Public and Science

This thesis studies an aspect of corporate social responsibility (CSR): multinational corporations’ (MNCs) recent claims of and commitment to responsible corporate tax practice. It investigates this phenomenon through a theoretical sample allowing us to explore the phenomenon in detail through three papers. Empirical material consists of interviews with tax and non-tax professionals, observations, and archival data (from 2000–2022). This thesis sets out to answer the overarching research question of: why and how do some MNCs consider tax a part of CSR and with what implications? The first paper investigates how and why responsible corporate tax has emerged. It demonstrates how diverse actors came together through opportunities and catalysts’ creation of spaces for inter-action drawing in resources and ideas from CSR and of corporate tax. These dynamics between ideas and professionals are presented in a model of how issues are drawn closer together – that of corporate tax and that of CSR. The second paper explores how tax professionals integrate CSR into legal compliance practice. It uncovers the salient issues in the organizational process such as a dedicated tax director, a supportive management, and an instructive tax policy. This paper theorizes this process as the responsibilization of legal tax compliance. The third paper studies how we can observe an emergent private governance for responsible corporate tax and analyzes the legitimacy dynamics in relation to past corporate tax practices, and in relation to public governance. This analysis reveals the emergent private governance as possible to crowd in further public governance rather than compete with, or complement, public policy. The thesis tells the story of the emergence and implications of responsible corporate tax practice that allows for an appreciation of the political role of corporations in relation to legal compliance and to governance. Together the three papers uncover the phenomenon of responsible corporate tax as having relational, organizational, and political implications. The thesis contributes to institutional theory with its multi-level analysis drawing on CSR perspectives, sociology of compliance and private governance literature. It extends our knowledge of inter-field relations and analyzes how the central concepts of institutions and institutionalization allow for a contemporary analysis of stability and change of organizational practice. The thesis argues that responsible corporate tax practice should be seen not only as a managerial practice, but also as a governance dynamic that should be understood in its contemporary context of complex societal and regulatory pressures of law and politics, and thereby provide insights to the continuous challenge of effective regulation of MNCs.

Unraveling the Triple Nexus: Exploring the Intersections between Humanitarian, Development, and Peacebuilding Interventions This doctoral thesis critically examines the implementation of the Humanitarian–Development–Peace-Nexus (Triple Nexus) framework, with a central focus on the research question: How is the Triple Nexus implemented within the humanitarian field, and how can its implementation be improved? The Triple Nexus is widely promoted as a transformative paradigm in global crisis governance, yet its operationalization remains constrained by conceptual ambiguity, fragmented practice, and limited methodological rigor. The thesis identifies these gaps through a systematic literature review and positions the Triple Nexus as a boundary object—conceptually ambiguous yet operationally productive—that enables coordination across mandates and levels while preserving divergent institutional logics. Methodologically, the study adopts a pragmatic constructivist approach and applies institutional ethnography as its core, complemented by a structured multi-method design. Across five peer-reviewed articles, the research integrates institutional ethnographic observation, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, documentary analysis, embedded case studies, and theory-based evaluation. Triangulation, reflexivity, and cross-level analysis enable the study to trace how the Triple Nexus is negotiated and practiced across intra-organizational, inter-organizational, and systemic levels. Empirically, the thesis spans diverse contexts: UNICEF’s global implementation of the Triple Nexus as a dual-mandate organization within the UN system; comparative analysis of humanitarian–development supply chain integration for gender-based violence services across East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific; and grassroots implementation of the Triple Nexus by the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society during the protracted economic crisis. These cases reveal how mandate negotiation, legitimacy management, and field-level adaptation interact across institutional levels and contexts. Theoretically, the thesis develops an integrated framework built on four pillars: humanitarian intervention theory, normative and critical perspectives, peacebuilding theory, and institutional, systems, and program theories. These traditions are not applied in isolation but combined relationally, producing an analytical framework. The analytical foundation is the Triple Nexus Organizational Field Map, which locates implementation as its core dependent variable and distinguishes three levels of analysis: intra-organizational (micro), inter-organizational/national (meso), and global/regional (macro). These levels are mediated by institutional contextual factors—norms, cognitions, values, policies, regulations, and cultures—that both shape and are reshaped by practice. This framework provides a systematic way to analyze how coherence is negotiated, constrained, or adapted across contexts. The findings demonstrate that Triple Nexus coherence is not a fixed blueprint but an emergent property produced through negotiation, adaptation, and contestation. Article-level insights highlight the persistence of donor-driven constraints on UNICEF’s dual mandate; the marginalization of explicit peacebuilding but its indirect embedding through conflict sensitivity and social cohesion; the fragility and rigidity of development-oriented supply chains in addressing humanitarian needs; and the role of local volunteerism and community actors in enacting grassroots Triple Nexus integration. Across cases, adaptive and anticipatory approaches consistently outperform rigid models, underscoring the importance of flexibility, contextual sensitivity, and iterative learning. Cumulatively, the thesis reconceptualizes Triple Nexus implementation as a practice of navigation in humanitarian interventions, shaped by mandate negotiation, legitimacy struggles, and adaptive responses to institutional and contextual pressures. The meta-contributions are threefold: first, reframing the Triple Nexus as an emergent system of negotiated coherence rather than a top-down policy model; second, advancing a cross-level analytical framework that integrates micro, meso, and macro dynamics within the Triple Nexus organizational field map; and third, bridging empirical fieldwork with theoretical innovation in crisis governance. Together, these contributions fill critical research gaps and advance both conceptual and methodological understanding of Triple Nexus implementation, offering scholars, policymakers, and practitioners a more realistic, politically attuned, and practice-grounded foundation for navigating humanitarian–development–peace integration.

