Mihaela Constantinescu (married Șimon) is a researcher at the Romanian Young Academy and the Research Centre in Applied Ethics, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest. She obtained her PhD at the University of Bucharest, with a thesis on “The Moral Responsibility of Organisations”, partly documented at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Her research interests include virtue ethics, business ethics, and philosophy of technology, approached within the philosophical framework of the Aristotelian moral thought. She is currently exploring the concepts of moral responsibility and moral agency in relation to individuals, organizations and AI. Mihaela co-authored the Romanian volume on Institutionalising Ethics: Mechanisms and Instruments and is author and co-author of articles published in international volumes and scientific journals such as the “Journal of Business Ethics”. With an academic background in both philosophy and communication, Mihaela Mihaela has been working as a public relations consultant in the private, nongovernmental and public sectors, while offering ethics counselling to the latter.
You were an ICUB Fellow between February 2019 and January 2020, with a project entitled Virtue ethics and moral responsibility in organizations: an Aristotelian account. Could you detail a bit your research topic?
Yes, I was lucky to have this great opportunity to research a topic that is very dear to me and that expanded my previous work in the field of ethics within organizations. During the 12 months of the ICUB Fellowship I developed conceptual research over the conditions that ground notions of moral responsibility and resulting praise or blame in organizational contexts. To this end, I have argued that virtue ethics of an Aristotelian tradition is able to offer a robust account of such grounding conditions, using both the philosophical interpretation of individual virtue and the Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) interpretation of organizational virtuousness. This resulted in a two-level account of moral responsibility in organizations, which connects individual and organizational moral responsibility through the concepts of virtue and virtuousness.
Why is this relevant? First of all, when an unethical outcome arises in organizational contexts, it is important to know who bears moral responsibility for it, in view of preventing future unethical actions that might impact multiple parties. Organizational scandals emerge constantly, with BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill or Volkswagen Group violation of vehicle emissions standards, to name but a few, bringing under close scrutiny ethical issues involving individual and organizational moral failure. The question arises: Who and how much do we blame in such instances?
You might be surprised that, after all this infamous track record of unethical outcomes in organizations, we still lack a satisfactory answer to such questions. And not only we lack a relevant answer, but actually little research is dedicated to the interplay between individual and organizational responsibility and to the way we may normatively ascribe individual and organizational blame. Because, let’s face it, when complex ethical failure surfaces in organizations, responsibility and blame usually becomes the object of a ping-pong game: employees point to organizational failure and organizations fault employees. As it turns out in life, not everything is black and white. So, I strongly think that approaching individual and organizational responsibility as an intertwined relationship might be a useful resource for business ethics to explain (and further prevent) ethical failures in organizations. I do hope that I have made steps to develop such a resource and that approaching the topic from a virtue ethics perspective brings further insights.
Your research is highly interdisciplinary, regarding both the topics addressed, and your work experience, in Academia and outside it. How do you balance all these aspects in your research?
Indeed, I seem to enjoy interdisciplinarity, both in terms of research and work experience. For that matter, my research at ICUB combined a philosophical approach to Aristotelian virtue with a positive organizational approach to virtuousness that is specific to social sciences. I have tried to connect the concepts of virtue and virtuousness, which are currently facing a divide considered impossible to reconcile by some, but prone to a potential dialogue by others. This divide is primarily prompted by the surrounding normative and empirical methodologies of philosophical virtue and, respectively, POS virtuousness. Nonetheless, both notions are relevant when it comes to explaining ascriptions of moral responsibility and blame to individuals and organizations.
My research interest and interdisciplinary approach are influenced by my double background as a researcher in Academia and as a communications consultant. Since 2004 I have been a PR practitioner in the NGO, private and public sectors and came across multiple situations in various industries, from media and education to FMCG and IT&C. It was this professional dimension of being part of several organizations and offering PR consultancy to many others that took me to research ethics within organizational settings. I owe a huge debt of gratitude for my whole research activity ever since 2009 to my PhD coordinator, regretted Professor Valentin Mureșan from the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest.
In November 2019, you organized the visit of Professor Muel Kaptein, (Erasmus University Rotterdam) at the University of Bucharest. Could you tell us more about this collaboration?
