The European Doctoral Association in Management and Business Administration (EDAMBA) has awarded Stefan Markovic, a graduate of ESADE Business School’s PhD in Management Sciences, third prize in the annual EDAMBA Doctoral Thesis Competition for his dissertation, 21st-Century Brands: An Innovation Opportunity and an Ethical Challenge. Three other recent theses by ESADE PhD candidates – Magarida Truninger de Albuquerque, Mehdi Bagherzadeh Niri and Leticia Mosteo – were also among the top 10 papers submitted to the competition. The awards for this annual competition were presented at the EDAMBA Annual Conference, held in August at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

“The results of this year’s EDAMBA competition reflect the high quality of the ESADE doctoral programme, whose graduates carry out research on critical business management issues that are relevant to the research community and to society in general,” commented François Collet, Associate Professor in the Department of People Management and Organisation and Director of the Master of Research in Management Sciences at ESADE.

Oriol Iglesias, Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing at ESADE and the supervisor of Stefan Markovic’s dissertation, commented: “Stephen’s study suggests that in today’s new hyperconnected and transparent environment brands must act in a genuine and much more ethical manner – beyond corporate social responsibility – and build brands with a conscience.” He added: “In this new ecosystem, we now have the opportunity to engage in collaborative innovation with customers through co-creation strategies that can improve the return on investment in innovation.”

In the opinion of Prof. Iglesias, Stefan Markovic’s study won third prize in the EDAMBA Doctoral Thesis Competition because it “quantitatively demonstrated that being perceived as ethical by consumers has a positive impact on a brand’s value and relational capital”. Prof. Iglesias added: “In his thesis, Stefan analysed 21 companies involved in co-creation projects and identified the main difficulties associated with this type of project and ways to overcome them.”