oikos Annual Report 2020

About oikos oikos is an international student-driven organization for sustainability in economics and management. Founded in 1987in Switzerland, we today empower leaders to drive change towards sustainability worldwide.

Our programs embed environmental and social perspectives in faculties for economics and management. They comprise conferences, seminars, speeches, simulation games and other initiatives to transformteaching and research. They promote the integration of sustainability in curricula and provide platforms for learning, creating and sharing solutions.

The heart of our organization are our student members who turn ideas into action, currently in 48 oikos chapters aroundthe world.

They are supported by a global community of oikos alumni, advisors, faculty, and partners, as well as an international team working remotely across the globe.

Content Table Vision, Mission, Values

4

Our History

5

Letter from the Presidents

6

oikos Map

8

LEAP Program

10

LEAP Advanced 2019/2020

12

LEAP Chapter Track

14

LEAP Life and Researchers Track

16

Curriculum Change Initiative

18

Positive Impact Rating

20

NexGenLead

21

Case Program

22

Spring Meeting 2020

23

oikos Community

24

Alumni

27

oikos International Team

28

Outreach

29

Partners

31

Outlook 2021

32

Mission, Vision, Values

Our Mission Economics and Management purposed for a sustainable world.

Our Vision To transform economics and management education by empowering student change agents, raising awareness for sustainability opportunities and challenges, and building institutional support for curriculum reform.

Our Values

Respect

Integrity

Accountability Openness

Our History In 1987, some few ambitious students at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland founded what nowadays has grown into a strong, and even more ambitious and impactful community of student change agents. Of course, this development needs continuous commitment and innovation over the years. Here a glimpse into over 30 years of oikos International history: Three years after starting the student club, the oikos Foundation was established as a result of successful engagement by the students of oikos St. Gallen. They envisioned a way to support the integration of ecological issues into the research and teaching of economics and management, a vision that had been fed by perspectives and voices of an increasing amount of members and visiting professors. Following these steps, oikos St. Gallen and the oikos Foundation played a fundamental role in establishing the Institute of Ecology and Economy at the University of St. Gallen in 1993.

Over the following years, the interest in oikos grew beyond the walls of St. Gallen and the decision was made to turn the local student club into an international network of student change agents which has been growing and evolving ever since. In 1998, we finally went international, opening first chapters outside of Switzerland.

Throughout the years we welcomed new chapters across Europe, North America, Asia and Africa. In 2003 we created the oikos Case Writing Competition and Case Collection, which by now has come to be our longest-running program. Many programs and initiatives have been added to our portfolio ever since one example being the FutureLab. Created in 2011, it quickly became our flagship event for gathering the entire oikos Community and building partnerships among oikos members, alumni, academia, and other partners.

In 2015 we kick-started what would eventually become another important pillar of our work - the oikos Leadership Program LEAP. Since its launch in 2015, the program welcomed over 250 participants and has had a lasting influence on their lives. Many of the LEAP Alumni return to the program as coaches to continue their leadership journey and help new generations of LEAPers evolve.

The 30 year anniversary in 2017 marked a start of a new era in oikos. It set in motion the transformation of oikos International into a fully student--led organization, which was finally completed in 2019 with the closure of the oikos Foundation.

Ever since 2016, oikos started moving all operations to the virtual space, gradually replacing the office in St. Gallen with the homes of our team members around the globe. By now we work fully remote in over 10 countries, a step that has been greatly supported by our alumni and that has already proven helpful considering our relationships to our roots.

Shifting the focus back on the work of our student change agents, which definitely deserves to be but into the center: Nowadays, oikos is a powerful student community with around 1000 active oikees, learning and leading in their local chapters in 48 cities all over the world. Together, we question how we want to learn, lead and live in a diversity of ways, on the ground, in our universities and in exchange with a global network of allies and supporters.

Letter from the Presidents Dear oikees, dear friends of our increasingly international community of student change agents, 2020 has been a turbulent year full of open windows and mastered challenges for us at oikos.

With a situation that unraveled the complexity of our world to a new extent, we have been experiencing a global turning point with regards to the student voice, how it is being perceived Throughout the year, we observed the need and willingness of several institutions to grant students the steering position and let their ideas shape the paths of education, economics and management. The shift to the virtual realm allowed us to offer these voices the stage they deserve and the space they need to express their perspectives. Events like the UN Global Compact Leaders summit, the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative Webinar, Business Schools Sustainability events (e.g.

