Department of Management, Society and Communication
Research Projects
Major current projects
Balancing Boundary Tensions in Corporate Sustainability Work
The project:
The Balancing Boundary Tensions in Corporate Sustainability Work research project examines how the characteristics and combinations of organisational boundaries shape corporate sustainability work. Moreover, the project analyses the tensions emerging from working across boundaries and the balancing practices of organisations trying to cope with these oppositional demands. Corporate sustainability is a holistic concept, which often crosses organisational demarcation lines. However, stepping across boundaries can give rise to tensions, which have to be mediated by the organisation in order to “make things work”. The project aims to generate new knowledge on how to classify and analyse boundaries and tensions in relation to corporate sustainability. Moreover, the project highlights the role of balance as key in understanding boundary tensions in corporate sustainability work. It is well-known that corporate sustainability is born with tensions and paradoxes, but more knowledge is needed on how organisations balance these oppositional demands in practice.
The team:
Professor Esben Rahbek Gjerdrum Pedersen (MSC), Assistant Professor Kirsti Reitan Andersen (Royal Danish Academy), PhD student Thordis Bjartmarz (MSC). Professor Esben Rahbek Gjerdrum Pedersen is the project’s Principal Investigator (PI).
The grant:
The project is supported by Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond (DFF), and is scheduled to end June 30th 2025.
Project report 2023:
Read here the project report (in Danish) 
B Corps og Bæredygtighed
For further information about the project, please contact Esben Rahbek Gjerdrum Pedersen, ergp.msc@cbs.dk.
A Holistic Fire Management Ecosystem for Prevention, Detection and Restoration of Environmental Disasters
TREEADS, European Green Deal
The project:
This flagship project will create resilient and informed communities focusing on the forests that are near wildfire risks. A holistic Fire Management platform will optimize and reuse available socio-technical resources in all three (3) main phases of wildfires, and real-time risk evaluation tools. The platform will integrate state-of-the-art capabilities drawing from areas like AI, UAV, AR, 5G, Earth Observation, Air Quality and Pollution. Eight (8) pilot implementations will be rolled out in a large-scale demonstration programme that covers seven (7) EU countries and Taiwan. Ultimately the project aims to increase European resilience to disasters and causes of crisis creating a safer environment for its citizens.
The CBS team:
Efthymios Altsitsiadis and Isabel Fróes, will be leading the inquiry into the organizational, structural, and sociotechnical factors for the TREEADS Ecosystem Building (WP3). CBS will be leading the WP3 where we will be on the one hand trying to involve user representatives from individual, community, first responders, industrial and commercial providers and policy-makers to identify the optimal form of governance and on the other empowering behavioural change of citizens, local authorities, businesses and schools through clustering and other social techniques. CBS brings its social research background that can provide the insights that can help a largely technical project attend to the softer sides of implementation, and more specifically those that are closer to the citizen (e.g. bottom up / social innovation dimensions that are vital in the project).
Collaborative Partners:
Rise Fire Research AS (FRN); Jotne EPM Technology AS; Bundesanstalt Fuer M Materialforschung UND - Pruefung (BAM); Universidad de Salamanca (USAL); Squaredev (SQD); National Center for Sceintific Research “Demokritos” (NCSRD); Software Imagination & Vision SRL (SIMAVI); Otto-Von-Guericke-Universitaet Magdeburg (OVGU); Adrestia Erevntitiki Idiotiki Kefalaiouxiki Etaireia (Adrestia); K3Y; Maggioli SPA (MAGG); Ethniko Asteroskopeio Athinon (NOA); Asociatia Forestierilor Din Romania (ASFOR); Johanniter Osterreich Ausbildung und Forschung Gemeinnutzige GMBH (JOAFG); Disaster Competence Network Austria (DCNA); Svilluppo Tecnologie e Ricera per L' Edilizia Sismicamente Sicura ed Ecosostenibile Scarl (STRESS); Pompiers de L’ Urgence Internationale (PUI); Lietuvos Agrariniu Ir Misku Mokslu Centras (LAMMC); Schmitz One Seven GMBH (OS); Vipo AS (VIPO); Woodify AS (WAS); Ministerul Mediului, Aperols Si Padurilor (MEWF); Asociatia Forestierilor Din Romania ASFOR (ASFOR); Fundatia Pentru Smurd (SMURD); Polytechneio Kritis (TUC); Agenzia Campana Per La Mobilita Leinfrastrutture e Le Reti (ACaMIR); National Taiwan University of Science & Technology (NTUST); Drone Hopper SL (DH); along with seventeen (17) other partners
The grant:
The total budget of the project is 22.5mln Euros, funded under the EU Green Deal Horizon 2020 program. The project will run for 42 months, from 1st of December 2021 until May 2025. CBS has a budget of 836k Euros.
For more information about the TREEADS project, please visit Cordis, or contact Efthymios Altsitsiadis, ea.msc@cbs.dk.
The project:
iBeauty (Intercultural Personas of Beauty & Values) is an international industrial/academic project investigating how people around the world define “beauty” and how their definitions of “beauty” are potentially connected with their interpersonal values. The project will be conducting a series of intercultural consumer surveys integrating data science, cross-cultural psychology and consumer psychology to map-out and profile various consumer types across markets. The eventual aim of the project is to develop "Intercultural Personas of Beauty & Values".
Project team:
The project team consists of three industrial researchers (two data scientists and one marketing scientist) from KOSE Advanced Technology Institute and Fumiko Kano Glücktad (CBS).
The grant:
The project is fully funded by the Japanese enterprise, KOSE Corporation and will run during the period 2021 – 2024.
For more information, please contact Fumiko Kano Glückstad, fkg.msc@cbs.dk.
Towards a socially just transition in the Arctic: Exploring, theorizing and disseminating best practice in meaningful stakeholder engagement for communities
The project:
This project contributes to Arctic sustainable development through new knowledge on handling adverse social impacts resulting from the transition to ‘green’ energy. Focusing on communities, incl. Indigenous peoples, we explore the concept of meaningful stakeholder engagement. We innovatively compare requirements, practices and experiences from contested sectors (wind and hydro power) transition minerals mining and less contested sectors (preservation of nature and traditions) to explore ‘best practice’ of stakeholder engagement. Milestones comprise desk and fieldwork-based analysis and recommendations, to be developed in close collaboration with rights-holders, business, authorities and other stakeholders who are main audiences. Outcomes will be shared through podcasts, pamphlets, meetings and academic texts.
