Dr. Maximilian Schormair

Assistant Professor, Trinity Business School

Biography

Maximilian Schormair is Assistant Professor in Business Ethics at Trinity Business School. In 2018, he received his doctoral degree in Business Ethics & Business Administration from the University of Hamburg, one of the top research universities in Germany. He studied Business Administration & Philosophy at Germany's leading business school (Mannheim Business School, University of Mannheim) and studied one year abroad at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan, Italy). Dr. Schormair has published his research in edited volumes as well as widely recognized academic journals, such as Business Ethics Quarterly, Business & Society, and the Journal of Business Ethics. He presents his research regularly at international conferences and collaborates with scholars and practitioners on business ethics issues. Together with esteemed colleagues, he has conducted several recent research projects within the German textile industry, such as, for example, a study on the Accord for Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh or a project on the "Detox my fashion" campaign by the environmental NGO Greenpeace. Moreover, Dr. Schormair is currently studying the ethical implications of recent developments in the digital economy, such as the advent of the sharing economy. In addition, he is currently working on a research project exploring the role of deliberative democracy in strongly sustainable, de-/postgrowth companies. He is a member of the Society for Business Ethics, the Academy of Management, the European Group for Organizational Studies, and the German Academic Association of Business Research (VHB). His doctoral dissertation received the best dissertation award of the Dr. W. Kapaun foundation for ethics in business in 2018. In 2019, he was nominated by the University of Hamburg to participate as outstanding emerging scholar at the prestigious 7th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Economics. In 2020, he received the Research Excellence Award of Trinity Business School. He is currently co-guest-editing a special issue of Business Ethics Quarterly on deliberative democracy and he is invited reviewer for Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly, Regulation & Governance, Business & Society, Journal for Business, Economics & Ethics (zfwu). During his years as doctoral and postdoctoral research associate at the University of Hamburg, Dr. Schormair has gathered extensive teaching experience in the business ethics and CSR area at the undergraduate as well as postgraduate level. His teaching approach rests on the assumption that business and society are integrated rather than separated. Therefore, he pursues a multidisciplinary and research-oriented approach by teaching current theoretical insights from international business ethics research alongside practical cases and impulses from film, art, and literature. Dr. Schormair regularly invites CSR practitioners and discusses cases and examples from business practice in class.