ESCP in Berlin, Imperial College in London), the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education Global Forum, to name a few, the attention of mainstream media outlets like the Financial Times.

Early in 2020 we were happy to co-launch Positive Impact Rating - the tool that grants first-hand access to students’ perception of sustainability and positive impact of their education. After the initial round, we’re already seeing first schools picking up the resulting data as a starting point for multi-stakeholder reflections and actions to move ahead.

Now more than ever, we at oikos International see our role in encouraging and empowering students and getting them ready for action and engagement with local stakeholders like faculty, universities or businesses, so they can take the lead in cocreating the more just and sustainable future. Our well-established formats like LEAP and the Spring meeting but also the new, innovative projects like the NexGenLead or the Curriculum Change Academy, and several chapter days and Regional Meetings brought the oikos community together. Bridging the physical distance, it sparked cross-cultural exchange which inspired outstanding projects of our chapters on the local level and new ideas, while also strengthening cross chapter collaboration. In the context of a drastically changing world, oikos’ vision and mission appear increasingly relevant and acute, clearly showcasing a destination and several important steps and leverages towards this future.

With the pandemic entering our everyday lives, the virtual world has become a truly tangible reality, as most of us had to shift to working remotely. The oikos community, and in particular the oikos International team, started exploring the virtual working environment back in 2016, becoming something of a pioneer and constant-

ly exploring new, creative approaches ever since. This is what made us largely unaffected, prepared us and helped adapt quickly to the sudden shift online, once the virus forced the world into their homes. Within just one month, we reimagined all of our events while providing our community with tools and methods to adapt to the online environment. We admire the way our chapters faced the challenges, transforming them into beautiful opportunities for cross-chapter collaborations and new ways of relating beyond their own campuses. We are certain that these are only the first steps of evolving the oikos network, making it more connected and interactive.

Despite all challenges 2020 brought to us as a global society, we at oikos can look back to a year of independently walking the talk while making a leveraged, collective positive impact together with our chapters and partners. The pandemic makrs the beginning ofa new era and we, as a student initiative, sense that it brings greater opportunities for us to contribute to a greater change in society and in our own community as such. Looking forward to what is emerging in 2021, we sense that it is time for us to lean even further out of the windows opening in the field of higher education & sustainability. contribute even more confidently at the tables where changes are manifested both on the local & the global level, and, first and foremost, to get our organization and community ready for the stormy seas that approach us on the horizon. Strengthening bonds within the community and directing the energy needed towards clarifying and updating structures, processes and information flows, are crucial to walk the talk in a way that’s sustainable for the planet and the people and adapted to the complexity of the 21st century.

Everything you read in this report is the result of the outstanding work of over 60 volunteers and 14 employees on the international level, along with hundreds of dedicated chapter members who wholeheartedly serve our growing community of student change agents. We are truly inspired by the collective effort of all the oikees out there, and how they practice a new kind of leadership in so many different, colorful ways. All these efforts would not be possible without the commitment, legacy and constant support of our alumni and the loyalty and advice of our partners and advisors. We are truly grateful to count on your support and collaboration as we move ahead into a new year. A big thank you from the whole team!

Let’s further chase the paths of the future we imagine,

Sophie Charrois President 2020/2021

Clémentine Robert President 2019/2020

LEAP Program

The oikos Leadership Program – LEAP inspires young people to become more responsible and sustainable in their decision making and equips them with insights, knowledge, and tools to do so. The program helps empower their voices and encourages them to be proactive about change.

Since its launch in 2015, the program has supported over 250 participants to lastingly transform their lives. The oikos LEAP Program is constantly evolving with the help of numerous volunteers who shape the program with their inputs and feedback and partly represent the voices of the community. According to the needs there are now 4 different Tracks with distinct foci, two of them added in 2020: 

LEAP Advanced Track - Intense 9-months personal development journey.

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LEAP Chapter Track - an opportunity for our chapters to receive support, reflect on, and practice responsible leadership at the local level.

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LEAP Researchers Track - for earlier career researchers to develop their leadership, teaching and research skills

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LEAP Life Track - for LEAP Alumni from all Tracks to continue your development.

This program would not be possible without the work of our countless volunteers.

