Research Projects

Department of Intercultural Communication and Management

Projects at the Center for Corporate Social and Responsibility

For information on CSR projects, please visit CSR's website: CBS Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility

Projects in the Centre for Business and Development Studies

For information on CBDS projects, please visit CBDS' website: Centre for Business and Development Studies

MISTRA Future Fashion

The overall objective of the MISTRA Future Fashion project is to promote systemic change of the Swedish fashion industry that leads to sustainable development of the industry and wider society, while at the same time strengthening the competitiveness of this industry. Expected outcomes of the four-year research initiative (2011-2015) include e.g. novel textile fibers, educational materials for designers, innovative recycling solutions, new business models, toolboxes for communication, and recommendations for policy makers. The project is financed by Stiftelsen för Miljöstrategisk Forskning ( MISTRA ).

MISTRA Future Fashion is based on cross-sectoral and cross-disciplinary collaboration between academia and industry. Participants include SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden, Chalmers University of Technology, Copenhagen Business School, College of Crafts, Arts and Design (Konstfack), Innventia, Malmö University, Stockholm School of Economics, Swerea IVF, and the University of the Arts London. In addition, the project also has participation of industry partners.

MISTRA Future Fashion is divided into 8 research projects. CBS will be responsible for the planning and implementation of two of these:

Associate Professor Esben Rahbek Gjerdrum Pedersen is project leader of Project 1: Changing markets & business models: Towards sustainable innovation in the fashion industry. The objective of this research project is to identify, develop, and disseminate knowledge about new market and business models for sustainable fashion. Concerted action is needed to foster a tipping point for sustainable fashion since no single actor has the capital and power to restructure the entire fashion industry. Therefore, the study of new market and business models have to look beyond the individual company and take into account the factors within the institutional environment that play a role in transforming the fashion industry.

Assistant Professor Wencke Gwozdz leads Project 7 : Sustainable consumption and consumer behaviour. The project strives to identify, develop, and disseminate in-depth knowledge about the sustainable fashion system in general and the behavior of specified consumers in particular. The focus is on potential promising entry points to successfully induce behavioral change towards more sustainable fashion consumption. We will be looking for such entry points in the realm of fashion producers, retailers and consumers as well as in policy making.

Contact persons: Associate Professor Esben Rahbek Gjerdrum Pedersen, erp.ikl@cbs.dk and Assistant Professor Wencke Gwozdz, wg.ikl@cbs.dk.

NeXGSD - Next Generation Technology for Global Software Development

The software development paradigm is changing with the rise of geographically distributed software development models. Increasingly, organizations shift all or part of their software development offshore. It is no longer debatable whether ICT companies – including the industry partners in this project – will develop software on a global scale; it is only a question of the degree to which they do it. Compared to co-located projects, GSD projects are, however, more likely to be unsuccessful, because geographical, temporal, cultural, organizational, and stakeholder distances can have negative impact on communication, coordination, collaboration, and knowledge exchange.

This project seeks to develop next generation technologies – infrastructure, tools, and methods – that bridge geographical, temporal, and cultural differences in Global Software Development (GSD).

We plan to;

conduct detailed studies of the collaborative distributed nature of GSD with a special emphasis on cultural discontinuities and opportunities,

design and prototype new collaborative technologies and infrastructures for GSD, and

develop new software engineering processes, practices, cultural norms, and practical guidelines for bridging distances in time, space, and culture

The two core ideas are; (i) to view cultural diversity not solely as a challenge but also as an opportunity for increased innovation; and (ii) to build technologies that help companies to move from an outsourcing to a collaborative model of GSD. Overall, the project aims at providing knowledge and tools for organization to excel in software development on a global scale.