This was an excellent opportunity provided by the ICUB Fellowship, to organize research events where we could bring over renowned scholars from other countries. I had previously collaborated with professor of business ethics & integrity Muel Kaptein from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, during my PhD research visit in the Netherlands, and we subsequently co-authored several articles given our common interest in the moral status of organizations. It was a great joy to have the possibility to invite him for two research events supported by ICUB Humanities. It was actually his first trip to Romania. The first research event was a roundtable on the topic “Academic Integrity: Challenges and Lessons from Practice” held at the ICUB Humanities venue, given prof. Kaptein’s position as chair of the Scientific Integrity Committee and former Integrity Coordinator of Erasmus University Rotterdam. The second research event was a MasterLecture on the applicability of conceptual ethics models into corporate reality that he held at the Research Centre in Applied Ethics (CCEA), co-organizer of the two events. I also managed to get some extra support from KPMG Romania for additional costs related to the research events. I received valuable administrative support to organize the events from the ICUB Humanities staff, which made everything much easier.
What made you apply for an ICUB fellowship?
Overall, I think it was the friendly environment combined with top quality research that made me apply for the ICUB fellowship. I first attended ICUB Humanities research events in 2017, when a friend gave a talk at the advanced research seminar on “Consciousness and Cognition” convened by Dr. Diana Stanciu. One year later I was giving a talk on the topic of consciousness and moral responsibility at the same seminar, this time pregnant in 8 months with my second daughter. Along the way I have interacted with great researchers showing a lot of passion for their work, all brought together by the small but committed managing team of ICUB Humanities. I am grateful to have been offered the fellowship.
What impact did the ICUB Fellowship have on your research? Which are, in your opinion, its main advantages?
The impact was substantive, as the ICUB Fellowship enabled me to take my research to the next level and deal with more challenging issues, as well as to develop new interdisciplinary connections and become more aware of the role of research in society. I had previously only addressed issues of moral responsibility in organizations, with some exploration of the concept of virtue applied to such settings, without developing interdisciplinary connections. In particular, the fellowship gave me the opportunity to connect philosophical virtue ethics to research in positive social sciences such as Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) concerned with virtuousness.
The weekly research seminar was a great opportunity for all fellows to present their work in progress and benefit from valuable peer feedback, with an important emphasis on research methodology. In fact, one of the highlights of the fellowship and the research community at ICUB Humanities it the attention paid to research methodology, which definitely strengthens the quality of research conducted here. What is more, there is lots of interaction among fellows, as well as lots of research events to attend.
I think the main advantage of the ICUB Fellowship for Young Researchers lies in the fact that it empowers independent research and gives young researchers the freedom and autonomy they need to pursue the research topic of their choice, with the research methodology of their choice. With its bottom-up approach in terms of research topics, the fellowship puts no constraints on prospective applicants related to topics, themes, subjects or methodologies of research. I think this is an important incentive for young postdoctoral researchers to become fully independent. The little bureaucracy and great administrative support are further advantages of the fellowship. And I would like to add here one other dimension of the ICUB fellowship, which is the attention paid to the status of researchers and research in general, to current debates over open access policies or research integrity. I consider this an added value of the ICUB Humanities which made me more aware of various issues related to my activity as a researcher.
Why do you think researchers should apply for an ICUB fellowship?
It is a dynamic environment, coordinated by an excellent team and with great people coming over. I received valuable advice and insightful suggestions regarding methodology issues from the scientific coordinator, Mihnea Dobre. Lead international researchers and professors from top universities are invited over to give talks. During my fellowship, ICUB Humanities also hosted one of the few ERC starting grants won by a Romanian researcher, not to mention many other national research grants.
Furthermore, the international environment offers lots of networking opportunities. In fact, it was during a workshop on Science Advice hosted by ICUB Humanities that I met Koen Vermeir and found out about the Global Young Academy and its strive to empower scientists around the world to become involved in e.g. policy development and take scientific knowledge to address current societal issues. Shortly after my fellowship at ICUB ended, the Romanian Young Academy was founded and I have successfully applied to become one of its first members, with a project on Moral Responsibility in the 21st Century: Challenges from AI that I first envisioned during the ICUB fellowship. It was also during the fellowship that I have applied for other research grants or fellowship which are currently on the reserve list. For each application process I received great feedback from the ICUB scientific coordinator, and the Grant Writing Seminar provided valuable insights for other future grant applications.
One more thing: I would encourage prospective applicants to an ICUB Fellowship not to give up in face of initial rejection and apply again with a better crafted project. It worked in my case.