Project organization :
Principal investigator (PI): Prof Karin Buhmann
Steering group : The PI and and lead team member for each country: Prof Rachael L Johnstone (Greenland, Iceland); Prof Rasmus Bertelsen (Norway), Dr Dorothée Cambou (Finland), Prof Mark Stoddart (Canada).
The entire team (including junior scholars) will collaborate on the discharge of tasks related to their specific fields of expertise and/or region as set out in project description and implementation plan. Close collaboration in the team is envisaged throughout, online/remotely as well as during the team’s physical interaction.
The grant:
The project is funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers/Nordregio Arctic Cooperation Programme and runs for three years from June 2021.
For further information about the project, please contact Karin Buhmann, kbu.msc@cbs.dk.
Behavioural Insights for a Circular Society (BEACON)
The project:
The Behavioural Insights for a Circular Society - BEACON - project explores and tests behavioural changes towards sustainable lifestyles to support the building of a Circular Society. While the research focuses on urban food systems and experiments in a real world setting of a city (Copenhagen), the findings are expected to apply to other consumption areas and systems of provision
One third of the global GHG emissions caused by human activity stem from the food system. Knowing the importance and impact of food systems on our lives and the planet, the BEACON research team works with engaged actors of practice and research to design, test, learn, adapt, share, and discuss (and, post-project, provide the evidence and pathways to scale up) behavioural interventions to shift an urban food system towards more resilience and sustainability.
The project seeks to answer two interrelated research questions. One with a focus on the individual and specific target behaviours (meat consumption and food waste), and one with a focus on the context of the larger urban food system and design processes: (1) How to move consumer-citizens towards “peak meat” and reduce avoidable food waste? and (2) How to design a more resilient food system and food environment? By finding the answers to these questions, our ambitions are (1) to promote lifestyles for sustainable consumption corridors, (2) to further develop the concept of a circular society, (3) to harness and advance behavioural insights, and (4) to develop and test in the real world pathways for change.
The City of Copenhagen is a full project partner, granting the project connection with actors that directly and indirectly shape the city’s food environments and enabling BEACON to employ interventions in a real-life setting. This makes a real difference in terms of the validity of the study, the usefulness of the results, and the engagement and “buy-in”. For a start, BEACON’s sustainability-focused interventions will take place at “Le Grand Depart” of the Tour de France and the two-day bicycle festival “FestiVélo” in Copenhagen (July 2022).
Project organisation:
The project team consists of Lucia Reisch (PI), Efthymios Altsitsiadis (co-PI and WP leader), Jan Bauer (WP leader of the field experimentation) and three scientific experts Meike Janssen, Maria Figueroa, Kristian Roed Nielsen, who work in synergy with the Consumer and Behavioural Insights Group (CBIG), founded by BEACON’s PI.
The grant:
The project is funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and runs for four years, starting in September 2021.
For further information about the project, please check the BEACON website, contact the research team at beaconproject@cbs.dk, and follow the project on LinkedIn.
PlantPro – Accelerating an efficient green consumer transition
The project:
MSC researchers participate in the PlantPro project which aims to accelerate an efficient green consumer transition towards more plant-rich diets and reduced food waste. The project identifies factors that drive consumer behaviour change towards more sustainable plant-rich diets and upcycled foods, and greater acceptance of sustainable food technologies. PlantPro contributes to reaching societal tipping points that will foster the green transition in Denmark.
MSC contribution:
MSC researchers investigate how to nudge consumers into purchasing plant-based foods in (online) supermarkets, to find out what works best for different consumer segments.
Project organization:
The project is a collaboration between the CBS Consumer and Behavioural Insights Group (CBIG) at MSC, the MAPP Centre at Aarhus University (as project coordinators), and the Department of Food Science at the University of Copenhagen. The partners from the food sector are Plantebranchen, Dansk Vegetarisk Forening, Thinktank OneThird, Simple Feast, Beyond Coffee, Circular Food Technology, Møllerup Brands, Food Innovation House, Orkla, Naturli, Planteslagterne, Upfield, Eachthing, Rema1000 and Fair Trees.
Associate Professor Meike Janssen heads the MSC contribution of the project.
The grant:
The project is funded by Innovation Fund Denmark and runs for three years, 2021 - 2024.
Read more about the project on the project website. For further information about MSC’s contribution to the project, please contact Meike Janssen, mj.msc@cbs.dk.
The paradoxes of climate-smart coffee (PACSMAC)
The project:
Focused on Ethiopia and Tanzania, The paradoxes of climate-smart coffee (PACSMAC) project investigates how climate change - and the ways actors across the value chain are trying to adapt to or mitigate it - affect coffee farmers’ livelihoods and land-use decisions. While observers often describe emerging coffee production experiments and the market opportunities they generate as resilient, vibrant and environmentally beneficial, these assessments are preliminary and speculative. In fact, the opportunities and incentives for growers to adopt and benefit from any of these innovations will depend on what downstream firms and even consumers do. Conversely, firm strategies will depend on how producers respond to changes in prices, demand, climate, and support programs.
PACSMAC illuminates the connection between smallholders’ opportunities to innovate to improve their livelihoods and firms’ and governments’ efforts to build and profit from global value chains. The project combines in-depth qualitative research using participant observation and expert interviews of downstream coffee firms with focus group, interview, survey and satellite data in selected villages in coffee-growing regions in the two countries. Combining these valuable data sources will allow us to develop scenarios of future coffee value chain development in the two countries that connect farmers’, states’ and firms’ actions with livelihood and land-cover impacts.
Project team:
The project is led by MSC Associate Professor Dr. Kristjan Jespersen who supports a leading international team of academics from Copenhagen Business School, Jimma University, University of Dar es Salaam, ETH Zurich, and Lafayette College.
The grant:
The project is funded by the Danida Fellowship Centre and run for five years, starting in April 2021. It supports the development of four PhD students.
For further information, please contact Kristjan Jespersen, kj.msc@cbs.dk.
