Sylvia D'souza

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.

I am presently pursuing two main strands of empirical research: 1. how is practical wisdom constituted in the Indian socio-cultural paradigm, and 2. what does it mean to teach business ethics from a Western perspective in international/non-Western contexts (further, what implications does this have for local ethical/virtuous practice). In a broad sense, with both strands, I hope to surface local modes of being, seeing, knowing, and show how ethics is embodied in these diverse modes.

Key interests: ethics, practical wisdom/phronesis, embodiment, difference, local onto-epistemologies

Theoretical approaches/interests: practice theories (particularly Bourdieu), existential phenomenology, Aristotle’s virtue ethics, Levinasian ethics, postcolonialism

PhD (Lancaster), MA, BCom

Prior to academia, I worked in various roles in the information technology and digital communications spaces. My most recent stint was as Deputy General Manager, Group Corporate Communications, Tata group (2011-2016).

Module Convenor:

CNMNGT110: Introduction to Management and Leadership

CNOWT314: Ethical Responsibility in Business

CNMNGT340: Embedding Research