Many LEAP Alumni return to the program as coaches to continue their leadership journey and help new generations of LEAPers – as we like to call our participants – in the process. This year we also managed to engage professional coaches to provide individual coaching for all our participants and a few of the team members.

This year close to 40 volunteers were engaged in one of the Tracks.

LEAP Advanced 2019/20 Cohort The LEAP Advanced Track is an intense 9-month-long participant-driven personal development journey that challenges participants to face the most daring questions in life – What are my values? What is my purpose? What results do I want?

LEAP Advanced 2019/2020

Participants are accompanied to attend to those and more questions via different elements, including webinars on different topics with renowned speakers from around the world. In 2020, we were grateful to learn about: 

“The Power of Language” with Chalmers Brothers

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“Cultivating your Wellbeing and Mindfulness in an Age of Anxiety” from Katherine Milligan

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"Leadership Mindtraps & Habits" with Jennifer Garvey Berger

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"Emotions centered leadership" by Dan Newby

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"Leadership and Higher Purpose" from Prof. Robert Quinn.

“Every day we create different versions of ourselves.

LEAP Advanced helped me to understand, accept, love and at the same time, improve my own self.”

Mariam Kvaratskhelia oikos Tbilisi

“LEAP is for me finding myself, working on myself.. creating myself in one of the most inspiring and loving communities I have met so far!”

Sophie Hilbert oikos Vienna

“LEAP for me is a self discovery journey and a safe space where I get to express myself and learn from others. My main take away from LEAP is that I am enough! “ Tatiana Falca oikos Paderborn

Monthly peer group meetings, as well as individual coaching calls, are designed to bring in different perspectives and empower the participants to grow and bring out the best in them, so that they can develop themselves and their leadership skills to become sustainability-driven change agents.

To consolidate our learnings regular reflection guides were sent out to enable individual written reflection. This year’s very proactive cohort took the initiative to shape their journey and requested shorter guides every 2 weeks to better embed it in their daily schedule.

Finally, at the 2 on-site meetings, the Kick-Off meeting in Leysin, Switzerland, from the 25th to 31st of October 2019 as well as the Mid Term Meeting in Munich, Germany, from the 5th to 8th of March 2020, the participants gathered for powerful sessions lead by their coaches to dive deeper, accelerate their development and strengthen their bonds as a community.

More information on the program is available here.

LEAP Advanced Midterm Meeting 2020 The 2020 Midterm Meeting took place from March 5th to 8th 2020 in a beautiful mansion in Mörlbach, near Munich. Together participants created new habits and enhanced their emotional literacy, connected the dots of their lives and discovered underlying beliefs. They improved their time and commitments management skills, listened to each other without even speaking, worked on their communication and discovered their Why. And all of that in a safe space that they together created, a respectful environment, where everyone was appreciated and could strive.

LEAP Advanced in numbers

LEAP Chapter Track

The LEAP Chapter Track is an opportunity for our chapters to receive support, reflect on, and practice responsible leadership at the local level. It is based on running registrations and chapters can easily register on the website.

Registered Chapters get a coach to empower local presidents and board members, guide them through their leadership challenges and encourage them to reflect on their organizational strengths and weaknesses. Coaches share insights on how to engage community members, and provide tools to do so. The coaching process also ensures that members are well informed about oikos and have detailed knowledge of changes happening at the international level.

This year was a pilot phase with 3 chapters - oikos Bangalore, oikos Copenhagen and oikos Graz - participating and being coached by 3 Alumni.

On top of that we had a reflection call at the beginning of the year with chapters where we had space to share progress from the year 2019 and exchange ideas as we move forward.

As a part of the Chapter Track the oikos Chapter Days were held in March and November to inform oikees about oikos International work and engage them to shape it in shaper spaces but also to inspire each other in open spaces, impact fairs and informal exchanges. Those events are always a great opportunity to meet the international community and learn more about the opportunities that come with it.

Participating Chapters are also encouraged to organize Micro-LEAPs for their Chapter or community. Micro-LEAPs are shortened versions of the LEAP program, custom to the chapter’s or person’s needs. Facilitators are provided a Micro-LEAP guide with exercises and tips around facilitation and creating a safe space and accompanied by a LEAP Coach on their journey. oikos Copenhagen and oikos Graz will launch their Micro-LEAPs in 2021. oikos Graz

LEAP Chapter Track in numbers

"We joined the program as we wanted to enable our members to become part of the great LEAP journey on a chapter level. This is particularly relevant as most of our team members have not yet had the chance to participate in a LEAP program. As the project team, we consider it a great opportunity to gain knowledge on facilitation and project management. With the help of oikos International and Benoît as our coach, we are setting up a series of sessions featuring selected topics from the regular LEAP program.

