Alan Morrison
Intesa Sanpaolo Professor of Business, Ethics and Finance
- alan.morrison@sbs.ox.ac.uk
Saïd Business School
University of Oxford
Park End Street
Oxford
OX1 1HP
Profile
Alan is a former investment banker who wrote his doctoral thesis at Oxford and who has been a member of faculty at Oxford Saïd and a fellow of Merton College since 2000.
He trained in finance, and was initially a Professor of Finance. An increasing concern with social policy questions relating to the market economy led him to work on regulatory matters. He was for some years Professor of Law and Finance, before he assumed his current role.
Research
Alan’s recent research work has been published in Business Ethics Quarterly, the Journal of Business Ethics, and the Academy of Management Review and in the past he published extensively in the economics and finance literature. His work has three broad themes.
First, how people can live well within organisational contexts. Almost all of us inhabit a work role and a private one; which version of ourselves represents our true identity, and how do we know? How do organisational choices shape us? What moral responsibilities do individuals and organisations have? Alan examines these questions through perspectives on identity from analytic philosophy, virtue ethics, existentialism, and theories of the firm from economics and finance.
Second, the nature of the organisation. Is it just a legal charter and a nexus of contracts, or is it something more? Can an organisation hold a 'belief'? Are organisations the sorts of things that can be blamed for their actions? Why do organisations sometimes evoke strong emotional responses? Alan is particularly interested in how language functions and the mental models organisations create in their stakeholders.
Third, Alan researches regulation. Do the above perspectives provide insights into the effects and role of regulation? Under what circumstances can the state engage with self-authorship in organisations? Can we claim that the state must intervene? This work builds on the above research and draws upon the legal and economic literatures.
Publications
Market Reactions to Gendered Speech Patterns: Uptalk, Earnings Calls, and the #MeToo Movement(opens in new window)
- Journal article
- Academy of Management Proceedings
Mapping the contours of blame: an account of the moral boundaries of organizations(opens in new window)
- Journal article
- Journal of Business Ethics
Organizational Culture, Vocabularies, and Attention: An Experimental Approach(opens in new window)
- Journal article
- Academy of Management Proceedings
Moral disjunction and role coadunation in business and the professions(opens in new window)
- Journal article
- Business Ethics Quarterly
Human Rights, Multinational Enterprises, and Legitimacy(opens in new window)
- Journal article
- Academy of Management Proceedings
Engagement
Alan sits on the Editorial Board of Business Ethics Quarterly and is a member of the Board of the Society for Business Ethics. He also sits on the Steering Committee of the Centre for Corporate Reputation, with whom he has organised many ethics conferences in Oxford, and with whose support he co-convenes with Rita Mota the R:ETRO seminar series on Reputation, Ethics and Trust in Organisations.
Teaching
Alan teaches courses related to Governance and Ethics on the MBA, Executive MBA, MSc Financial Economics, and MSc Law and Finance degrees. His recent executive education work has been concerned with the ethics and governance of organisations, on conflicts of interest, and on the ethics and ontology of AI.