The project is funded by the Danish Council for Strategic Research in Denmark

Partners:

IT University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen Business School
NNIT
TATA
TEO

Contactperson at CBS: Professor Anne-Marie Søderberg, ams.ikl@cbs.dk

CORPUS

Enhancing connectivity between research and policy-making in sustainable consumption - CORPUS -

FP7 Project, chaired by Prof. Lucia A. Reisch, cbsCSR (starts 2010)

The current EU Research Framework Programme (FP7) provides the unique opportunity to further improve knowledge transfer at the interface of policy-making and research on sustainable development. CORPUS is a research project within the work programme “Environment”. It aims to develop new and practical approaches in order to enhance the connectivity between research and policy-making. The aim of this activity in FP 7 is to experiment and develop new integrative modalities of linking research results to policy-making through 'secondary exploitation' of existing research. The project will focus on the policy issue of ‘sustainable consumption’ which is of great importance in the current and future strategic development of the EU. It is included, for instance, in the re-launched Lisbon Strategy and is one of the key challenges of renewed EU SDS.

The objectives of the project are:

Development and testing of a knowledge web-platform with in-built incentives attracting and matching researchers’ and policy-makers’ interests in knowledge exchange alike.
Development and testing of interactive tools of knowledge brokerage within different dialogue-oriented formats, such as scenario workshops and mapping exercises.
Initiation of learning processes among researchers and policy-makers involved in the specific trials in order to trigger self-sustaining processes of knowledge brokerage and community building.
Assessment of the capabilities and shortcomings of the knowledge brokerage tools under consideration in order to arrive at general recommendations for future methodologies aimed to enhance the connectivity between research and policy-making in sustainable development.

You can download the brochure for the project here: Corpus Folder

Contact person: Professor Lucia A. Reisch

IDEFICSstudy - Work Activity 07 (Consumer Science)

IDEFICSstudy = Identification and prevention of Dietary- and lifestyle-induced health EFfects In Children and infantS

The IDEFICSstudy, financed by the EU 6th Framework Programme, is a major multidisciplinary, intercultural project with partners in 11 EU countries and focusing on children aged 2 to 10 years. The project is conducted from September 2006 until August 2011. Its strategic objectives are:

1. to enhance knowledge of health effects of an altered social environment & lifestyle of children in Europe

2. and to develop, implement & validate specific intervention approaches in order to reduce the prevalence of diet- & lifestyle-related diseases & disorders in the EU

Prof. Lucia Reisch is chairing the Work Activity 07 “Consumer science”. Here, consumer behaviour is put into the broader perspective of society, e.g., internal and external factors of health behaviour are identified. Children’s health behaviour is not only influenced by individual characteristics and the family environment, but also by communities and school and on a societal level by all actors involved, e.g., political actors, mass media, food industry etc. A special interest within this consumer working area is laid on the role of commercials where a qualitative toolbox provides an insight into the effects commercials exert on children’s food related behaviour.

Contact persons: Lucia Reich and Wencke Gwozdz

Cultural Intelligence as a Strategic Resource

The research project Cultural Intelligence as a Strategic Resource studies how managers and employees in nine Danish companies and three public institutions experience cultural differences and talk about culture. It also explores how managers in Danish companies handle cultural encounters in their foreign affiliates and virtual multinational teams. The three-year project, which is funded by the Danish Council for Strategic Research, was launched on 1 April 2008.

Research leader, Professor
Anne-Marie Søderberg
Tel: 3815 3204
E-mail: ams.ikl@cbs.dk

Creative Encounters: The Socio-Economic Organisation of Creative Industries

It is now widely recognised that different kinds of innovation and creativity are driving new production forms that give rise to goods and services with an added value: experience. For Denmark to operate as a high growth, competitive, global leader in the experience – or creative – economy, its government and business organisations need to develop a highly interconnected fabric of cultural and creative infrastructure.

Composed of nine dedicated senior researchers at CBS, plus PhD students, the programme examines at both macro- and micro-levels of analysis three Creative Industries' sectors: Fashion & Luxury; Film & Media; and Place Branding, Art & Culture. The programme is accordingly divided into three Research Streams.

Read the full description of the project here: Creative Encounters: The Socio-Economic Organization of Creative Industries. Project description And the supplementary material: Creative Encounters: The Socio-Economic Organization of Creative Industries. Supplementary material .

Link to Creative Encounters
Contact: Research leader Professor Brian Moeran

Last updated by Lise Søstrøm 13/01/2012