All online and tailored to the needs and wishes of the oikees here in Graz. Our aim is to create value for our chapter members in terms of leadership skills and team building and strengthen the connection to oikos International."

LEAP Program LEAP Life Track The LEAP Life track informally lives already since the end of the first LEAP Advanced cohort in 2016 through all the Alumni that continuously stay engaged and want to continue their personal development journey and learn more about coaching.

This year we have shaped it, together with the Alumni, into a formal Track with the vision of continuing our development journey, fostering a new sense of ongoing learning, courageous practice and co-generation, in a community of diverse change agents.

This Vision was put into practice by the Alumni themselves through Input Talks about topics like the GROW Model, Internal Family Systems or Basics about coaching, Brave Talks that provide a safe space to open up and share from the heart, challenges to encourage participants to reflect and go out of their comfort zone and peer calls.

Currently there are about 30 active participants, including 3 professional coaches who even further enrich conversations with their experiences.

Participants of this track also create the Micro-LEAP guides that are currently under development. To have some experience they will do Micro-LEAPs with their families, work colleagues and chapter members and then share their experiences to create guides targeting the different groups.

LEAP Researchers Track Many Early Career Researchers are finding it hard to face the environmental and social challenges of today, as only few educational institutions address them, hence finding themselves unprepared, lacking both personal and professional support.

This is why in 2020, we launched a pilot program of the LEAP Researchers’ Track with 12 earlier career researchers, aiming to address these challenges. The LEAP Research Track therefore aims to empower academics, helping them reach their full potential in personal development, while fulfilling the mission of transforming economics and management education.

The program focuses on participants’ personal development, alongside providing support in the field of research and teaching. It helps shape their perspective on changes in economics and management education required to face the challenges and better understand their role in pushing these changes by becoming well informed, reflective, and purpose-driven change agents. We intend to contribute to designing an economic system that allows both the Planet and people to prosper.

The 9-month program with 12 earlier career researchers started in September, and it focuses on the element of self-development and experiential learning.

The track aims: 1) to develop a community of earlier career researchers who are willing to develop their leadership, teaching, and research skills 2) to create & cultivate a culture of cooperation with shared values.

3) to allow practicing the acquired competencies by coaching university students on curriculum reform.

In 2020, these 12 researchers had monthly meetings alternating personal and professional topics. Topics such as getting to know their strengths, art of convening, and social media and research were covered in 2020. All participants have a 1:1 coach and a possibility to interact with each other in a peer to peer group. This program will run until June 2021.

We aim at turning this pilot program into a successful project with long-lasting effects on future professors and researchers participating.

Curriculum Change Initiative The initiative at the core of the oikos mission, with the aim of adapting the curriculum to make education more sustainability-oriented, has recently seen some great developments!

After the Curriculum Academy, in Spring, the Curriculum Action Squad was formed, from the initiative of the participants themselves. Since then, regular squad calls have been planned and carried to work together for greater impact on curriculum change towards sustainability. A curriculum Research Squad has also been created to work more on the content/methodology of curriculum including sustainability as well as on the organization of the oikos in Residence.

oikos Curriculum Academy 2020 The second oikos Curriculum Change Academy was jointly organized by oikos Lausanne and the oikos international Curriculum Change Initiative team from April 3 to 5 2020. Due to the situation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event was held only online. Despite this particular context, we were so grateful to have gathered more than 30 people from several countries in this inspiring Academy.

Over the course of 3 days, we tried to grasp the breadth of economics and management subjects and relate them to current social and environmental challenges. Professors, early career researchers, and students came together to understand each other’s needs and exchanged on how to collaborate in order to drive the curriculum reform towards sustainability. This second edition was conceived around the Curriculum Change Initiative’s values, the multi-dimensional side of economics, and even practical examples of successfully reformed curricula at some universities.

oikos In Residence

oikos International hosted its first “oikos in Residence” event in Basel, Switzerland from February 13 to 16 2020. The oikos in Residence is a new event format that is intended to accelerate the creation of materials related to curriculum change.

