oikos Annual Report 2011

be informed. get involved. make a difference.

www.oikos-international.org

the oikos year 2011 plus an outlook on 2012

oikos

welcome

mission “oikos strengthens action competence for sustainable development among tomorrow’s decision makers.”

1 2

Hello to our oikos family and friends Firstly, thank you all for your participation in, involvement with, support for, and contributions to oikos. It is because of you that we are able to continue working towards our ultimate goal of making this a sustainable world.

Therefore, we increase awareness about sustainability opportunities and challenges, focusing on students of management and economics,

As we look back at our accomplishments in 2011, we see that this was actually a momentous year for oikos. In 2011, we: •

foster their ability not only to analyse long-term economic, environmental and social trends, but also implement sustainability-driven innovation,

3 create institutional support for these learning processes through the integration of sustainability issues in research and teaching at the world’s faculties for management and economics.

Content...

...translating our mission

into practice

Welcome 3 Chapters 4 Spring meeting & winter school 6 oikos student reporters 7 Academic programmes 8 Young scholars academies: facts & feedback 9 PhD fellowship programme 10 Case programme 11 oikos project portfolio 13 FutureLab 14 Our ambition – outlook 2012 15 Get involved 16

• • • • • •

launched our first ever FutureLab - the first time in our history that we brought together all of our different stakeholders to share, learn, and interact with one another gathered our student network for a motivational Spring Meeting at University of Economics Prague, which saw a record number of participants strengthened our management team, which signals a turning point in our history as we now start to think about our future and the ways in which we can create tangible and meaningful impact. ‘graduated’ our fourth research fellow Kim Poldner from our PhD Fellowship Programme. added three new chapters to our network in Tbilisi (Georgia), St Andrews (UK) and Copenhagen (Denmark). expanded our oikos Young Scholars Academy program to five academies, with the introduction of an academy in Organisational Theory and one in International Economics migrated the Winter School to Berlin, which is a hub in Europe for entrepreneurship / start-up social enterprises

We are very excited about what the future holds in store for us, and we hope that you will continue to get involved to help us make a difference.

Dawid Wrobleski

oikos International President 2012

Eissa Khoury

oikos Foundation Managing Director

Warm regards Eissa Khoury and Dawid Wroblewski

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chapters

2011

Our chapters attract students who are motivated to drive change at universities and business schools across the globe. Our members develop initiatives at their university to raise awareness of sustainability issues, work to change the curricula at their institutes, and to green their university campuses. To date, we have 38 chapters in 20 countries on 4 continents. Here is a snapshot of some of the work being done by our students around the world.

oikos Ahmedabad

Chapter development year

students

events

advisors

chapters

979

110

74

37

Members of oikos came together to plant fruit trees within the campus. 18 fruit trees were planted to supply fruit to students as well as the canteen.

oikos Chennai

2011 2010 2009

941 863

145 181

90 81

*

36 32

2008

499

126

59

21

2007

404

121

71

20

*

At the time of publishing

Our members were instrumental in launching the ‘Sustainable Chennai Forum’ with partners to promote the business case for sustainable development in the Chennai Metropolitan area.

oikos Dhaka

Organised the 2011 Style Carnival at BRAC University, promoting local sustainable and environmentally friendly products.

oikos Maastricht

A group of enthusiastic Maastricht students run oikos Consult and specialise in advising small companies such as restaurants, bars, shops or hotels in how to develop their business in a more sustainable way.

oikos Paris

Contributed to The Global Social Venture Competition held at ESSEC by organizing a ‘Job Opportunities Conference in the Sustainable Development and Environmental Sectors’.

oikos Reims

Organised a campaign to make CBS the first ‘Fairtrade University’ in Scandinavia.

Two oikos members cycled 14.000km from Reims to Beijing as part of their Bike to School. Along the way, they gathered views and perspectives about a sustainable future from children across different cultures.

oikos Cologne

oikos St Andrews

oikos Copenhagen

Organised a university wide lecture series and published a new book on Sustainable Development Politics with contributions by leading German experts.

oikos St Gallen

Held the 22nd annual oikos Conference: ‘Profits without Hunger and Thirst?’, attracting high-profile guests, enabling participants to dive into the development role of the private sector in all its complexity and depths.

oikos Tbilisi

Examined Higher Education Reforms and the Quality of Higher Education in Georgia with the aim of creating the first ever ranking system of Georgian universities to advance the introduction of sustainable development into teaching at those faculties.

oikos Tuebingen

As part of their ‘oikos Goes to School’ initiative, members of oikos

Tuebingen visited a grammar school and gave lessons about CSR and the Global Compact.

oikos Witten-Herdecke

Organised the 2011 Bachelor Thesis Award for research in sustainability in economics and management and provided recognition for those who spent their summer sweating over their thesis.

oikos Zagreb

At the 3rd International Student Conference, Time to Rethink Economics 2011: ‘Beyond Frontiers, oikos presented the newest trends in the field of economics and management in order to position sustainability as a crucial element in rethinking the future.