Publications and Further Research Outputs

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Schormair, Maximilian J. L.; Gilbert, Dirk U. , Creating Value by Sharing Values: Managing Stakeholder Value Conflict in the Face of Pluralism through Discursive Justification, Business Ethics Quarterly, 31, (1), 2021, p1 - 36Journal Article, 2021, DOI
Schormair, Maximilian J. L; Gerlach, Lara M., Corporate Remediation of Human Rights Violations: A Restorative Justice Framework, Journal of Business Ethics, 167, 2020, p475 - 493Journal Article, 2020, DOI , URL , TARA - Full Text
Huber, Kristin; Schormair, Maximilian J. L. , Progressive and Conservative Firms in Multistakeholder Initiatives: Tracing the Construction of Political CSR Identities Within the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, Business & Society, 60, (2), 2021, p454 - 495Journal Article, 2021, DOI , URL , TARA - Full Text
Schormair, Maximilian J. L. , Assessing the Risk of Sharewashing in the Sharing Economy - An Analytical Framework, Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Boston, 2019Conference Paper, 2019, DOI , URL
Schormair, Maximilian J. L.; Gilbert, Dirk Ulrich , Shared Value beyond the Porter & Kramer Paradox: A Procedural Framework, Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Atlanta, 2017Conference Paper, 2017, DOI , URL
Huber, Kristin; Schormair, Maximilian J. L. , Creeping commitment versus creeping denial? Transitioning into the role of a political actor through Multi-stakeholder initiatives - the case of the "Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh", Annual Meeting of the Society for Business Ethics, Atlanta, 2017Conference Paper, 2017
Schormair, Maximilian J. L., Obfuscating Ideology Through the Notion of Sharing - the Case of Shared Value, Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Chicago, 2018Conference Paper, 2018, DOI , URL
Schormair, Maximilian J. L., Shareholder, Stakeholder, or Shared Value - Which value to realign business and society?, Annual Meeting of the Strategic Management Society, Berlin, 2016Conference Paper, 2016
Huber, Kristin; Schormair, Maximilian J. L., The ambiguity of multi-stakeholder governance: an exploratory study of the "Accord on fire and building safety in Bangladesh", Annual EGOS Colloquium, Naples, 2016Conference Paper, 2016
Schormair, Maximilian J. L.; Gilbert, Dirk Ulrich , From Financial, to Stakeholder, to Comprehensive Value Creation: Toward Realigning Business and Society through a Procedural Conception of the Corporate Objective, Philosophy of Management Conference, Chicago, 2014Conference Paper, 2014
The Institutionalization of Responsible Management Education in, editor(s)Dirk C. Moosmayer, Oliver Laasch; Carole Parkes; Kenneth G. Brown , SAGE Handbook of Responsible Management Learning & Education, Sage, 2020, pp426 - 438, [Rasche, Andreas; Gilbert, Dirk U.; Schormair, Maximilian J. L]Book Chapter, 2020
Das Shared Value-Konzept von Porter und Kramer - The Big Idea? in, editor(s)Wunder, Thomas , CSR und Strategisches Management, Springer, 2017, pp95 - 110, [Schormair, Maximilian J. L.; Gilbert, Dirk Ulrich ]Book Chapter, 2017
Discourse Ethics and CSR in, editor(s)Idowu, Samuel O. , Dictionary of Corporate Social Responsibility, Springer, 2015, pp178 - 179, [Schormair, Maximilian J. L. ]Book Chapter, 2015
Shared Value in, editor(s)Idowu, Samuel O. , Dictionary of Corporate Social Responsibility, Springer, 2015, pp474 - [Schormair, Maximilian J. L. ]Book Chapter, 2015
Life Design between the Poles of Economization, Self-Realization and Sustainability in, editor(s)Urban, J., Schröder, L.-M., Hantke, H., Bäuerle, L. , A new way of teaching business, Germany, Springer, 2020, pp161 - 176, [Thrun, T.; Caspar, M.; Schormair, Maximilian J. L. ]Book Chapter, 2020, DOI , URL
Schormair, Maximilian J. L.; Reuter, J. , Integrating multiple sustainability objectives through deliberation: The case of degrowth businesses, Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Vancouver , 2020Conference Paper, 2020, DOI , URL
Grimm, J.; Schormair, Maximilian J. L.; Gilbert, D. U. , Co-Constructing Decoupling and Recoupling: A Process Perspective on the IAS DETOX, Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Vancouver , 2020Conference Paper, 2020, DOI , URL
Gilbert, Dirk U.; Rasche, Andreas; Schormair, Maximilian J. L.; Singer, Abraham, Special Issue Call for Submissions on: The Challenges and Prospects of Deliberative Democracy for Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility, Business Ethics Quarterly, 29, (2), 2019, p285 - 289Journal Article, 2019, DOI
Gilbert, Dirk; Rasche, Andreas; Schormair, Maximilian J. L., Abraham Singer, The challenges and prospects of deliberative democracy for corporate sustainability and responsibility, Business Ethics Quarterly, 33, (1), 2023, p1-25Journal Article, 2023, TARA - Full Text
Organisational Integrity from a Discursive Justification Perspective in, editor(s)Muel Kaptein , Research Handbook on Organizational Integrity, 2024, pp190 - 209, [Dirk Ulrich Gilbert, Michael Behnam, Maximilian Schormair]Book Chapter, 2024
Business Ethics Quarterly, 33, 1, (2023), Schormair, Maximilian & Gilbert, Dirk; Rasche, Andreas; Singer, Abraham, [eds.], 2019-2022Journal, 2023
Matthews, Josephine; Schormair, Maximilian, Exploring the role of democratic deliberation in regenerative organizations, European Group for Organization Studies (EGOS), Cagliari, 2023Conference Paper, 2023

Dr. Schormair's research adopts a conceptual as well as qualitative-empirical approach focusing on areas such as political CSR, multistakeholder governance, stakeholder engagement, business and human rights and the sharing economy. His research explores relevant international business ethics issues such as how companies can address value conflicts with their stakeholders, how businesses can remediate human rights violations, and how corporations increasingly adopt and enact political roles in multistakeholder initiatives that aim to address social and environmental issues on a global scale.

Economics and Business Administration, Politics, Philosophy, Ethics and Religion, Humanities and the arts, Social sciences, Law and legal studies,

Recognition

TBS Teaching Excellence Award 2024
TBS Research Excellence Award 2021
TBS Research Excellence Award 2023
TBS Teaching Excellence Award 2021
TBS Teaching Excellence Award 2022
Trinity Provost PhD Award 2021

Academy of Management
German Academic Association of Business Research (VHB)
Society for Business Ethics
European Group for Organizational Studies

Reviewer for the following journals: Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly, Business & Society, Journal of Management Studies, Regulation & Governance, Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensethik (zfwu)
Co-convenor of subtheme 16 The Challenges and Prospects of Democratic Organizing at the 36. Egos Colloquium in Hamburg July 2-4, 2020
Co-guest editor of special issue of Business Ethics Quarterly 2019-2022
Co-convenor of subtheme 16 The Challenges and Prospects of Democratic Organizing at the 36. Egos Colloquium in Hamburg July 2-4, 2020
Reviewer for the following journals: Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly, Business & Society, Journal of Management Studies, Regulation & Governance, Zeitschrift fr Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensethik (zfwu)