The Residence event in Basel brought together a team of representatives from oikos chapters, oikos International, and Rethinking Economics to discuss the relevance of a re-envisioning of what is taught in typical business bachelors programs.

oikos In (Your) Residence Following the event in Basel, Switzerland, the next oikos In Residence was organized in summer and in an online format due to pandemic. The summer edition ‘took place in your residence’, with a series of 5 events held online between July 9th and July 26th. The sessions focused on topics like building arguments for curriculum change, working towards local curriculum change, doing curriculum reviews or student surveys, and designing options for alternative curricula.

Positive Impact Rating The Positive Impact Rating (PIR) is a new rating conducted by students and for students. It is the first time that students around the world assess their business schools on how they perceive their positive impact in the world. oikos International is a partner of the PIR and the OI President sits on the Supervisory Board to represent the student voice in strategic decisions.

The overall PIR score of the business school is used to position the school on one of five levels. The characterizations of the different levels refer to the developmental stage of the business school.

The collection of data is organized through student associations, who distribute a survey within their own school. They take responsibility for assessing the positive impact of their own schools and get access to the data collected through an online dashboard.

In the 2020 Edition of the PIR, 30 schools were rated, with oikos chapters running PIR survey campaigns in several of those schools across the world. The results were the launchpad for student led changes in several of those schools.

John and Autumn from the OI Management Team are the PIR Outreach and Marketing Manager and Student Engagement Coordinator, respectively. Their work on the planning, launch and running of the 2021 further cements oikos’ central role in the growth of the PIR.

NexGenLead NexGenLead was the biggest project of oikos International this year. Organized in collaboration with swissnex Brazil, it was enabled by Movetia’s International Pilot Program.

This first version edition was a 3-week global virtual program on Responsible Leadership, foster Leadership and Sustainability in education through an inclusive and lowcarbon footprint event. This format has been planned long before the pandemic outbreak, showing oikos International willingness to innovate on Leadership education. Throughout the year, with many new opportunities arising, the organizing team wanted to try out different and innovative formats for this project, as the pilot project status allowed for new experiments.

This innovative, participant-led program attracted more than 550 students from around 70 countries! The participants had the opportunity to make & watch interviews with Responsible Leaders, discuss together about their learnings and take facilitation roles during the sessions. Those different types of activities empowered the participants by giving them different learning choices and the opportunity to step forward in the path of Responsible Leadership.

Find more information about the conceptualization, implementation and main takeaways of the program here. oikos & swissnex Brazil Webinars As the lead-up to NexGenLead, oikos International together with swissnex Brazil, hosted the VR4sustainability: how Virtual Reality can change our behaviors webinar, on May 20th. The webinar presented how VR can be employed in education and sensitization to sustainability issues, counting with the contribution of Brazilian and Swiss academics and entrepreneurs in this field.

Together with 98 attendees and 4 speakers, we explored the state of the art of VR, some ethical concerns about this technology and examples of its application in sustainably-related projects.

As the face-to-face educational model was being suddenly transposed to a virtual setting, we once again jointly organized a webinar on Virtual Mobility in August.

This webinar focused on the opportunities and challenges of virtual mobility, and the share of existing best practices worldwide, with speakers representatives from Brazil, Switzerland, China and European Union, attracting 194 attendees. This webinar was also a way to gather new ideas to the NexGenLead program.

Case Program The annual Case Writing Competition is an ongoing oikos program. Active since 2003, encourages the writing of high-quality cases on sustainability topics that can stimulate innovative teaching and learning experiences. The program aims at giving students the possibility to approach their faculty to start embedding sustainability into curricula through the use of case studies.

This year the program received 30 cases, which undertook 2 rounds of evaluations.

The student jury and faculty jury set up this year came from different parts of the world and was actively involved in reviewing the cases.

The authors of the best three cases are added to the oikos free Case Collection and receive a financial reward while also getting the chance to engage with peers and organizations and learn about their latest tools, actions and initiatives.

The oikos Case Program is promoted among oikos Chapters and encourages students and academics worldwide to write about sustainability in management, entrepreneurship and finance education. The case studies are meant as tools to encourage innovative teaching & learning mechanisms and to include sustainability into curricula.