Organised a Webinar with UN Principles for Investors in Inclusive Finance Initiative (PIIF) about institutional microfinance, attended in person by members of oikos St Andrews and virtually by 3 other oikos chapters.

www.oikos-international.org/chapters 4

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students

2011

Spring Meeting 2011

Winter School 2011

Student Reporters

Our chapter at University of Economics Prague (VSE) hosted the oikos Spring Meeting 2011. This event saw a record number of oikos members gather from all over the world to explore the topic of Sustainable Architecture.

The spirit of Prague was a perfect setting that inspired great participation and strengthened the spirit of oikos.

Everyone had a chance to discover and compare different ways for how sustainable architecture and urbanism could be understood and practiced. Students had the opportunity to visit energy efficient offices and ecologically-renovated houses that were inspired by the Chinese art of Feng Shui.

Participants also discussed brownfields, redevelopment strategies, or tried to shape their own proposals for lowenergy community design.

The 8th annual Winter School enabled students from all over the globe, not just oikos members, to come together to learn about and embrace social entrepreneurship. In 2011, the organising chapter of Witten-Herdecke decided to move this programme from the academic environment of their university to the city of Berlin, with a leading scene for start-up enterprises.

Why are we in oikos so fascinated about advocacy journalism and social media, and large conferences?

One of the most important aspects of the meeting was the opportunity to share knowledge across chapters, and the development of new projects during the Chapter Fair and peer to peer workshops. Furthermore, it was at this meeting that we officially announced the memberships of the oikos Maastricht and the oikos Chennai chapters.

A highlight of the event was the improvisational theatre performance that opened the party to celebrate the Spring Meeting.

In order to lead by example, and reduce the ecological and carbon footprint of the event, only vegetarian meals were served, tap water instead of bottled water, and reusable or corn-based plastic dishes were used. There was even a Sustainability Hero Award for the most sustainable traveller to Prague.

In a weeklongseries of workshops, lectures, networking events and insights on social entrepreneurship, participants were empowered to think in global and holistic contexts to make a positive impact on their local and regional social environments. Lectures about future mega trends, future technological possibilities, and institutional evolution provided unique perspectives on how to solve various problems that in turn shaped new visions of change. Individual success stories and global visions inspired the participants to think ahead and act on behalf of sustainability.

“I flew to the oikos Winter School all the way from Peru and it was worth the trip a hundred times over. The input from participants, organisers and experts provided an avalanche of valuable ideas.

The bottom line: being thinkers is not enough, we have to become makers” Philip Reiser, University of Tulsa, USA

“At the end of it all, you realize that you are no longer just colleagues but true friends and that’s worth a lot!”

Stepan Trojanek, the chief coordinator of the Meeting 2011

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www.oikos-winterschool.org

and live blogging at conferences. We also opened our reporter pool and invited a global team consisting of everything from 19 year old first year students to PhD candidates from Europe, Asia, and the US. The tremendous feedback from conference organisers, conference participants, readership from around the world, and the reporters themselves has convinced oikos to develop an ambitious Vision 2014 to transform the Student Reporters into a leading training platform in student advocacy journalism.

This is an incredible platform that allows oikos students to learn how to strategically frame sustainability issues in order to build communities and influence decision makers.

The programme helps the student to understand these dynamics, and allows them to play a new role by making the implicit more explicit to the readers of our blog. Student reporters hone their journalistic investigation skills, their writing skills, and their academic experience by leveraging social media as a means for advocating change.

The programme started in 2009 with an exploratory project that brought ten students from the oikos network to the World Resources Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Since then we have been working to the Student Reporters to the next level.

