Course Name: Multispecies Perspectives on Business and Organizing
Time and place: 17-19.8.2026 OR 19.8–21.8.2026, Nuuksio, Espoo, Finland
Learning goal and objectives:
This PhD course ‘Multispecies Perspectives on Business and Organizing’ warmly welcomes doctoral researchers primarily within the field of management and organization studies (e.g., business ethics, organization theory, critical management studies, leadership, sustainability), who seek to engage with the emerging and critical debates on organizations, organizing, and business through a multispecies lens. The course offers a unique opportunity to explore multispecies perspectives in-depth with experts in the field while also positioning your own research within these debates.
Multispecies perspectives are gaining traction in organizational and business research. Acknowledging that organizations, businesses and organizing practices exist and operate within a multispecies world is crucial for advancing sustainability and responding to current socio-ecological crises. How humans ethically relate to and organize with other species remains one of the most urgent issues for the (un)sustainability of our time. Multispecies research aims to adopt an ethical, political, and species-inclusive lens to bring the agency, voice and interests of other species from the margins to the center of analysis in organizational and business research. In this way, multispecies research offers alternatives to how animals and other species are currently featured in business, society, and organizing activities, and how a multispecies lens may affect thinking and practices (for example, decision-making processes).
Multispecies research is critical, innovative and transdisciplinary, guided by emancipatory aims and a commitment to changing harmful behaviours and practices. It raises awareness of power structures that marginalise animals and other species, while reimagining alternatives that promote more ethically sound human-nonhuman relations as well as multispecies flourishing and justice. By expanding debates, theories, and practices regarding multispecies and interspecies life often through a critical lens, multispecies research involves adopting perspectives that recognize the intrinsic values, standpoints, and interests of multispecies relations and more-than-human life. These perspectives can be applied to study a wide range of topics, including organizing and organizations, entrepreneurship, tourism, animal suffering in human-led structures, human-animal relations at work, identities and lived experiences, and multispecies communities and practices, etc.
The course consists of three full days of theoretical and methodological conversations with pioneering speakers, including inspirational theoretical insights drawing on Animal Organization Studies, multispecies inclusivity and organizing, multispecies perspectives on business ethics, illustrative cases, in-class discussions, and hands-on nature-based practical workshops.
This course serves as a critical introduction to multispecies perspectives and research in management and organization studies at an advanced-level for doctoral students. The course foregrounds an ethical, critical lens. Together, we create an inclusive learning experience for anyone interested in doing high-quality multispecies research within organizational and business research. During the course, key multispecies theoretical perspectives, research examples, and application areas, relevant to fields including, but not limited to, organization theory, management, tourism research, entrepreneurship, and EDI, will be presented and discussed.
After completing the course, participants have an in-depth understanding of multispecies perspectives in the field of management and organizational research and can relate these insights to their own research project. More specifically, the objective is to provide participants with an overview of the essential theoretical insights in the field and methodological considerations needed to produce high-quality, innovative, and critically engaged multispecies research. The course aims to:
Facilitate understanding of current and emerging theoretical debates in multispecies organizational and business research
Encourage critical thinking regarding the philosophical, onto-epistemological, ethical and methodological issues in conducting high-quality multispecies research in practice
Facilitate a self-reflexive stance toward the theories and approaches in multispecies research, with the capacity to critically assess, apply, and position one’s own work in relation to them
Develop the ability to integrate theoretical and practical perspectives on multispecies organizational processes and methods, and to critically assess their applications through case studies and practical nature-based multispecies encounters in the Nuuksio national park.
Instruction and examination:
Credits: 5 ECTS
Grading: The instructors assess the course with a global “pass” or “fail” grade. Active participation and a learning diary are required to pass the course.
Prerequisites:
Admittance: We warmly welcome applicants primarily within the field of management and organization studies (e.g., business ethics, organization and management, leadership, sustainability). Only PhD researchers are eligible to apply. To apply, candidates are kindly asked to submit a motivation letter addressed to the organizers. In this letter, applicants should explain why and how they consider the course and multispecies perspectives to be relevant to their own academic work. Specifically, the letter should provide a brief overview of the applicant’s research area and interests and indicate how these may connect to multispecies perspectives in business and management studies. Admission will be based on the applicant’s expressed motivation and interest in engaging with multispecies research approaches. 25 students are admitted to the course.