2020 Case Writing Competition Winners 1st Place

2nd Place

3rd Place

Shwetha Kumari and Prof Muralidhara Gv, ICFAI Business School (IBS) – Bangalore for their case study Nigeria’s Hello Tractor – Leveraging Technology to Provide Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture. The case study focuses on the Hello Tractor enterprise, an agricultural technology social enterprise aiming at improving food and income security throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. The company developed a Uber-like platform allowing Smart Tractor owners to rent them out to other farmers.

Prof Arpita Agnihotri, Penn State University-Harrisburg and Dr Saurabh Bhattacharya, Newcastle University Business School — Challenges of Promotion Sustainable Innovation Through Biomimicry Case of Biomimicry Institute. The case study presents the Biomimicry Institute’s initiatives to foster biomimicry, an approach which aims to respond to human challenges with sustainable solutions using mother’s nature patterns.

Dr Sonal Purohit, Chandigarh University - Transaction to Trust: Sustainable Business in Gift Economy. The case study introduces the business model of a café built on the concept of the gift economy. This communitybased café was built on principles of involvement, participation and support and offered locally produced meals on a participatory and voluntary basis.

Spring meeting 2020 took place in April. The oikos Baku team had a difficult task on their hands to make a big shift from onsite to online format in a relative short period of time and they managed to make not only an amazing but also the most inclusive Spring Meeting yet.

This year, oikos Virtual Spring Meeting 2020 explored the idea of Inclusive and Sustainable Development as it has evolved over time since the revolutions in the West, and in the developing countries since 1950s when development economics and development policy were officially born. Nowadays, in lots of societies, many people are excluded because of their gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, disability, or poverty. The effects of such exclusion are staggering, deepening inequality across the world. Hence, Inclusive and Sustainable development ensures that all marginalized and excluded groups are stakeholders in development processes. It is defined as a policy that deliberately seeks to achieve concurrently a dynamic relationship between individuals and societies. The active pursuit of this process must, therefore, be the basic aim of development policy. In short, Inclusive development is development for all the representatives of the various societies as mentioned in the motto of Spring Meeting 2020 – Change Involves All! The first Spring Meeting to be planned and organized entirely online drawn a diverse crowd of participants from across the globe. In an interesting way they were all connected by two things—a worldwide lockdown and passion for sustainability. They had an opportunity to attend a variety of sessions, webinars and workshops by local and international speakers, touching many subjects like inclusion of people with disabilities, youth work etc.

It even highlighted the correlation of climate change and inclusive development opening new perspectives to look at the trend and empower participants to embrace inclusivity.

oiConference: Developments in Finance and Sustainability The oiConference – Developments in Finance and Sustainability on April 3rd & 4th 2020 was a big success! The webinar brought together participants from all over the world, engaging professionals, academics, activists, and students in various discussions about developments in the financial world related to sustainability. The recordings of the sessions are now available on oikos International’s YouTube page.

oikos Community Chapter Days In April of 2020, the community gathered for its first ever fully online formatted Chapter Days followed by another edition of the event later in the year in November. Chapter Days are two days filled with sessions designed for two main purposes: educate the community to oikos International, and foster the relationships between the local chapters that make up the international community.

Fostering relationships speaks for itself, and is aimed at creating stronger bonds between our local chapters to grow stronger together, to learn from each other as well as support and inspire one another.

Educating the community to oikos International means bringing everyone up to speed regarding what oikos International is, does and where it is headed. That means introducing the tools we create to support the chapters and presenting all of our programs. The aim of this part is to give the chapters the relevant information to better equip them for voting during the Legislative Assembly, which follows the Chapter Days shortly.

Legislative Assemblies Legislative assemblies are bi-annual gathering of oikos Chapter to discuss and vote on important topics related to the work of oikos International. This year for the first ever Legislative Assembly was delivered completely online. It was a great success and the community interaction exceeded our expectations, showing the power of a community of like-minded people, despite difficulties. In spring, the Assembly elected Sophie Charrois as the new president of oikos International for 2020 to 2022, while in fall it elected the new Board of oikos International for 2021.

oikos International Strategy Meetings Prior to the beginning of very semester the complete oikos International Team meets up to discuss and create the strategy for the organization in the period ahead. That means catching up with everyone and their domain, discussing what went well and what did not in the past semester, as well as what the new semester’s objectives are.

The first Strategy Meeting of the year took place in January in Switzerland, however the midterm meeting in summer, due to pandemic, was held fully online for the first time ever. It was quite a challenge to convert what usually is a long weekend, intensively packed with discussions on the same subject, into a week-long string of video conferences, designed to bring in as many inputs, decisions and takeaways as possible.