In 2011 we set up a new online blog with the support of the Mercator Foundation Switzerland, and with the help of social media experts Konstantina Zoehrer and Sandra Diana Troegl from the Sandbox Network, we developed a professional training programme in advocacy journalism

In 2012 we will train teams at the World Water Forum in Marseille, in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and the UN Rio+20 Conference for Sustainable Development in partnership with the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education. We invite collaborators to join our journey.

Interested in the

?

oikos Student Reporters

www.studentreporter.org 7

2011

academic Our academic projects aim at promoting academic innovation and entrepreneurship in research and teaching to develop responsible graduate students and faculty who create a sustainable world. A special focus is placed on developing faculty that will drive the change in teaching and research at their respective institutions. In 2011, we expanded our by launching new international Young Scholars Academies in the fields of Organizational Theory and Economics, supplementing our existing academies in the fields of Development, Finance and Entrepreneurship.

We also emphasised our networking activities by gathering our academy alumni at the 2nd oikos Young Scholars Alumni Meeting at the Academy of Management Conference in San Antonio. Furthermore, we expanded our teaching innovation programme with the new Case Quarterly, welcomed two new oikos PhD Fellows, and published the second volume of the oikos case collection: Case Studies in Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainability.

www.oikos-international.org/academic.html

4th oikos-PRI Young Scholars Finance Academy The Future of Responsible Investment Faculty: David Wood, Harvard University, USA; Lars Hassel, Umeå School of Business, Sweden; Yonca Ertimur, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, USA “A superb week. I came away completely inspired by what we might all accomplish, individually and together.”

Kate W. Parrot, MIT, Cambridge MA, USA

In 2011 we enlarged our Academies Programme from 3 to 5 academies, which brought 15 top scholars and numerous doctoral candidates from 6 continents. This unique programme enables young scholars to get firsthand knowledge on the academic publication process, on developing research strategies with impact, and to identify potential partners for research collaborations. You will find an overview of the programmes 2011 on the next page.

www.oikos-international.org/academic/phd

Young Scholars Academy Programme 2011: Facts & Feedback

2nd oikos Young Scholars Entrepreneurship Academy Cleantech Entrepreneurship, Finance & Policy Faculty: Itai Sened, Washington University at St. Louis, USA; Sophie Manigart, Vlerick Leuven Business School, Belgium; Rolf Wüstenhagen, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland “By far the best academic experience of my life. I feel like I truly have a support network now- and that I will keep in touch with the participants for years to come.”

Jocelyn M. Leitzinger, University of Wisconsin - Madison, USA 1st oikos Young Scholars Organisations Academy Organizations and Cultural Sustainability

NEW

Faculty: Davide Ravasi, Bocconi University Milano, Italy; Jennifer Howard-Grenville, University of Oregon, USA; - Trexler W. Proffitt, Franklin and Marshall College, USA “It was a thought provoking and productive experience; I wholeheartedly recommend it to any PhD student or junior faculty. ” Oana Albu, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

Partners 2011: 8

1st oikos Young Scholars Economics Academy Management of Natural Resources and International Trade NEW Faculty: Melaku Desta, University of Dundee, UK ; Simon Evenett, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland ; Kelly Sims Gallagher, The Fletcher School and Harvard Belfer Center, USA “The Academy was very impressive, intellectually stimulating and full of constructive activities. As a faculty, it gave me new ideas of developing teaching

infused with latest sustainability research”

Gouranga Das, Hanyang University, South Korea 4th oikos UNDP Young Scholars Development Academy From Models to Markets for Inclusive Development (IIM Bangalore, India) Faculty: Ana-Maria Peredo, University of Victoria, Canada; Harry Barkema, London School of Economics, UK; Sourav Mukherji, IIM Bangalore, India; Raghavan Srinivasan, IIM Bangalore, India “Fantastic! An excellent concept and an extremely developmental experience.”

Samer Abdelnour, London School of Economics

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fellowship

case programme

PhD Fellowship Programme

Case Writing Competition

We are happy to report on selected accomplishments of our PhD Fellows in 2011:

The oikos Global Case Writing Competition has been continuously running since 2003 in partnership with the European Case Clearing House, CasePlace.org, humanet and Ashoka. In 2011 it attracted nearly 50 cases from 5 continents and involved more than 40 renowned faculty members in a double blind review process.

The competition in 2011 received an increasing number of strategy-driven cases and the top three winning cases in each track provide truly exceptional learning opportunities. In the Corporate Sustainability track the winning cases reflected on corporate responsibility of Coca-Cola in India supply chain challenges of a fastfood chain Burgerville and a product

Nina Hug submitted her dissertation in January and obtained her PhD in October 2011. She is now working as a project manager at WWF Switzerland focusing on project evaluation and monitoring.

