Common good-oriented economic and management issues
Forms of economic activity which focus on competition and profit-maximization continue to dominate our global economy, largely ignoring dimensions of common good-oriented economic activity with ethically based values such as solidarity, justice, human dignity and co-responsibility.
We see demand for studies examining the extent to which ethical norms and values that serve the Common Good enable organizations and their networks to survive and prosper through resilience in dimensions that extend the current ESG (environmental, social, governance) debate.
Research is also needed on why organizations and their employees do not implement ethical-social-ecological models and processes, what values and norms underlie these negating decisions, and what impact these decisions to ‘opt-out’ have on the broader corporate culture, our social environment and our relationships globally (World Fair Trade Organization).
Systemic issues of social, economic and ecological resilience
Organizational sustainability and resilience
We are interested in research that focuses on the interaction of people (incl. managers, employees) with their social environment (community, network), relating to the development and impact of social capital (norms of trust and reciprocity) within and outside of the organizations (i.e. both extra-organizational and inter-organizational social capital).
The interplay of the development (accumulation) and the impact of social capital on the resilience of individuals, organizations and systems is of interest, as is the impact of this interplay on the resilience of the values themselves.
In studying this interplay, our interest lies with a better understanding of the role of power in enabling and preventing the common good orientation.
Organizational change and systems transformation
Since organizations are typically part of inter-organizational entities (value/ supply chains) and thereby part of larger systems (food systems etc.), we strive to understand the interactions at each of these levels with common good orientation in mind.
We aim to understand factors that drive individual organizational change and subsequently systems change (e.g. common good orientation and social trust in communities surrounding organizations), yet also factors at systems and value chain level, and how these impact individual organizational change (e.g. institutional pressures on individual organizations and how this affects common good orientation).
Agro-ecosystem resilience
Humanity is facing accelerated global change, the immense consequences of which will significantly shape the next decades (IPPC). Soils are the nexus of food, energy, and water, making them a key element for sustainable land management and biodiversity. One challenge for scientists is to assess these agroecosystems for sustainability and find parameters that holistically reflect all the effects of different variables within these complex social-ecological interactions.
Resilience is often promoted as a boundary concept for integrating social and environmental dimensions of sustainability. It is described as the capacity or ability of a system to cope with disturbances and maintain ecosystem functions. Therefore, resilience is a promising parameter for assessing land management practices, as it reflects both the strongly interrelated ecological and management components and values.
At the Institute, we seek to assess agroecosystem resilience at the farm level, paying particular attention to the farmer as a socio-ecological driver of local soil resilience due to his individual farm management practices. In this context, the farm is considered as a holistic organism with its own “farm individuality”, characterized by the complex interplay of individual farming practices and site conditions, in the context of agri-food value chains (food systems).
We are particularly interested in biodynamic farm management practices and soil resilience and its interaction with the human component (individual, family and community values and norms).