Making Oceans count in the Nordic financial system (MOC)
The project:
The MOC project is aiming to drive Nordic financial service institutions (FIs) towards an increased awareness of how their investment and credit decisions contribute to major Nordic ocean risks. Up to now, FIs have been slow to react to the state of the ocean. However, the financial sector has the opportunity to support healthy oceans via its capital allocation. Whilst data platforms of primary ocean focused data are gaining more extensive knowledge, availability, and quality, the main issue faced by the finance sector is to connect and translate nature-related data into applicable data for their investment activities. Thus, this project deals with creating a link between data providers and FIs, for the latter to assess the magnitude of key ocean pressures and the scale of human activities driving them. This shall facilitate investors to include oceans in carbon accounting and disclosure, which is playing a major role in global carbon cycling.
The project’s theory of change includes a compliance assessment to position oceans on the agenda of FIs. By then engaging with ESG data vendors in the form of interviews, roundtables, and events, the project will investigate solutions to integrate an ocean risk metric and ultimately provide data that is ready for deployment by FIs to monitor ocean impacts of their financial decisions. This will allow to create a data foundation for practice change towards greater accounting for ocean risks.
Project team:
The project team is led by the Green Digital Finance Alliance (GDFA), partnered up with WWF and CBS, represented by MSC Associate Professor Dr. Kristjan Jespersen.
The grant:
The project is funded by the Velux Foundation and runs for 2 years (Jan 2021 – Dec 2022).
For further information, please contact Kristjan Jespersen, kj.msc@cbs.dk
The project:
‘Climate Change and global value chains in Bangladesh’ is a research and capacity building project that uses cutting-edge social science methods to investigate how the garment/textile value chains connecting Europe and Bangladesh are being reconfigured in response to climate change and COVID-19.
The project will create new academic and policy relevant knowledge by developing a conceptual framework that bridges global value chain and climate change analysis and involves the education of three PhD students from Bangladesh. Detailed fieldwork will be undertaken in Europe and Bangladesh for the project.
Project collaborators:
The project is undertaken in cooperation with Aalborg University, Roskilde University, BRAC University, University of Dhaka, University of Durham, the Danish Ethical Trade Initiative and Danish Fashion and Textile.
The grant:
The project is funded by the Development Research Council of Denmark and runs for four years (2021-25)
For further information about the project, please contact Peter Lund-Thomsen, pl.msc@cbs.dk.
The project:
The INCULTUM project deals with the challenges and opportunities of cultural tourism with the aim of furthering sustainable social, cultural and economic development. It explores the potential of marginal and peripheral areas when managed by local communities and stakeholders. We adopt innovative participatory approaches transforming local people into protagonists that are able to reduce negative impacts and learn from and improve good practices, which we can replicate and translate into strategies and policies.
The project evolves around ten pilot cases of very different living territories and communities. Based on the findings from these pilots, we identify and compare drivers and barriers that account for the success or failure of participatory models and thus innovative customised solutions will be co-created. The pilots will also enable us to assess outcomes and analyse the pre-conditions needed for implementing and scaling up of potential solutions. The pilots provide new quantitative and qualitative data, which we combine with official statistics and novel data gathered by the use of self-developed IT applications. The project thus exploits previously untapped data sources through the implementation of advanced econometric methods and the use of machine-learning tools into tourism research. The findings will enable us to suggest recommendations for effective and sustainable policies and create new synergies among public and private stakeholders.
The CBS team, Carsten Humlebæk and Viktor Smith, will be responsible for WP7, ‘Impact, evaluation and exploitation plan’, including stakeholder mapping, ‘performance-tracking’, and harvesting and marketability of project results and solutions.
Collaborative partners:
Universidad de Granada (ES, coordinator); Univerzita Mateja Bela V Banskej Bystrici (SK); Promoter SRL (IT); Syddansk Universitet (DK); Università di Pisa (IT); Uppala Universitet (SE); G.A.I. Elimos SRL (IT); Eachtra Archaeological Projects Limited (IE), Bibracte (FR); Koinoniki Synetairistiki Epicheirisi Syllogikis i Koinonikis Ofeleias Zagoriou Ta Psila Vouna (EL); Qendra e Kerkimeve Dhe Promovimit Te Peisazheve Historiko-Arkeologjike Shqiptare (AL); Universidade do Algarve (PT); Patronato Provincial de Turismo de Granada (ES); Municipality of Permet (AL)
The grant:
The project is funded by the EU Horizon 2020 Innovation Action programme and runs from May 2021 through April 2024.
For further information, visit the INCULTUM project website, or contact Carsten Humlebæk, cjh.msc@cbs.dk, or Viktor Smith, vs.msc@cbs.dk.
The project:
Hecat aims to investigate, demonstrate and pilot a disruptive technology to support labour market decision making by unemployed citizens and case workers. At one stage or another, almost half of all EU citizens will rely on a Public Employment Services (PES), and so this is a key touchpoint of a contemporary state and has impacts on citizen’s thinking about social cohesion, care and wellbeing. The ambition of the project is to improve citizen’s experience and outcomes of unemployment by offering real-time evidence-based insight into their personal position in the labour market.
Hecat builds on the existing big data algorithmic techniques used by some European PES administrations to:
- deliver labour market insight directly to unemployed citizen based on their own profile and self-assessed needs
- broaden out the focus on quantity of jobs to add a focus on job quality and sustainable employment
- go beyond the profiling of ‘problem categories’ of citizens that current profiling systems use in order to treat each individual as a unique complex subject by drawing on qualitative fieldwork with unemployed and case workers in our pilot sites in Slovenia
- build and test a tool that visualizes the labour market opportunities that are most relevant from the point of view of the jobseeker
Collaborative partners:
Waterford Institute of Technology (lead), Copenhagen Business School, Employment Service of Slovenia (ESS), University of Ljubljana, Sciences Po, Roskilde University, Institut Jozef Stefan, Fundacion Tecnalia Research & Innovation, Platform Networking for Jobs
Responsible staff at CBS: Janine Leschke & Clément Brébion
The grant:
The project is funded by the EU Horizon 2020 Research and innovation programme and runs from February 2020 until July 2023 at the Department of Management, Society and Communication
For more information, please visit the project website or contact Janine Leschke, jl.msc@cbs.dk
The project
The project examines the role of imagination about digital media for dialogue between multinational companies and social movement organisations. Digital media have been vested with hopes for facilitating dialogue. But dialogue between companies and social movements in digital media remains largely absent. Instead, their relationship is often seen as a struggle between David and Goliath, while the business models of digital media platforms such as Facebook are increasingly shown to privilege the powerful. As a consequence, tales of social movement criticism as shitstorms have come to serve as cautionary tales for companies, while corporate retaliation serve as cautionary tales for social movements. This may instill fear and distrust in both companies and social movements. But such assumptions, expectations and feelings about digital media are underresearched.