Martin Herrndorf concluded his fellowship in the summer of 2011.

He won the 2011 Henkel Science Slam Award at the University of Münster (Germany) and became a staff writer of the World Resources Institutes’ NextBillion Blog.

Liudmila Nazarkina (current PhD fellow) was selected as one of 20 outstanding researchers within the Green Talents Competition 2011, organized by the German Ministry for Research and Education (BMBF).

The award included an invitation to the “Green Talents International Forum for High Potentials in Sustainable Development” and a paid three months research stay in a German research institution of her choice.

Patricia Mesquita (current PhD fellow) has been a visiting fellow at ESADE Barcelona in 2011 at the invitation of Professor Daniel Arenas Vives, and co-organized the Doctoral Consortium of the Organizations and the Natural Environment Division (ONE) at the Academy of Management Conference in San Antonio.

Kim Polder ‘graduated’ from our fellowship programme in December 2011. She published a teaching case “Veja: Sneakers with a conscience” with the renowned Ivey School of Business (co-authored by Prof. Oana Branzei). Kim obtained a one year stipend from the SNF (Swiss National Science Foundation) and will become a visiting fellow at ICN Business School, Nancy, France, at the invitation of Prof. Paul Shrivastava, Director, David O‘Brien Centre of Sustainable Enterprise, John Molson School of Business, Montreal, Canada.

To learn more about accomplishments and profiles of our Fellows Shailee Pradhan, Tim Lehmann, Johannes Schwarzer and Jordi Vives Gabriel please follow us online.

greening strategy of the US-based Clorox Corporation. In the Social Entrepreneurship track our top three winners focused on electric mobility provider Better Place, Ndlovu Care Group a health-care social enterprise in South Africa, and Tropical Salvage a social enterprise that offers high quality furniture made of salvaged, or rediscovered, tropical woods, thus

contributing to the environmental conservation in areas that are particularly sensitive from the biodiversity point of view. We are also thrilled about the submissions to the 2012 competition – the winners and finalists will be featured at the 2012 Academy of Management Conference in August 2012.

www.oikos-international.org/academic/cwc/

New: Free Case Collection Download and teach the winning Social Entrepreneurship case of the 2011 competition. Protected under the Creative Commons license the case “Better Place – Shifting Paradigms in the Automotive Industry” - by Dror

Etzion and Jeroen Struben (McGill University, Canada) is the first free case available online. If you are faculty and are interested in using this case in your classroom, send an email to case@oikosinternational.org

and receive a free teaching note. By early 2012 we published 3 doubleblind reviewed teaching cases and we aim to expand the collection of free teaching cases in 2012.

www.oikos-international.org/academic/case-collection/free-cases.html

www.oikos-international.org/academic/fellowship/ 10

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case programme Case Quarterly 2011 also saw the launch of the oikos Case Quarterly. This is a quarterly periodical that targets educators around the world that use case method for teaching corporate sustainability and social entrepreneurship courses.

In each issue we present several winning cases and publish short articles written by case authors who advise on specific tools and approaches for using their winning case in the classroom. We had a great start with this project and received a

lot of positive comments. The number of subscribers to the oikos Case Quarterly is also gradually increasing.

In 2011 we published 4 issues focussing on organic food (Issue 1), agriculture and rural businesses (Issue 2), sustainable mobility (Issue 3) and water (Issue 4). We are planning to continue with this project in 2012 with forthcoming focus issues on sustainable lifestyles, forestry and sustainable housing.

www.oikos-international.org/academic/oikos-caseteaching-initiative/oikos-case-quarterly.html

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project portfolio 2011 Case Collection

When

What

Who

The oikos case collection is a growing online repository of inspection copies of selected double-blind reviewed quality cases. We also published the second case textbook in 2011 in cooperation with Greenleaf Publishing. This volume has been well-received and obtained excellent reviews in several publications.

