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Item type:Publication, Research integrity in context: How informal networks shape research practices and academic careers in Kazakhstan(2026-09-15); Kim, TatyanaWhile mentorship, collegial support, and the sharing of opportunities are widely viewed as essential to sustaining academic communities, research shows that academic networks can also obscure merit-based achievements, reinforce exclusion, and facilitate favoritism (Heffernan, 2021; Price et al., 2015). Building on this tension, the study addresses two research questions: (1) How do different forms of informal networks shape academic careers and research practices? (2) How do these networks interact with formal research integrity policies? Empirically, the paper draws on an in-depth qualitative case study of Kazakhstan, a context characterized by accelerated internationalization reforms, strong state oversight, and persistent reliance on personalized academic relationships (Ahn et al., 2018; Kuzhabekova & Almukhambetova, 2017; Oka, 2019). Theoretically, the analysis is grounded in Ledeneva’s (2018) framework of informal networks as compensatory mechanisms that help actors navigate gaps between formal rules and institutional realities. This framework distinguishes solidarity, domination, redistribution, and market-oriented networks based on their openness, affective versus instrumental character, and degree of persistence. Methodologically, the study is based on 23 semi-structured interviews conducted in the first half of 2025 with senior administrators and academic leaders working in universities, research institutes, technology parks, data centers, and the National Academy of Sciences in Kazakhstan. Purposeful maximum variation sampling was used to capture diverse institutional types, disciplines, and geographic locations (Creswell, 2012). Interviews were analyzed thematically following Braun and Clarke (2006), with themes developed through collaborative coding and reflexive discussions within the research team. The findings show that informal networks are not peripheral but constitutive of academic life in Kazakhstan, influencing hiring, promotion, dissertation defenses, publication practices, and access to research funding. From an outsider perspective, interviewees describe nepotism, cronyism, patronage, and clientelism as structural rather than exceptional features of the system, with academic advancement frequently tied to loyalty and compliance rather than scholarly merit. From an insider perspective, however, these same practices are often experienced as necessary forms of mutual assistance in a context of intense publication pressure, weak infrastructure, and hierarchical governance. Solidarity networks grounded in kinship, generational ties, or long-term mentorship relationships provide emotional support, facilitate collaboration, and compensate for ineffective formal communication, yet they also normalize non-confrontation and tolerance of questionable practices such as guest authorship or plagiarism. Domination networks, organized around elite credentials and personalized authority, structure access to resources and recognition while marginalizing scholars lacking prestigious affiliations, reinforcing symbolic hierarchies under the banner of excellence. Redistribution networks enable reciprocal exchanges of authorship, citations, and publication-related resources, helping academics collectively meet performance metrics but also blurring boundaries between legitimate collaboration and strategic gaming of evaluation systems. Market-oriented networks represent the most transactional response to metric-driven reforms, commodifying authorship, publications, and degrees through contract cheating. Importantly, the study finds that these networks are fluid, overlapping, and unpredictable: participation does not guarantee outcomes, obligations are often implicit, and refusal to engage in informal exchanges can result in delayed careers even for well-qualified scholars. The findings also demonstrate that integrity violations are frequently collective, relational, and structurally incentivized rather than individual deviations from rules. Policies that rely solely on transparency, formal compliance, or punitive sanctions fail to address the social norms of loyalty, reciprocity, and care that sustain informal practices. Effective integrity reforms must therefore be context-sensitive and relationally informed, distinguishing legitimate academic support from practices that distort evaluation, protecting junior scholars who refuse unethical exchanges, and aligning incentive structures with ethical standards rather than attempting to eliminate informality altogether. Through theorizing informal networks as ambivalent institutions rather than pathological deviations, the paper shows how rapid internationalization and output-based evaluation reshape, rather than replace, informal practices. While grounded in the Kazakhstani case, the analysis offers insights relevant to other higher education systems undergoing similar pressures, highlighting the need to integrate an understanding of informal networks into the design and implementation of academic integrity policies.Type:conference contribution - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Research Project, - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Research Project, - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Borrowing Responsibility: A Human Library Approach to Ethical Decision-Making in Student Use of GenAI(2026-09-15) - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Gewusst wie: Organisationales Lernen und Wissensmanagement bei Personalabgängen – Eine posthumanistisch-praxistheoretische Erschliessung(2026-09-18)This thesis examines how organisational knowledge management is practised in the context of employee departures and how this contributes to the stabilisation and transformation of other practices. It starts from the observation that the knowledge required to carry out work processes and generate innovation is becoming increasingly diverse and complex, while organisations simultaneously face a growing number of anticipated employee departures – potentially with substantial consequences for organisational performance. Against the backdrop of a research field dominated by a socio-cognitivist transfer logic, organisational knowledge management in the case of employee departures is analysed on the basis of a posthumanist practice-theoretical understanding following Gherardi (2019): knowledge is understood as situated, collective knowing-in-action in a socio-material environment, with agency emerging from the connectedness of practice elements within the unfolding