By examining companies’ and social movement organisations’ assumptions, expectations and feelings – what this project terms imaginaries – about digital media and each other, this project contributes to public knowledge and debate about how we can find avenues beyond mistrust and polarisation and towards collaboration for more sustainable business practices, which are much needed at this time of climate crisis.
The grant
The project is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark’s Sapere Aude programme. It will run for four years from 2021-2024.
For further information, please contact PI Julie Uldam, ju.msc@cbs.dk.
The project:
HUMAC focuses on how business-humanitarian collaboration can be organized in an ethical, effective, and sustainable manner. As the world grapples with growing humanitarian needs caused by COVID-19, natural disasters, and armed conflicts, there is a need for increased collaboration between private and humanitarian organizations. In response, Danish companies and international firms alike are experimenting with new ways to contribute to humanitarian assistance, including long-term collaborations and strategic partnerships.
The project group is conducting in-depth process research on business-humanitarian collaboration in different crisis contexts. The aim is to analyze how partners organize their cooperation and how they handle the challenges they encounter along the way. In doing so, HUMAC aims to generate urgently needed research-based knowledge and theoretical insights into the organizational dynamics, complications, and solutions of business-humanitarian collaboration — insights that can be used to enhance the delivery of aid and assistance to people in distress.
The grant:
The HUMAC project is made possible by a grant from the VELUX FOUNDATION’s core-group programme and co-financing from CBS, for a combined DKK 7.2 million. The VELUX FOUNDATION’s core-group programme seeks to support and promote excellent research in Denmark in the humanities and allied social sciences. The project will run for four years, 2020 – 2024.
For further information, please visit the project website or contact Jasper Hotho, jho.msc@cbs.dk, or Verena Girschik, vg.msc@cbs.dk.
BECOOP
The project:
The ambition of the EU-funded BECoop project is to provide the necessary conditions, technical as well as business support tools, for unlocking the underlying market potential of community bioenergy. The project’s goal is to make community bioenergy projects more appealing to potential interested actors and to foster new links and partnerships among the international bioenergy community across Europe.
Collaborative partners:
WHITE RESEARCH SPRL, GOIENER S.COOP, FUNDACION CIRCE CENTRO DE INVESTIGACION DE RECURSOS Y CONSUMOS ENERGETICOS, ENERGEIAKH KOINOTHTA KARDITSAS SYN.PE., ETHNIKO KENTRO EREVNAS KAI TECHNOLOGIKIS ANAPTYXIS, Q-PLAN INTERNATIONAL ADVISORS PC, Federazione Italiana Produttori Energia da Fonti Rinnovabili, COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL, Gmina Oborniki Slaskie – Miasto, UNIWERSYTET PRZYRODNICZY WE WROCLAWIU, SUDTIROLER ENERGIE VERBAND GENOSSENSCHAFT, INSTITUTE FOR EUROPEAN ENERGY AND CLIMATE POLICY STICHTING
The grant:
The project is funded by the EU Horizon 2020 Research and innovation programme and runs from November 2020 until October 2023.
For further information, visit the BECoop project website or contact the MSC participants Isabel Froes, ifr.msc@cbs.dk, Efthymios Altsitsiadis, ea.msc@cbs.dk, or Luise Noring, lno.msc@cbs.dk.
AI Reuse
The project:
AI REUSE is a multi-year research project comprising Copenhagen Business School and Durham University. AI REUSE will develop advanced theoretical and methodological frameworks for thinking through concepts and practices of reuse of data and algorithms in AI / machine learning (ML) systems and the ethical and political questions these reuse processes give rise to. Based on this work AI REUSE will develop strategies and recommendations that can help the Danish public sector make responsible decisions in relation to ML systems.
Specifically, the project will explore and accumulate knowledge on digital transformations by studying how the pioneering data industry reuses data and algorithms, focusing on questions of accountability and ethics. This knowledge will have direct impact on the ethical sustainability of the Danish public sector in developing strategies for machine learning
Project team:
The project team consists of Nanna Bonde Thylstrup (CBS), Mikkel Flyverbom (CBS), Kristian Bondo Hansen (CBS), Louis Ravn (CBS) and Louise Amoore (Durham University).
The grant:
The project is funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark and will run during the period 2020 – 2023.
For more information, please contact PI Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, nbt.msc@cbs.dk.
A Social Manufacturing Framework for Streamlined Multi-stakeholder Open Innovation Missions in Consumer Goods Sectors (iPRODUCE)
The project:
The iPRODUCE project introduces a novel social manufacturing framework that embraces manufacturing companies in the consumer goods sector, their networks, makers spaces, DIY communities and various other innovative players at local city level. To do so, it builds on well proven Fab-Lab concepts and makers approaches and well-connected local multi-stakeholder ecosystems that are transformed into collaborative manufacturing ecosystems thanks to Collaborative Manufacturing Demonstration Facilities (cMDF).
Collaborative partners:
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V., Zenit GMBH, Trentino Sviluppo SPA, LAGRAMA, ENERGY@WORK Societa' Cooperativa A R.L., FabLab Valencia, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas CERTH, White research SPRL, FabLab Vosges, European Dynamics Luxembourg, AIDIMME Institutp Tecnológico, EXCELCAR, F6S Network Limited, MakerSpace Bonn, betaFACTORY, Siemens AG, Materalia, AidPlex, Information Catalyst for Enterprise Limited
Grant:
The project is funded by an EU Horizon 2020 grant and runs for three years, 2020-2022.