An increasingly diverse, highly qualified global workforce and the emergence of non-conformist, self-directed transnational pathways compel to question the prevalent comprehension of professional and personal identities. For centuries, modern conceptualisations of ‘the self’ and ‘identity’ have been fostered alongside individualist theories and nation state logics. However, as contemporary ‘movers’ lead their professional and personal lives across a plurality of social fields and locations, sedentarist metaphysics inhibit the apprehension of the ‘mobile self’. Enhanced boundary-crossing professional moves, when recurrent and self-directed, i.e., when not initiated, steered and controlled by employers, entail major epistemological challenges and spark ontological interrogations, which remain to be addressed in management and organisation studies. Whilst ‘global mobility’ and the attraction and retention of highly qualified employees constitute a strategic endeavour for employing organisations, the term ‘migration’ describes macro-economic and foremost political manifestations of the same phenomenon: geographical human movement. Despite distinct taxonomies, economic affairs and state affairs are increasingly intertwined when it comes to the attraction and retention of so-called ‘global talent’. In an attempt to address these late modern complexities, the author demonstrates how ascribed analytical and administrative categorisations that designate professional ‘movers’ diverge from lived experience and self-identifications. A conceptual essay and three interconnected, but independent empirical studies demonstrate how post-structuralist methods, such as discourse analysis, evocative writing and non-representational interpretation, allow for new insights on mobile ways of belonging and becoming: normative, ascribed categorisations appear to be constitutive for the social creation of difference in ‘destination countries’; the collapse of the shared imaginary of mobility during the pandemic composes ephemeral and affective ways of belonging beyond traditional structures of the workplace; singular ‘moments’ of mobile lives that are narrated as ‘liberating’ or ‘revelatory’ allow to take a glimpse at the intensities of becoming on the move. By allowing for the pragmatist inquiry to evolve around the phenomena of mobility as such, the here-developed approach contributes not only to global mobility studies in the field of management and organisation, but also to the mobilities and migration nexus more broadly. Together, the four core elements of this thesis provide openings for theorising the ‘mobile self’ beyond monolithic identities and human capitalist logic.

This dissertation explores the role and influence of Big Tech companies as humanitarian actors in refugee aid. Private sector companies are increasingly involved in responding to humanitarian crises, correlating with a growing willingness from for-profit companies to “do good” and engage in social causes. In what became known as “the European refugee crisis,” tech companies played a particularly active role, for example, by partnering with humanitarian agencies to develop digital solutions to help refugees. However, Big Tech companies also increasingly develop technologies that governments and border agencies use to track and exclude migrants and refugees. Moreover, these tech companies are increasingly condemned for their questionable business operations and ethics around data collection and privacy. Therefore, their growing involvement in refugee aid prompts critical questions about how and why for-profit corporations engage in humanitarianism and what kind of help they actually offer. In three separate empirical articles, this dissertation examines the corporate humanitarian engagement of tech companies in the global refugee crisis to understand how these practices have positioned tech companies as legitimate humanitarian actors. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in San Francisco, New York, and Copenhagen, the articles explore the convergence of Big Tech and refugee aid in three interlinked sites: 1)In a Tech for Good event at Google 2)In cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) between tech companies and refugee aid agencies 3)In refugee-themed volunteer hackathons

Climate change, loss of biodiversity, the return of the wolf, the nitrogen crisis.... We face a variety of socio-ecological challenges, within which the relationship between humans and nature has been disrupted. A moral-ethical approach to secondary biology education can respond to these challenges by providing students with the space to reflect upon these dilemmas: how they relate to them and what possible behaviour in relation to these challenges looks like. This design research focuses on: (1) the development of design principles for secondary biology education which supports students' skills related to morality within the context of the disturbed relationship between humans and nature (theoretical yield); (2) concretization of these design principles in the development and implementation of an intervention (practical yield). The intervention was implemented in three pre-university education biology classes of 15-16-year-old biology students.The following design principles resulted from this research: (1) to emphasize the moral nature of the dilemmas, they are introduced with short, topical video clips, which highlight the dilemma from different perspectives; (2) students use an ethical matrix, which they use to investigate arguments and moral values for various stakeholders and to include them in their own moral reflection; (3) students work together in groups in which they are encouraged to take each other's perspective and include it in their own consideration; (4) the 'Four Component Model' of morality serves as a guide for tasks aimed at supporting various skills related to morality.Recommendations are made for theory, research and practice.