action. Empirically, the thesis draws on a qualitative-interpretive research design guided by the principles of a constructivist Grounded Theory approach (Charmaz, 2000, 2025). The analysis is largely based on the shadowing of unfolding practices (Czarniawska, 2007, 2018) in the context of the departures of two long-serving employees from an administrative unit within the Swiss Federal Administration. In addition, Interviews to the Double (Nicolini, 2009a), semi-structured interviews and workshops are conducted. The empirical analysis results in a reconstruction of the practice of “knowledge transfer”, showing how, in the administrative unit studied, knowledge associated with departing employees is activated and made accessible to successors in cases of employee departures. In doing so, the thesis provides insight into the context-specific organisation of knowledge management during employee departures – particularly with regard to its methodological enactment, materialisation, and the positions accorded to practitioners. At the same time, the analysis makes visible both stabilising dynamics and medium- to long-term dynamics of change that emerge from the practice of “knowledge transfer” and affect the work environment of departing employees. Moreover, the thesis highlights both existing connections and potential linkages between knowledge management practices and other organisational practices within an organisation-wide practice texture, making empirically accessible how these relations enable, shape and constrain the unfolding of knowledge management. Finally, in light of the empirical analyses, routinisation, standardisation, formalisation and institutionalisation are discussed as dynamics through which knowledge management practices are (made to be) reproduced as recognisable entities across situations. Overall, the thesis contributes to the field of organisational knowledge management by rendering productive a posthumanist practice-theoretical perspective on the context-specific organisation, embeddedness and long-term anchoring of knowledge management in the case of employee departures. Limitations and avenues for future research arise in particular from a conceptual focus on the exchange between departing employees and their successors, and, relatedly, on the period prior to their departure.Type:doctoral thesis - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Kapitalmarktrecht im Fokus 2026 - Conference ReportOn 19 August 2026, practitioners, academics and market participants convened at SIX ConventionPoint in Zurich for Kapitalmarktrecht im Fokus 2026. Under the Title “Clarity or Room for Interpretation? Challenges in Interpreting Bond Terms and Conditions“ (Klarheit oder Auslegungsspielraum? Herausforderungen bei der Interpretation von Anleihensbedingungen), the conference examined how standardized bond terms should be interpreted, the interaction between contractual provisions and regulatory requirements and the significance of prospectuses, risk factors and changing market practice. Particular attention was paid to regulatory capital instruments and the Point of Non-Viability (PONV), against the background of the write-down of Credit Suisse AT1 instruments and the related decision of the Swiss Federal Administrative Court. The conference combined doctrinal analysis, a comparison with the European resolution framework and practical perspectives from issuers, banks, counsels and other advisers.Type:conference paperJournal:CapLaw - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, To enforce or not, to annul or not, those are the questions: On the prohibition of intra-EU investment arbitration and the ECHR(2026-10-16)Type:digital resource - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, 'Tu CASa no es mi casa’: Is the Autonomy of EU Law Looming over Sport Arbitration?This article examines whether arbitral proceedings before Arbitral Panels established under the procedural rules of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) breach the interpretative monopoly of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) over the definitive interpretation of EU law. As a starting point, the contribution briefly outlines the relationship between the Union’s legal order and sports rules up to the judgment of the CJEU of December 2023 in International Skating Union (ISU) v. Commission, whose findings concerning competition law are scrutinised in view of the case law of CJEU on the autonomy of Union law. In this respect, it concludes that incompatibility with the latter principle cannot be ruled out due to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court (FSC) to hear appeals against CAS awards within the scope of the EU treaties. In conclusion, the article discusses select possibilities designed to ensure, on the one hand, unity and consistency in the interpretation of international sports rules and, on the other hand, respect for the autonomy of EU law.Type:journal articleJournal:European Foreign Affairs ReviewVolume:30Issue:Issue 1 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, The Feral Life of Plastic Waste: Third Nature and Speculative AestheticsThis article explores the interactions between plastic waste and non-human animals from a non-anthropocentric and future-oriented perspective. After a first introductory section, I argue for a plane of analogy connecting animals and plastics. If extended into the future, this plane of analogy shows a new feature: ferality. Contra Hegel, Heidegger, and some contemporary scholars, I contend in the third section that ferality cannot be framed as a regression of “second nature” (human culture) to “first nature” (non-human nature), but should be understood as post-domestic “third nature”. The argument for the future ferality of animals and plastic waste also urges consideration of their evolutionary interplay, which I analyze in the fourth section through the lens of a speculative aesthetics of new materialist and feminist inspiration. The last section considers artistic projects that grant imaginative access to speculative, feral futures in which life and plastics can no longer be disentangled.Type:journal articleJournal:Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, A Novel Digital Audit Workforce - Embedding Agentic Artificial Intelligence in Internal AuditingAgentic artificial intelligence (AI) enables auditors to partner with autonomous AI systems that perceive, reason, act, and learn independently. These systems promise to expand audit coverage, streamline evidence collection, and generate insights throughout the audit lifecycle. This article outlines agentic AI’s foundations and illustrates its practical benefits.Type:journal articleJournal:Expert FocusVolume:6