Topics & Current Research

In an era marked by escalating global challenges—including climate change, geopolitical tensions, and democratic destabilization—grassroots movements, NGOs and social businesses increasingly demand urgent action against environmental and social injustices. Meanwhile, the emotional toll of these escalating challenges also leads to disengagement, compounding feelings of helplessness and hampering collaborative efforts. This project builds on the literature on critical pedagogy and prospective theorizing. Thus, in this project, we focus on positive visions of a sustainable future to address global challenges and proactively empower people to contribute to existing challenges. In particular, the use of artificial intelligence for the visualisation of positive future scenarios is being examined in more detail.

Sustainable new ventures seeking to tackle grand challenges such as climate change or biodiversity loss through new business models face the difficult task of reconciling social and ecological goals with profit. To provide a better understanding of how founders balance such tensions and develop viable business models, this longitudinal case study traces the evolution of business models in six nascent sustainable ventures. We find that depending on the founding team's cognitive configuration (i.e., narrow vs. paradoxical), sustainable new ventures develop business models along two alternative paths. Reflecting different approaches to business model design in terms of what is done, how it is done, and when it is done, these trajectories explain why some ventures survive beyond the proof-of-concept phase while others do not. Overall, we observe that teams with a paradoxical mindset, simultaneously integrating social, ecological, and economic goals, are more likely to navigate beyond the proof-of-concept phase successfully. Moreover, having idealistic and pragmatic perspectives within the team fosters cognitive diversity, which is crucial to dealing with complex challenges effectively.

This study has been published in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. You can find it here.

The aim of digital social innovations (DSI) is to overcome social challenges. One example of this is homelessness. Using a design-orientated research approach, a multi-year research project is investigating how technologies can help people to overcome social challenges. At the same time, this research project is focussing on how stakeholder values can be inscribed in the DSI or technology.

In this qualitative research project, we are investigating how sustainability innovations can be driven forward in established companies. In particular, we focus on the role of experimental spaces (e.g. social intrapreneurship programs or sustainability incubators in companies) and explore the dynamics of change processes that move sustainability further into the core of organizing practices.

Amidst global challenges such as climate change, inequality, and resource depletion, social enterprises (SEs) play a vital role in driving positive social and environmental impact. Impact measurement and valuation (IMV) is a key approach enabling SEs to align their strategies, internalize externalities, and maintain accountability to stakeholders. This research project examines how SEs measure and communicate their impact. The findings reveal that while SEs frequently communicate their impact intentions, their measurement practices are predominantly output-focused. Outcome-level indicators remain less developed but show potential for standardization. The study also explores how SEs align their indicators with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and identifies dominant themes in outcome measurement. The findings provide valuable insights into the challenges and strategies SEs face in impact measurement. They offer actionable recommendations for practitioners and policymakers to enhance transparency, standardization, and the effectiveness of impact reporting, advancing meaningful practices within the SE sector.

Individuals and organizations are increasingly confronted with challenges that span across borders, such as the climate crisis, the COVID pandemic, and interstate wars. In the context of the war against Ukraine, this research project investigates how robust action strategies can be translated into practice. The overarching aim is to understand how organizations can contribute to tackling grand challenges by developing structures, practices, and strategies that enable flexible, fluid, and resilient organizing in the face of crisis.

Purpose has become a prominent concept in business and describes the central objective of a company that transcends profit maximization to generate positive societal impact. In an era when companies are under increasing pressure to take responsibility for their social and environmental footprint, it is crucial to better understand how different stakeholder groups - including customers, employees and the general public - perceive the legitimacy and authenticity of the stated purpose of firms. Through various quantitative and qualitative studies, we examine the dynamics of these perceptions and evaluation processes. In doing so, we aim to contribute to a more nuanced and critical perspective on organizational purpose concept by identifying the conditions under which adopting a higher purpose enhances or undermines perceptions of legitimacy and authenticity.

In diesem Forschungsprojekt untersuchen wir, wie real utopias durch sogenanntes prefigurative organizing verwirklicht werden können. Hierbei fokussieren wir uns insbesondere auf die Probleme und Schwierigkeiten, die sich für präfigurative Organisationen ergeben, wenn sie innerhalb traditioneller, kapitalistischer Makrostrukturen agieren und gleichzeitig alternative Organisationsprinzipien verfolgen, wie beispielsweise Konsensdemokratie innerhalb der Organisation, Selbstorganisation der Mitarbeiter:innen und Verzicht auf Hierarchien. Unser Ziel ist es, zu verstehen, wie solche alternativen Organisationen die mit ihrer wirtschaftlichen Tätigkeit verbundenen Komplexitäten bewältigen können, insbesondere im Kontext von Krisen.

Forschende: Dr. Svenja Tobies (Universität Hamburg), Prof. Dr. Laura Marie Edinger-Schons (Universität Hamburg), Prof. Douglas Schuler, Ph.D. (Rice University), Prof. Juliane Reinecke, Ph.D. (University of Oxford)

Within the next few years, up to 50,000 companies in the European Union will be required to report on sustainability issues under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). The so-called materiality analysis plays a key role here, a process through which companies, in cooperation with their stakeholders, determine those sustainability topics that are particularly relevant for sustainability management and reporting. In this research project, we invest how German companies implement the requirements for reporting and materiality analysis and how changes in regulation affect internal company-internal and boundary-spanning processes.

Digital technologies are increasingly employed to design interventions that promote pro-environmental behaviors, leveraging their ability to deliver personalized and adaptive feedback. While the effectiveness of such digital behavior change interventions (DBCIs) is well-documented, evidence suggests that their impact is highly variable and may follow complex temporal dynamics. In our research we employ sensor-based data collection methods and advanced statistical modeling techniques to explore how digital behavior change interventions affect pro-environmental behavior over time. Investigating how behavioral patterns change depending on different intervention environments and a variety of interindividual characteristics, we aim to advance the understanding of DBCI effectiveness and offer actionable insights for designing interventions that sustain pro-environmental behaviors over time.