New and full chapters In 2020 a new oikos chapter opened in Alexandria, Egypt, marking a historic milestone as the first chapter in the country.

At the Legislative Assembly in April the oikos Bangalore chapter in accession gained a full chapter status, followed by oikos oikos Hong Kong and oikos Lisbon in November.

Regional Meetings The global pandemic and travelling restrictions made it impossible for chapter representatives to meet up in person for regional meetings, so the chapters took it upon themselves to organize them online.

The Central and Eastern Europe Regional Meeting was organized by oikos Tbilisi in September, with the main topic being bringing the change to Classrooms and in Workplace.

The Asian oikos chapters decided to team up and jointly organize the online oikos Asia Meet 2020 in November. Under the name Challenges for leaders of sustainable initiatives the event focused on entrepreneurial and educational challenges in the Asian region and in the world.

Chapter Activities As the new circumstances of the global pandemic arose, with worldwide lockdowns and a switch to an online mode for classes, work and many other everyday activities, in 2020 our chapters found themselves facing new challenges. By then, most members had little to no experience organizing events in the online space which had become the only available format for any activities at the time. oikos International has been in the process of going fully remote, making the Management and the Board no longer physically present in St. Gallen and moving all the work to the cloud. This meant we were prepared to make the same transition for the events and our team was working hard around the clock to provide all the support and resources needed for hosting online to the chapters.

It wasn’t long before chapters would start creating online workshops and webinars and converting their biggest events to a virtual format themselves. Some even hosted events in English and invited members of our community to attend, expanding the audience.

Cross Chapter Collaboration Some oikos chapters took the opportunity of the new virtual environment to get together with other chapters, bridging the physical distance in working together on joint project. This year was a very important stepstone in strengthening chapter bonds and creating many cross chapter projects. oikos Graz and oikos Vienna were one of the most prolific in cross chapter collaboration this year. The two Austrian chapters have come together and organized webinars on some quite interesting and very important topics, addressing the questions of sustainable travel or taking the battles for the climate to court.

The Asian chapters worked together to host their regional meeting, but among them oikos Hong Kong and oikos Suzhou have had joint projects of their own in 2020.

Due to the circumstances, oikos Hong Kong partnered with their Suzhou counterpart on their flagship Sustainability Impact Case Competition. The three week event had a large number of students participating from their homes in both cities and the Greater China region.

The St. Gallen, Bayreuth, Tübingen and Cologne chapter jointly held a series of webinars as a part of their oikos Meets Changemakers project, featuring numerous high quality speakers in German language.

Chapter project recognition oikos Graz is one of the main contributors to the Sustainability Days project at the University of Graz which gained the recognition as a highly commended project at the International Green Gown Awards 2020.

oikos going fully remote Our transition to functioning remotely started back in early 2019 and over time all of the oikos Team members shifted to working out of office. By the beginning of 2020 the oikos International President was the only position left working from the office in St. Gallen.

Following the handover of Presidents which was completed at the end of November, we started December as a fully remote organization.

With the remarkable state of the world and the entering of a new president, the oikos board agreed and approved to take a leap: we wish to enable the President to serve the community from a location with a more global embrace and a place with a social support network of her/his choice.

While remaining a Swiss organization that is based in the canton of St. Gallen, the physical office in St. Gallen will become obsolete and is not needed any longer. At oikos, we perceive this as an opportunity to reduce structural obstacles to impartiality and nurture our team culture and health. It enables us to be very intentional about strengthening long-standing partnerships and exploring further international links and networks. We are proud of our Swiss roots and just as excited to see where we might grow from and with them.

oikos Alumni oikos Alumni are active across the world in business, government, NGOs and academia. Their common history and interest in sustainability provides a bond that lasts long beyond their university years. The Alumni take part in our international activities and get together in an informal setting todiscusst heir favorite topics of sustainability, exchange career experiences and reminisce about their times at oikos.

Alumni Weekend While it became difficult to meet and the world was shifting, the oikos Alumni community kept meeting on a regular basis. In April we hosted the Alumni Weekend - an online event gathering many oikos Alumni around the globe.

It was a truly diverse audience from different career paths all connected by their passion for sustainability and their oikos journeys, some of which joining even 20 years after their oikos days.

