Research focus areas

This research strand examines the conditions of productive, ergonomic, meaningful and humane work as well as promising approaches to prevent or at least cushion the exploitation and precarization of workers in global and regional value creation, taking into account heterogeneous institutional contexts, individual constructions of meaning and complex actor constellations. This work follows on from various internally funded interdisciplinary preparatory work at the University of Nottingham and third-party funding from the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant (2016-2018). Several projects have been completed in recent years. Between 2018 and 2019, a GIZ-funded project was carried out as part of the Internal Center for Development and Decent Work (ICDD) on the topic of "Developing a training concept for building sustainability-related capacity among managers in the Bangladeshi garment industry". Also worth mentioning is a BMBF-funded project on the topic of "Cultural practice of non-academic work in Mexico" (2019-2022), carried out jointly with the Department of Vocational and Business Education. Between January 2021 and August 2024, a project aiming to better include people with disabilities at the workplace (ABLe) was finalized together with research colleagues from the Hann. Münden Police Academy and the Royal Holloway University of London.

Typical sustainability challenges in developing and emerging countries are usually linked to the global division of labour, in which a large number of work steps are outsourced to other countries or continents and thus elude direct visibility and control. Building on a number of previous research projects in recent years, this research line examines the conditions and sustainabilityrelated challenges of value chains and networks. It addresses value chain-specific issues such as cooperation, innovation, risk management and accountability as well as broader issues such as circular economy, food waste and new technologies such as 3D printing, cloud manufacturing and distributed ledgers.

This research direction investigates the mechanisms of diffusion of sustainability standards and sustainability-relevant practices. Our research focuses, among other things, on the selection and evaluation of suppliers, the establishment and management of company networks for the circular economy, and the transfer of standards and practices along value chains and networks, but also between the individual subsidiaries of multinational companies. Here, questions of network structure play just as important a role as, for example, the power of individual employees to act as "translators" of sustainability practices in companies.

Developing countries and emerging economies in particular are facing significant sustainability challenges in our modern world. A simple transfer of established Western business models is often ineffective and sometimes undesirable. At the same time, contexts at the lower end of the income pyramid ("base / bottom of the pyramid") can be understood as laboratories for innovative sustainable economic models, which is why they are of particular interest for corporate sustainability research. Nevertheless, data collection and analysis pose major challenges for researchers, which is why further cooperation with complementary partners is important. In Bangladesh, for example, we are working with researchers at the University of Manchester to investigate small and medium-sized social businesses operating at the Base of the Pyramid. We are also researching business models at the Base of the Pyramid in affluent countries such as Germany.

At the latest since the tsunami disaster in South East Asia in December 2004, humanitarian aid operations and humanitarian logistics have become the focus of media attention. The majority of current academic research is aimed at achieving the efficiency and effectiveness of relief operations. Our research at the department extends the target corridor from humanitarian aid to the long-term well-being of the population not only in affected areas but in the entire bordering region. This extended target corridor requires a comprehensive consideration of the phenomenon at a system level and the inclusion of various socio-economic and institutional contingency factors. We are also currently working on the current refugee crisis as an empirical field of research in which innovative management approaches can be applied.