Manuel Wörsdörfer

Dr. Wörsdörfer is an Associate Professor of Management and Computing Ethics at the Maine Business School and the School of Computing and Information Science at the University of Maine. He is also an Associate Member of the university’s AI Initiative. Before joining UMaine, he served as a lecturer and research fellow at the Murdough Center for Engineering Professionalism and was affiliated with the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. He previously held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Cluster of Excellence ‘The Formation of Normative Orders’ and was a member of the Center for Business Ethics at Goethe University Frankfurt. In addition, he has been a visiting research fellow at Peking University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Toronto, and York University. Dr. Wörsdörfer’s research focuses on business and human rights – particularly political corporate social responsibility – as well as AI ethics, with a special emphasis on big tech and antitrust. His work has been presented at major international conferences, including the annual meetings of the Australasian Business Ethics Network, the European Business Ethics Network, the International Association for Computing and Philosophy, and the Society for Business Ethics. His research has appeared in leading journals such as AI and Ethics, Business and Society Review, Digital Society, European Competition Journal, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, History of Economic Ideas, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Philosophy & Technology, Philosophy of Management, The Antitrust Bulletin, and Transnational Legal Theory. He is the author of the 2026 book AI Ethics and Governance – Historical, Cultural, and Regulatory Perspectives and the forthcoming book Ordoliberalism and the Governance of Artificial Intelligence: Competition, Constitutional Order, and Digital Capitalism. 

Areas of Expertise

AI ethics and responsible AI
Algorithmic fairness, accountability, and governance
Generative AI and emerging technologies
Privacy, data ethics, and surveillance
Big tech, digital platforms, and antitrust

Business and Human Rights
Corporate responsibility and accountability
Human rights in global supply chains
Labor rights, migrant workers, and conflict minerals
Technology, business, and human rights
Corporate social responsibility and stakeholder governance