For more information, please visit the project website or contact Luise Noring, coordinator at MSC, ln.msc@cbs.dk, Isabel Froes, ifr.msc@cbs.dk or Efthymios Altsitsiadis, ea.msc@cbs.dk
The project:
Global inequalities are growing and have become widely recognized as major challenges. A main driver of inequality has been the globalization of production which yielded new winners and losers within and across nations. Massive participation of global South actors in value chains and production networks has not led to a significant increase in value-added within these countries, despite expectations of the contrary. As inequality in the distribution of value added between actors in the global South and in the global North persists, new efforts have been directed in understanding how to reduce these inequalities. PIPS contributes new knowledge on about how value chain actors exercise power and what kinds and combinations of power they yield. Existing research has focused on identifying bargaining power asymmetries without examining how other forms of power may underpin, challenge or undermine bargaining power across value chains and in time. PIPS applies and further develops a new theory of power in global value chains to address these limitations.
- How do different combinations of power shape the functioning of global value chains in time?
- When and in what circumstances do these combinations yield increasing or decreasing inequalities along global production systems?
- What policies and interventions can be learned in view of taming existing inequalities?
Empirically, PIPS analyzes two global value chains within the agro-food sector: Chile and South Africa. These two countries have similar production conditions but divergent outcomes. In both countries, international trade plays an important role, and the agro-food sector contributes to important diversification venues away from overdependence on extractive industries. Their climatic conditions (Central region in Chile, Western Cape region in South Africa) and portfolio of agricultural products is similar, making them competitors for a range of processed and fresh products. Yet, their trajectories in seeking to improve domestic value addition have been widely divergent, with Chile succeeding and South Africa failing.
PIPS examines power dynamics in these value chains over time, focusing on two out of their top three agro-food export industries: table grapes and wine. In the table grapes value chain, the two countries provide a relatively uniform counter-seasonal fresh product to retailers in the global North, with quality playing a relatively less important role in power relations along the value chain. In wine, the two countries provide a large quality portfolio of a processed product, with quality differentials playing a key role in power relations. This comparison allows for an examination of how different forms of power affect bargaining power over time, and thus how they affect inequality in the distribution of value added along the two chains.
PIPS employs the following data collection methods:
- collection of industry reports, information from company publications and websites, newspaper articles and other relevant documents;
- review of the regulatory frameworks for the two value chains – at the domestic and international levels;
- gather secondary data and statistics on financials, production, exports, number and kinds of value chain actors and their characteristics;
- conduct semi-structured expert interviews with key institutional actors and a broad range of participants at each key stage of the two value chains, with specific but not exclusive focus on the functions carried out within Chile and South Africa; and
- attendance of four industry conferences for participant observation, collection of presentation slides, further interviews and informal conversations.
The grant:
The project is funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark with a DFF-Social Sciences-Tier1 research grant.
For more information about the project, please contact PI Stefano Ponte spo.msc@cbs.dk.
The project:
Creative and cultural industries (CCIs) are being lauded for their potential to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Supported by a range of UN Agencies, many African governments have bought into the promise of CCIs to deliver economic growth, decent jobs and sustainable development. Policies to support the CCI sector are being introduced despite a lack of knowledge regarding the practices and experiences of creative labour, the opportunities and challenges faced in running viable creative businesses, and the impact of such policies in an African context.
To fill this knowledge gap and further advance the capacity of CCIs to contribute to the achievement of the SDGs, the research project Advancing Creative Industries for Development in Ghana (ACIG) will use qualitative methods to investigate the policies, labour conditions and entrepreneurship dynamics of CCIs in Ghana. Focusing on the music, film, fashion design and visual arts industries, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Copenhagen Business School (MSC), Loughborough University and University of Ghana will work closely with private sector businesses and policy stakeholders to co-produce original empirical and theoretical knowledge on CCIs in an African context.
Capacity building is central to the project, with research capacity being strengthened through the close collaboration of junior and senior researchers and the training of four Ghanaian PhD students.
The grant:
The project is funded by a grant from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, administered by Danida Fellowship Centre. It runs from 2019 to 2021.
For more information about the project, please contact project coordinator, Associate Professor Thilde Langevang, tla.msc@cbs.dk or visit the webpage and social media sites of the project:
- Website
- Facebook: Advancing Creative Industries for Development in Ghana
- Twitter @CCIsGhana
The project:
Since an upsurge of unrest in Burundi in 2015, 258,000 refugees have crossed into Tanzania, making it the largest recipient of Burundian refugees in the East African region. Tanzania currently hosts 317,000 refugees in three camps, which is an unprecedented five-fold increase compared to three years ago. Everyday humanitarianism (EH) refers to an expanded series of practices in the everyday lives of citizens that are engaging in humanitarianism, outside of the formal structures of humanitarian actions. This do-gooding response to crisis can be proximate for one’s neighbours or distant for suffering Others. EH may involve, for example, housing refugees along their journey to processing centres, paying school fees for additional children in areas affected by floods, or donating online) or to local churches in earthquake prone regions of the country.
Tanzanians of all social classes are involved in EH, from rich philanthropists to farmer neighbours, yet these actions remain unacknowledged and unaccounted for. Unfortunately, the reason that Tanzania is an excellent case for understanding EH results from its increasing humanitarian need, uneven government attempts to manage disasters, and complex linkages between humanitarian and development needs and the partners who engage them. EveryHumanTZ will measure and explain the everyday humanitarian practices of communities engaged most directly with protracted crisis (refugees) and others experiencing acute crises (earthquake, floods). EveryHumanTZ’s Overall Objective is to understand how people interacting in everyday situations respond to crisis situations outside of the formal structures of humanitarian assistance.
Project team:
Partner institutions in the project: University of Dar es Salaam, Roskilde University, and University of Copenhagen.
The grant:
The project is funded by a grant from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, administered by Danida Fellowship Centre. It runs from 2019 to 2021.
For more information about the project, please contact project coordinator, Professor of Globalisation Lisa Ann Richey, lri.msc@cbs.dk .