Alumni Impressions Having been part of oikos, I have met some of the most inspiring people in the world! Friendships, great discussions and the strong commitment of the oikos crowd to make change happen is what I remember most vividly.

Nóra Locskai, Budapest

oikos is an amazing network of thought provoking and open-minded individuals who are always there to support each other.

Francesca Stocco, Lille

St. Gallen Unconference

Organized by the Alumni, the main goal of this StGallen Unconference is to help oikos community members find as many links in the network as possible and to offer you the space to share your knowledge and experience. It takes place every year around the end of August.

oikos International Management Team oikos International Board

Oikos International Team

Volunteer Position

Paid Position

Outreach oikos International as Signatory In 2020 oikos International became a signatory in the following initiatives: 

Signed the Economists 4 Future open letter

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Signed the open letter to global leaders: A healthy planet for healthy people from the club of Rome

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Signatory of Econ4Future DE call for action

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Signatory of the Youth Questions for Canada's 50 Top Corporate Citizens letter

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Signed Our Future, Our Business Manifesto

Representation at international events In 2020 oikos International was represented at numerous international conferences, forums, discussions and other online and in-person events: 

Speaker and a workshop at the sustainable innovation conference of ESCP Europe, Berlin

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Speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos at The Positive Impact Rating launch

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Speaker at the AMBA & BGA event on 'Integrating Sustainability into Business Education' at the Imperial College in London

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Present at ‘Sustainable Development Goals in Education: From Africa to Switzerland’

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Speaker at the First Goodaftercovid fishbowl

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Speaker and co-organizator of the #goodaftercovid19 | Millennials Edition Fishbowl

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Present at UN Global Compact 20th Anniversary Leaders Summit

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Present at online text-based Financial Times Q&A entitled "Is business school good value for money?"

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Speaker and moderator Virtual UN PRME Global Forum,

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Speaker at the Reboot the Future Fishbowl

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Present at the Responsible Management Education Virtual session during the 2020 EMEA Annual Conference of AACSB

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Present at AACSB Responsible Management affinity group, Associate Deans Conference

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Moderator at the Virtual Global Climate Conference 2020 by EAUC, represented by oikos Vienna chapter member

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Curriculum Change Workshop at Better Economics for Climate Change event by Rethinking Economics India

Publications In 2020 oikos International published or contributed to the following publications: 

oikos International was mentioned in a Financial Times article : “MBA students and employers demand ‘profitable solutions for people and planet'”, February

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oikos International participated in the writing of The SAGE Handbook of Responsible Management Learning and Education, August

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“oikos Students Transforming Economics and Management Education”, August

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Financial Times interviewed Clémentine Robert on the topic “Business schools learn to ‘do the right thing’ on sustainability”, September

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“Defining Sustainability: oikos’ understanding of sustainability & sustainable development”, October

oikos Advisory Board

Our advisors provide tremendous support for oikos. They accompany us on a longterm basis – both on an international as well as on a local level. All of them provide a strong platform for us by sharing knowledge, establishing contacts and helping us identify effective leverage points to pursue the oikos mission. We are pleased to introduce members of the oikos Advisory Council below:

Partners Our projects would have been impossible without our partners.

Thank you for your support interms of funding, ideas, knowledge, guidance and outreach.

In 2020 oikos International had following partners: 

Started official partnership with Climate KIC

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Became a member of EAUC, The Alliance for Sustainability Leadership in Education

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Member of SOS International, an international student network on sustainability

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Goodwall platform, BetterTogether project

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Böckler foundation

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Mission possible Foundation

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Movetia

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Corymbo foundation

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University of St.Gallen

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Partners For A New Economy

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swissnex Brazil, swissnex China and swissnex Network in general

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Coordinating student engagement into PRME (work with PRME Secreteriat) as part of PRME new Board (appointed

Outlook 2021

With this challenging, but fruitful year coming to an end we look forward to 2021 and what it has in store for us. 2020 gave us many things and brought about many changes in order to adapt to the new normal. We will take the learnings from it with us and make the best out of the next one and although we’ve had to adjust our plans for 2021 accordingly, we don’t plan on slowing down in pursuing the oikos Mission and Vision!

Be Informed, Get Involved, Make a Difference!

Become a Member Start a New Chapter Connect as an Alumni Join our Faculty

Support us as a Donor

oikos-international.org info@oikos-international.org