Sustainability Management in Research, Teaching, and Practice at LEIZ
On the occasion of releasing the brochure Digital Sustainability Management, a selection of activities on this topic from all parts of the Leadership Excellence Institute Zeppelin (LEIZ) is presented: The LEIZ has its roots in business ethics and compliance management. Its activities are oriented towards the implementation of sustainability in processes and management systems of companies. In recent years, the institute has focused on supply and value chains. It also looks at opportunistic behaviour and corporate interaction with civil society and political actors.
“Sustainability does not only require structures that cultivate environmental, social and ethical values, but does also require leaders and employees that are capable of living such values”.
Carmen Tanner
On the Term Sustainability Management
Besides sustainability, LEIZ uses Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Shared Value as terms for aspects of the same phenomenon: management of normativity triggered by economic transactions.
Research on Sustainability Management and Related Topics
Studies around a CSR evaluation and management tool can be found summarised here. Reports on the conception and validity of the tool can be found summarised in final reports for the Federal Ministry of Labour & Social Affairs.
In its third edition, the Compliance Management Handbook gathers conceptual basis and practical success factors for dealing with opportunistic behaviour in organisations.
With the development and validation of the German Ethical Culture Scale, corporate culture and conditions of courageous moral behaviour in the workplace are explored.
With the Moral Intelligence concept, individual abilities needed to support personal integrity are explored and trained.
The research group Transculturality investigates responsibility in global value chains. More information here.
Furthermore, we would like to refer alphabetically to the completed dissertations of Anna Eckhart, Marcus Ehrenberger, Dominik Fischer, Andreas Heck, Isabel Jandeisek, Marco Möhrer, and Maude Schmiedeknecht.
Teaching on Sustainability Management and Related Topics
Teaching at LEIZ that regularly covers aspects of sustainability management is analogous to research:
Behavioral Business Ethics taught by Prof. Carmen Tanner. The course has been awarded the ZU Teaching Award.
Corporate Responsibility & Compliance taught by Prof. Josef Wieland.
Examples of transdisciplinary teaching on CSR by Isabel Jandeisek and international teaching projects on global value networks thaught by many lecturers of LEIZ.
"With high complexity and information uncertainty, the consequences of an action are so manifold that the conscience [...] of an economic actor must be limited in order for action to occur at all."
Josef Wieland
Practice of Sustainability Management and Related Topics
The Lake Constance Innovation Cluster continues its work in the innovation circle Digital Sustainability Management. Further information is available here.
The Berlin CSR Consensus represents a political consensus of many ministries, trade unions, social and business associations, and companies on what is meant by CSR. Prof. Wieland chaired the meeting. We recommend the final document.
LEIZ chaired the 2018 Global Supply Chains Working Group as part of the German G20 Presidency consultations.
Participation in the development of ISO 26000, which standardises corporate social responsibility. For an overview, we recommend the publication series "Studien zur Goverannceethik".
Sustainability at ZU
Efforts to improve sustainability processes at Zeppelin University and the Emission-Free Campus project at Zeppelin University are presented here.
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