The Regulation of International Supply Chains (RISC): Lessons from the Governance of OHS in the Bangladesh RMG Industry
The Project
RISC investigates the regulation of International Supply Chains in the Bangladesh Ready-Made Garment (RMG) industry with respect to occupational health & safety and wider social sustainability. Whilst a multitude of regulatory initiatives emerged after the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster, little is known about what approaches are most effective, what the variety of efforts mean for the industry overall, or how lessons may be applied more systematically in Bangladesh and beyond. Therefore, the objectives of RISC are to:
- Identify attributes of effective sustainability governance
- Provide new academic and practical knowledge on the governance of sustainability in international supply chains
- Contribute to local capacity-building, policy development and company practices for social sustainability in Bangladesh and beyond
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) serve as a thematic framework for RISC, and in particular, Goals 12: Responsible consumption and production, 8: Decent work and economic growth, and 17: Partnerships for the goals.
To fulfill its objectives, the outcomes and contributions of RISC are threefold.
- Understand the landscape and scope of organizations and governance initiatives for social sustainability in the BD RMG industry, and their interactions.
- Determine the attributes of effective governance for social sustainability in the Bangladesh RMG industry, and of their applicability to supply chains more broadly.
- Make findings accessible to practitioners and enhance the capacity of local researchers, practitioners, and organizations by facilitating the growth of locally-driven, evidence-based solutions.
A unique approach of the project is that of capacity building, working from the premise that sustainable, systemic change is best accomplished when locally-driven and managed. The findings and evidence from the research will be used both to generate new academic knowledge as well as to formulate practical recommendations for the industry. RISC will also seek to identify and support local organizations to uptake the findings and recommendations via the provision of ‘micro-grants’.
RISC is affiliated with CBS Sustainability and the Centre for Business and Development Studies. It is a 2-year project, running from June 2019 to May 2021.
Project Team
RISC adopts a collaborative approach by working in partnership with academic and practice institutions. It brings together researchers from CBS, BRAC University Bangladesh, and Tufts University (USA) with the Danish Ethical Trading Initiative (DIEH), a non-profit industry multi-stakeholder initiative. The project team consists of:
- Professor Jeremy Moon, CBS (Project Lead)
- Assistant Professor Erin Leitheiser, CBS
- Assistant Professor Sharmin Shabnam Rahman, BRAC University Bangladesh
- Professor Jette Steen Knudsen, Tufts University
- Director Mikkel Stenbæk Hansen, DIEH
- Project Manager Sarah Dieckmann, DIEH
Additionally, RISC utilizes an advisory board consisting of leaders from both academia and practice in Europe, the USA and Bangladesh to oversee and guide its work.
The Grant
RISC has been made possible through a Window 2 grant from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, administered by Danida Fellowship Centre.
For further information about RISC, please contact Erin Leitheiser (el.msc@cbs.dk).
Hidden Costs focuses on global supply chains but aims to go beyond the traditionally investigated economic benefits and explore the rather less well understood - but growing - environmental and social costs. The goal is to contribute new knowledge about the winners and losers within the global political economy, and highlight critical pathways for policy intervention.
Collaboration Project
The project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. It is based on a global, collaborative partnership between journalists and governance scholars, and holds potential for unique knowledge translation and mobilization. Hidden Costs has signed partnership agreements with The New York Times, PBS FRONTLINE, Toronto Star, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, NBC News, and Smithsonian Channel. These partners will provide additional funding and support for reporting projects, and will distribute the content, which will include documentaries, newspaper series and digital projects. The project will culminate in a travelling exhibit staged in two shipping containers – built in collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada – which will travel around North America to key hubs of global commerce.
MSC contribution
MSC Professors Stefano Ponte and Hans Krause Hansen participate participate in the project and will contribute with their expertise in governance and global value chains. Together with the other research partners in the project, they will conduct a series of supply chain roundtables designed to highlight and explore critical governance themes of relevance to the project.
The project runs for seven years, 2018 – 2025, and is based at the Global Reporting Centre, the University of British Columbia in Canada. Read more about the project on the website of the Global Reporting Centre. For more information about the MSC contribution to the project, please contact Stefano Ponte, spo.msc@cbs.dk.
Global mobility of employees (GLOMO)
The Horizon 2020 project, GLOMO, focuses on understanding global mobility into EU countries and within the EU and its impact on careers.
The objectives of the project are
- “to systematically generate knowledge about the mobility phenomenon and its implications (success factors, effects and added value);
- provide trainings to (further) develop early-stage and senior researchers understanding the complex multidisciplinary phenomenon of mobility, and
- suggest relevant implications for individuals, organisations, the European societies and economies”.
MSC Associate Professor Mette Zølner is the GLOMO coordinator at CBS.
Sub-projects
GLOMO is divided into 15 sub-projects, each undertaken by a PhD student employed by the project. Two PhD students are hosted by MSC and both are supervised by Mette Zølner. The two PhD projects are:
- Kerstin Martel: “Creating identity: A narrative approach”
- Ivan Vulchanov: “Managing language perspectives on an international career: A study in MNCs with English as corporate language”
Project organisation
Professor Dr Maike Andresen from the University of Bamberg, Germany, is the overall coordinator of GLOMO, which has eight partner institutions from six EU countries. The project has received funding from the European Union’s H2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 765355. It started in January 2018 and will run for 48 months.
A kick-off workshop was held in Hamburg in September where all 15 early stage researchers and their supervisors met for critical discussion and exchange of ideas about their shared topic of global mobility. The next project meeting will be held at CBS on January 21-25, 2019.
Read more about GLOMO and its sub-projects on the project website: www.glomo.eu .
For further information about the MSC contribution, please contact Mette Zølner, mz.msc@cbs.dk.
Commodifying Compassion (CoCo)
Commodifying Compassion: Implications of Turning People and Humanitarian Causes into Marketable Things
The project:
Commodifying Compassion seeks to understand how ‘helping’ has become a marketable commodity and how this impacts humanitarianism symbolically and materially. An international team of researchers funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research will examine ethical consumption intended to benefit humanitarian causes from the perspectives of consumers, businesses, NGOs and recipients.
This is the first project to include the cause beneficiaries’ regimes of value as an important component in understanding the ethical dilemmas of ‘helping.’ The research will produce a better understanding by humanitarian organizations and businesses leading to more ethical fundraising, donors weighing consumption-based models as part of more effective aid, and consumers making more informed choices about ‘helping’ by buying brand aid products.
Commodifying Compassion will explore the dynamics of consumption for a humanitarian cause in three different contexts where humanitarianism has been a realm traditionally dominated by the state (Denmark), the church (Italy) and the market (United States).
