Prior to moving into academia, I worked in various capacities in the information technology and digital communications spaces. My most recent stint was as Deputy General Manager, Group Corporate Communications, Tata group (2011-2016).
Current Teaching
Module Convenor:
CNMNGT110: Introduction to Management and Leadership
CNOWT314: Ethical Responsibility in Business
External Roles
Member of the UKRI Talent Peer Review College (PRC)
What does teaching business ethics (as Western ethical perspectives) imply for doing ethics in local contexts?
01/10/2024 → 30/09/2025
Research
Journal of Business Ethics (Journal)
Editorial activity
2024 Warwick Summer School on Practice and Process Studies
Participation in conference - Academic
British Journal of Management (Journal)
Editorial activity
Organization (Journal)
Editorial activity
Culture and Organization (Journal)
Editorial activity
British Academy of Management (BAM) Conference 2022
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
EASST2018
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
European Academy of Management (EURAM) Conference 2018
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
- Centre for Technological Futures
- Pentland Centre