Date: 25 February 2026, Wednesday
Time: 10.30 – 11.30
Place: MA-330
“From Harm to Harmony? Epistemic Dominance and the Practice of Moral Repair”
by
Jordi Vives
IESE
Abstract
The restoration of damaged stakeholder relationships after a transgression, “moral repair,” has become an important and visible corporate practice. Yet, business ethics research offers incomplete guidance on it, because although organizations are investing in moral repair, victims frequently report dissatisfaction. Critical scholars generally attribute these failures to systemic power, but tend to overlook organization level repair tactics. Integrating these perspectives, we examine how systemic power shapes moral repair. Drawing on a case study of corporate repair efforts after the 2012 Marikana massacre in South Africa, we show that enduring victim dissatisfaction arises from epistemic dominance, a form of hegemonic power rooted in the clash between “corporate” (formal rational) and “communal” (substantive rational) worldviews. Epistemic dominance manifests as an excessive corporate focus on process that unintentionally silences victims’ voices and leaves them unknowing about their moral healing. Importantly, this dynamic is moderated by victims’ perceived legitimacy, thus producing a hierarchy of “victim tiers” with unequal access to moral repair. Theoretically, our work (1) situates moral repair within power structures; (2) refines process theory on moral repair by identifying epistemic congruence and reflexivity as boundary conditions; and (3) further elucidates the role of counterhegemonic action in moral repair, suggesting that it hinges on victim legitimacy.
Bio
Jordi Vives-Gabriel is a postdoctoral fellow at IESE Business School’s CaixaBank Chair on Sustainability and Social Impact. He is also a senior research fellow at the Institute for Business Ethics at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), where he also earned his Ph.D. His main areas of teaching are leadership, business and human rights, and business ethics. In the classroom, he is keen on building on the students’ own professional experience to discuss topics and in introducing the arts and the humanities as a tool to learn about how business, as a human activity, transcends the mantra of maximizing shareholder value. His research focuses on how organizations engage in moral repair—addressing instances of unethical behavior, such as human rights abuses, environmental harms, and corruption, as well as managing the legacies of these transgressions. Jordi has published his research in top journals of his field – e.g. Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly,Academy of Management Perspectives. He is also member of the Editorial Board of the the Business and Human Rights Journal.