Course application form:
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Motives for participating in the course:
Application letters are kindly to be sent via email to Prof. Astrid Huopalainen astrid.huopalainen@aalto.fi and Prof. Marjo Siltaoja marjo.siltaoja@jyu.fi. Please title your email “Kataja course on multispecies organizing”. Applications are due 30 April 2026, and notification of acceptance will be communicated by 15 May 2026.
Instructors:
José-Carlos García-Rosell, Professor of Business Ethics, Department of Marketing, Management, and International Business, Oulu Business School, University of Oulu, Finland. His research lies at the intersection of corporate social responsibility, business ethics, and responsible management education. José-Carlos’ current research agenda encompasses four interconnected areas: responsible tourism business, human–animal relations in organizations, non-human stakeholders, and the role of animals in responsible management education. Methodologically, José-Carlos draws on qualitative approaches, including action research and ethnography. His work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Business Ethics, Business & Society, Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Management Learning, and Tourism Geographies.
Astrid Huopalainen, Assistant Professor (tenure track), Aalto University, Finland. Astrid’s multispecies research has examined human-animal relationships through care and vulnerability, an EDI and gender lens, multispecies inequalities in showjumping, horses and leadership, care ethics in human-animal interactions, the power of art in addressing animal suffering, and overlooked, uncharismatic ‘others’, such as freshwater pearl mussels. She is a qualitative researcher with scholarly expertise in posthumanist perspectives, humanimal relations, more-than-human organizing, care ethics, and gender- and diversity-related inequalities in organizations. Astrid serves as the Consortium PI of the Research Council of Finland-funded project PAWWS – People and Animal Wellbeing at Work and in Society (2023–2027). Her work has been published in journals such as: Human Relations; Journal of Business Ethics; Organization; Business & Society; Gender, Work and Organization; Culture and Organization; and ephemera.
Marjo Siltaoja, Professor, University of Jyväskylä School of Business and Economics (JSBE), Finland. Marjo’s work has concentrated on how organizations and management practices both conform to and contest societal and environmental challenges. In particular, her ongoing work centers on the recognition and change of animals’ moral status in organizing and how it influences the demise and contestation of markets. She currently acts as the Consortium PI of RCF funded project OPPOSE (2025-2029) which examines entrepreneurship in non-cooperative spaces. Her work has been published in journals such as: AMLE, Journal of Business Ethics; Organization; Business & Society and Organization studies.
Linda Tallberg, Senior Lecturer, University of Lapland, Finland. Linda’s research focuses on animal interests and multispecies relations in business, management, and organization through ethics, care, inclusivity and justice with focus on posthuman, feminist, post-anthropocentric and multispecies lenses on arts-based post-qualitative methods, stakeholder theory, dirty work, emotional labour, human-animal work, multispecies inclusivity and business pedagogy. Her research includes ethnographic research in animal shelters, animals working in tourism and animal activism in the classroom. Linda is a PI in the Research Council of Finland PAWWS project, has served as editor for several journals, and edited (with Lindsay Hamilton) The Oxford Handbook of Animal Organization Studies. Her work has been published in journals such as: Journal of Business Ethics; Work, Employment and Society; Journal of Organizational Ethnography; Management Learning; and Business & Society.
International instructor
Lindsay Hamilton, Professor of Animal Organization Studies at the University of York’s School for Business and Society in the United Kingdom. Her books include Animals at Work and Ethnography after Humanism – both co-authored with Human-Animal Studies scholar, Nik Taylor, and The Oxford Handbook of Animal Organization Studies, edited with Linda Tallberg. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork with veterinary surgeons, meat factory employees and managers, farmers and voluntary animal carers. She is currently working on human-bird interactions in organizational contexts as well as examining the biopolitics of plants as actors. Lindsay has experience of doctoral tuition within the White Rose Consortium of Yorkshire universities in the United Kingdom, and has supervised and examined in the UK and internationally.
Course contact information:
Astrid Huopalainen: astrid.huopalainen@aalto.fi
Marjo Siltaoja: Marjo.siltaoja@jyu.fi