Project team:
- Lisa Ann Richey, Professor of Globalization, MSC, CBS
- Mette Fog Olwig, Associate Professor, Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University
- Alexandra Cosima Budabin, Senior Researcher, Human Rights Center, University of Dayton
- Maha Rafi Atal, Postdoc, MSC, CBS
- Mie Vestergaard, postdoc, Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University
- Sofie Elbæk Henriksen, PhD student, MSC, CBS
The grant:
The project is funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research and runs from 2017 to 2021.
For more information about the project, please visit the project website or contact project coordinator, Professor of Globalisation Lisa Ann Richey, lri.msc@cbs.dk .
Major completed projects (past five years)
The project:
SUSTEIN (SUStainable TEa INfrastructures) focuses on localized translations of transnational sustainability standards in Kenya, United Arab Emirates and corporate headquarters in Europe to advance our understanding of the global value chain of certified tea. The theoretical objective is to venture beyond the notion of global value chain by way of deploying the novel concept of infrastructure. We assume that this lead concept will allow us to better comprehend the recursive loops and contingent causes and effects in global supply chains/global infrastructures.
SUSTEIN consists of three subprojects, which each addresses a core question posed by the project:
A) How does certification shape agrarian production in the form of cultivation and factory processing? Who benefits from which sustainability standards?
B) How does certification influence the valuation of tea, assessed in terms of taste, grade and price? How is the value of certification performed and capitalized?
C) How do corporate professionals and independent auditors distinguish between "sustainable/unsustainable"? What lines of evidence are recognized?
The SUSTEIN project team will be collaborating closely with researchers at cbsCSR as well as at the Centre for Business and Development Studies both of which are located at MSC.
The project team
- Associate Professor Martin Skrydstrup, (project leader)
- Postdoc Hannah Elliott
- Assistant Professor Matthew Archer
The grant
SUSTEIN is funded by a Sapere Aude Starting Grant, awarded by the Danish Council for Independent Research (DFF). The SUSTEIN project runs from 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2020.
Find out more about the project on the BOS blog and on the project website.
For further information about the project, please contact Martin Skrydstrup, msk.msc@cbs.dk.
Community Health Innovation: Platform Development and New Models for Preventive Care (PreCare)
The project focuses on developing preventive health care solutions. Key tasks in the project include the development of a health data platform and the establishment of an E-doctor organization based on the Epical Care Model (ECM). The project has received funding from Innovation Fund Denmark and includes partners from Region Zealand, Odsherred Municipality, Roche, DTU, Urgent Agency, and Manchester Business School. Project period: 1 Januar 2018 - 30 November 2018.
The MSC contribution to PreCare
MSC contributes to the PreCare project with knowledge on population health management, value-based healthcare, and Pay-for-Success (PFS) models. Moreover, CBS participates in the development of education and communication material based on the experiences from the PreCare project. Professor Esben Rahbek Gjerdrum Pedersen is the core MSC participant in the project.
Report reviewing Pay-for-Success Models
Researchers from the PreCare project have finalised a report (September 2018), which provides an overview of Pay for Success (PFS), an innovative financing and contracting model for improving social outcomes. The report focuses especially on the potentials of PFS models to promote innovative, outcomes-based health services.
The report can be accessed here: Pay for Success Literature Review - a PreCare Report
Practitioner document
As a part of the PreCare project, Esben Rahbæk and Mikkel Munksgaard have developed a guideline-document (June 2020, in Danish) for social impact bonds in Denmark. The report showcases that social impact bonds can be used to utilize innovation within preventive healthcare and user-centric services. Additionally, it provides a step-by-step guide to how practitioners may develop and implement these programs. The report builds on data from international databases and learnings from the PreCare-project.
The report can be accessed here: Sociale investeringsprogrammer i Sundhedsvæsenet
Analysis of new health partnerships
The following document analyzes the emergence of new accelerated health partnerships formed in the beginning of the covid19-crisis in Denmark. It concludes that these partnerships differ significantly from traditional health partnerships. The analysis builds on a review of 62 new partnerships formed between March 2020 and June 2020. The document is in Danish.
The document can be accessed here: Nye Sundhedspartnerskaber
For more information about the project, visit the PreCare project site or contact Esben Rahbek Gjerdrum Pedersen at ergp.msc@cbs.dk.
The project
People Oriented Transport and Mobility (POTM) holds a great promise for tackling some of the most persistent urban and peri-urban sustainable mobility challenges of EU cities. Researchers, practitioners and policy makers alike are well aware of the potential achievable by improving citizens-driven mobility. However, the current research and innovation framework provides insufficient evidence and solutions. Cities-4-People brings to light new innovative solutions by the multidisciplinary consortium to introduce a community-driven POTM framework based on participatory, inclusive and transparent citizens-driven innovation processes. We further the understanding of EU citizens needs and co-create new mobility solutions with citizens harnessing digital and social innovation.
Based on local citizens communities and supported by cross-disciplinary teams and a comprehensive suite of collaborative technologies (both online and offline), citizens along with public and private city stakeholders co-develop concepts and endorse concrete solutions – inspired by shared and connected mobility. The best solutions have been tested in pilots and scale ups across 5 different EU urban areas with rich diversity in terms of size, population density and socio-economic context. In parallel, the project introduced an open process to co-develop a shared set of definitions, metrics, indicators and methods to guide POTM impact assessment that places, for the first time, the citizen in the centre. We believe that this work acts as the first open standard in POTM and introduces a new way for the structuring of this virgin field of research and practice.
Collaborative partners:
General Assembly of Budapest, White research SPRL, Oxfordshire county, University College London (UCL), Stichting Waag Society, Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, KTI institute for transport sciences non-profit LTD., HafenCity Universität Hamburg, e-trikala SA Development Company, Uskudar municipality, Q-Plan international advisors EPE, Istanbul University.
Grant:
The project is funded by an EU Horizon 2020 grant and runs from 2017 to 2020.
Project publications:
- Big Messages - lessons for co-creative mobility initiatives in neighbourhoods: the Cities-4-People project was involved in co-writing this publication with 3 other neighbourhood projects. The publication highlights lessons learned and both challenges and opportunities in co-creating mobility solutions in urban environments. Learn more and read the publication here.
