Ajnesh Prasad, Audencia Business School

Eric Li, University of British Columbia

Natalia Vershinina, Audencia Business School

Alejandro Centeno, American University of Beirut

This special issue explores how embodiment shapes business ethics and organizational practices. Growing scholarly interest has demonstrated that embodied experiences—from emotional labor to physical strain—raise ethical questions that abstract frameworks alone cannot address. The issue seeks to ground business ethics in lived embodied experience and practice.

The call invites scholarship examining how bodies are constructed, regulated, and valued within capitalist systems and organizations. Topics include the commodification of bodies in industries like modeling and sports, gendered and racialized norms governing bodily presentation, and the physical toll of labor on workers. Methodologically innovative contributions using sensory or participatory approaches, and conceptual work developing new theoretical frameworks, are also welcome.

Contributors should explore how organizational structures inscribe power relations onto workers' bodies, how economic conditions constrain autonomy and consent, and how ethics can be reimagined to address embodied difference and protect worker well-being.

Appel publié par Journal of Business Ethics. Voir l'appel sur le site de l'éditeur. Fiche de l'appel sur kerostig.

Potential topics

• Ethical dimensions of emotional and relational labor through embodied experience
• Ethics of body commodification in market-driven labor contexts
• Embodied toll of labor and organizational ethical responsibilities
• Gendered, racialized, and classed regulation of bodies in organizations
• Participatory, sensory, or arts-based methods to research embodiment and ethics
• New theoretical perspectives on embodiment in business ethics

Timeline

• October 31, 2026: Submission deadline