Chair ofResponsible Management Chair person note

We are living through an age of accelerating grand crises, rooted in severe social and environmental issues. Many of these issues and crises are caused by outrageously and tragically common irresponsible, unsustainable, and unethical logics of economic, business, and management practice: The growth paradigm, productivism, extractivism, managerialism, profit maximization, short termism, shareholder primacy, linear take-make-waste, instrumentalization of human beings and wider nature as mere resources to be exploited. The list is long and keeps expanding.

The purpose of the Chair for Responsible Management is to study, develop, and promote alternatives to these problematic logics of business and management. Examples for alternative more socially and environmentally desirable logics of practice can be found, among others, in humanistic, indigenous, biomimetic, post-growth, sufficiency, circular, rewilding, and stakeholder-democratic management, and restorative management logics, as well as the practices and business models shaped by them. We conduct engaged scholarship including research, teaching, and transfer work, harnessing the explanatory power of three main lenses, responsible management, alternative business models, and performative practices. We study these topics in the context of contemporary trends and forces, such as the twin transition of digitalization and sustainability.

- Prof. Dr. Oliver Laasch