January January February March March April April May May May May May May June June July July August September September September October November November November November November November November November December December

oikos Young Scholars International Economics Academy Sustainable Development Label Jobs Opportunities Conference Spring Meeting oikos Master Thesis Award Student Leadership Award – Campus Change Model WTO Cycling Series Develop Prize Competition EcoSocial Days Publication: Sustainable Development Politics Energysavers International Student Conference ‘Time to Rethink Economics’ Sustainability Day: Rethinking Energy Systems oikos Young Scholars Entrepreneurship Academy Organic Farm BA/MA Thesis Development Workshop oikos UNDP Young Scholars Development Academy oikos Young Scholars Organizations Academy Student Reporters at World Resources Forum in Davos oikos PRI Young Scholars Finance Academy Copenhagen Business School Fairtrade University Webinar with UN Principles for Investors in Inclusive Finance FutureLab Presidents Strategy Weekend Winter School oikos Conference Go beyond Greening Day Photo Competition ‘Sustainable Unity’ Carbon Neutral Campus Business Can Care

oikos oikos Reims oikos Paris oikos oikos St Gallen oikos Reims oikos St Gallen oikos Ahmedabad oikos Copenhagen oikos Tuebingen oikos Cologne oikos Warsaw oikos Zagreb oikos Graz oikos oikos Ahmedabad oikos Cologne oikos oikos oikos oikos oikos Copenhagen oikos St Andrews oikos oikos oikos Witten oikos St Gallen oikos St Gallen oikos Tbilisi oikos Tbilisi oikos St Gallen oikos Warsaw

www.oikos-international. org/academic/case-collection/about.html

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futurelab

outlook 2012

oikos FutureLab 2011: Stepping into new territory

Our ambition - Outlook 2012

The oikos FutureLab 2011 was the first oikos event ever to gather our global family of student members, alumni, advisors, faculty and partners. We launched this new platform to provide not only a meeting point to share perspectives on the future, but also a “laboratory” to design initiatives and engage the oikos community in pursuing them. More than 130 oikos members and partners gathered at the two days’ event. A key feature of the oikos FutureLab was the Project Fair, a forum where participants introduced projects that were of importance to them, and through which they could engage the oikos community to help them realize their projects. oikos members and partners presented a variety of initiatives, ranging Majka Baur’s weACT challenge which aims at motivating people to change their daily habits toward a more sustainable lifestyle to Sofia Altafi’s “Skilling Millions of Young Indians” initiative.

In order for us to realise the potential of oikos, we need to step back and look at the big picture. Immediately, a number of fundamental issues become apparent that, when addressed, will pave the way for a very exciting future.

Building on the exciting experience in 2011 we want to focus at the 2012 oikos FutureLab on our personal and organizational impact: Are we tackling the most relevant issues? How do we cooperate in order to achieve our objectives? The FutureLab 2012 will take place on November 19/20, 2012 in St. Gallen. Watch out for updates on our website and join us!

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We have been doing excellent work over the past years, and have developed some very interesting projects. However, the opportunity definitely exists for us to be far more ambitious in driving change and creating direct and tangible impact through our work. When we are able to design, develop, coordinate and link all of our projects, then the opportunity will exist for us to maximise our impact and increase our collective learning as an organisation.

We also have to become much better

at harnessing our incredible network to to further increase the impact of our work. When it comes to oikos, the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its individual parts.

We are revisiting our vision and mission to ensure that they are still relevant, and provide the necessary guidance and inspiration for our organisation. We need to put mechanisms into place to facilitate conversations across our network. Our future relies on a continued dialogue, both internally and externally. We need to put mechanisms into place to capture all the learning from our projects and make them accessible to our network. At our core, oikos is focused on education and learning, and we must evolve into a learning

organisation to remain relevant and significant.

Our future requires us to hold on to the assets that have made us strong in the past, let go of any baggage that is outdated and no longer relevant to our future, and develop new programmes that will help us to move to the next level in our development.

As change makers, we must be honest with ourselves and recognise that we cannot bring about change, when we are not willing to change ourselves.

And the time for change is here.

Please join us in our continuing journey to transform the world of management and economics education.

Get involved by subscribing to our newsletter!

www.oikos-international.org/get-involved 15

www.oikos-international.org

get involved Dawid Wroblewski oikos international, President +41 71 224 2594 dawid.wroblewski@oikos-international.org Eissa Khoury oikos foundation, Managing Director +41 71 224 3558 eissa.khoury@oikos-international.org Dr. Jost Hamschmidt oikos foundation, Academic Director +41 71 224 2595 jost.hamschmidt@oikos-international.org

@oikos_internat

partners oikos Circle of Partners 2011 Concept, Content and Design: oikos International - Photos on p. 1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15: Robert StĂźrmer, www.stuermerfoto.ch