- CIVITAS Research Projects, Lessons Learned 2016-2020: This publication from CIVITAS showcases the key lessons learned from six CIVITAS Research and Innovation Action (RIA) projects funded since 2016: Cities-4-People, METAMORPHOSIS, Mobility Urban Values, PROSPERITY, SUITS, and SUMPs-Up. These projects formed two broad clusters – neighbourhood mobility planning projects and projects working on Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs). Learn more and read the publication here
For more information about the project, please visit the project website or contact coordinator at MSC, Luise Noring, ln.msc@cbs.dk.
New Partnerships for Sustainability (NEPSUS)
The project:
Based in Tanzania, the NEPSUS project (New Partnerships for Sustainability) seeks to explain the formation of complex partnerships in natural resource management and establish whether and how they lead to better and more equitable sustainability outcomes in comparison to simpler forms of partnerships. Three natural resource sectors in Tanzania - wildlife, coastal resources and forestry - are studied by a multidisciplinary team with the purpose of making structured comparisons of the forms of complexity involved. The central research questions of the project are:
- RQ1: Complexity
Investigating determining factors; geographical contexts; social networks. - RQ2: Processes
Focusing on different kinds of partnerships; forms of legitimacy; participatory processes. - RQ3: Sustainability outcomes
Aspects of environmental and socio-economic outcomes; synergies and trade-offs; conflict and cooperation.
The project team:
The project team consists of researchers from the partner institutions: the University of Dar es Salaam, the Univeristy of Sheffield, Roskilde University and Copenhagen Busienss School. Professor Stefano Ponte, MSC, and Senior Lecturer, Dr Christine Noe, University of Dar es Salaam, are project coordinators.
The grant:
NEPSUS is funded by the the Danish Foreign Ministry, the Consultative Research Committee for Development Research (FFU), and runs from April 2016 to March 2020.
For further information about the project and the project partners, visit the project website, www.nepsus.info, or contact Stefano Ponte, sp.msc@cbs.dk
A specific project scope is to acquire a deeper understanding of tourists from emerging tourist countries (TETC) with special focus on Chinese tourists, by developing a formalized framework that investigates travel motivations, goals as well as mental pictures that TETC tourists have of Denmark as a tourist destination. This approach is accompanied by a complementary analysis of performance drivers of the tourism industry that enables us to measure the competitiveness and growth potential of the Danish tourism industry.
Another vital scope is to integrate the aforementioned novel theoretical framework into “a segment-based data collection platform” enabling the intelligent analysis of complex and diverse intercultural segments of potential TETC, by employing state-of-the-art machine learning technologies. This can provide an efficient “segment-specific” communication strategy to attract more TETC tourists to Denmark. The project further proposes a process to tailor Danish tourism offerings to different types of potential TETC.
Finally, the project provides insights into the exciting possibility of spill-over effects on Danish exports in the tourist’s home country.The current project specifically focuses on Chinese tourists. Whereas the Danish tourism industry has previously studied Chinese tourists visiting Scandinavia through Chinavia, they have never investigated potential tourist segments that have NOT yet chosen Denmark as a tourist destination. The current project specifically focuses on identifying the potential segments from the overall Chinese market which have never been studied. The project investigates mental representations of Denmark as a tourist destination per segment, which facilitates improvement and better management of ‘Denmark’ images, held by Chinese tourists. The project also studies spillover effects of the tourism experience on the export businesses by studying how Chinese tourism experience in Denmark can change their images of Denmark as a product origin, and thus affect consumption behaviors among Chinese consumers in their home country.
Project members:
Copenhagen Business School:
- Alexander Josiassen, Project Leader, Professor & Director of Center for Tourism & Culture Management, Dept. of Marketing
- Fumiko Kano Glückstad, Project Manager, Associate Professor, Center for Tourism & Culture Management, Dept. of Management, Society & Communication
Technical University of Denmark:
- Mikkel N. Schmidt, Technical Manager, Associate Professor, Section for Cognitive Systems, DTU Compute
- Morten Mørup, Associate Professor, Section for Cognitive Systems, DTU Compute
Industrial Partners:
- Visit North Sealand
- Visit Carlsberg
- Wonderful Copenhagen
- Visit Denmark
Contact: Alexander Josiassen, aj.marktg@cbs.dk, or Fumiko Kano Glückstad, fkg.msc@cbs.dk. Website: http://sf.cbs.dk/umami
The overall objective of the Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives in the Cotton Value Chains of South Asia project is to analyze:
• How multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSI) for sustainable cotton production are formulated, implemented, and monitored in the cotton value chains of South Asia; and
• whether the processes through which MSIs are institutionalized in South Asia make any difference to the income, work, and environmental conditions of cotton farmers and on-farm workers in this region.
These objectives will be achieved through the development of a theoretical framework that analyzes the processes through which sustainable cotton MSIs emerge, how they are institutionalized in different institutional contexts in the developing world, and how a variety of global forces (MSIs in global value chains (GVCs)) and local forces (national institutional contexts, local industrialization strategies, and the agency of workers/farmers) co-determine cotton producers’/on-farm workers’ income, work, and environmental conditions in developing countries. The framework is then applied to a comparative study of the evolution of the world’s largest sustainable cotton MSI – the Better Cotton Initiative - and its effects in South Asia (India and Pakistan).
Contact person: Associate Professor Peter Lund-Thomsen
The ‘Successful African Firms and Institutional Change’ (in short SAFIC) project investigates how and why African firms are able to be successful in changing business and institutional environments. The project partners include Copenhagen Business School, Centre for Business and Development Studies (lead), Roskilde University, Department of Globalization and Society, University of Dar es Salaam, Business School, University of Nairobi, Institute for Development Studies and University of Zambia, Department of Geography and Environmental Science.
The project will contribute to the capacity building of the involved African universities among senior researchers and graduating 5 PhD scholars and 21 Master students in the field.
The project was initiated on 1 January 2012 and is expected to end on 30 September 2018.
For more information, contact Søren Jeppesen
The prevalence of overweight and obesity across Europe has increased dramatically in the last thirty years, particularly among children. The full consequences of this epidemic have yet to unfold, with an expected increase in a range of both physical ailments and mental health conditions including anxiety and depression. These are accompanied by huge social, health service and economic costs: they affect individuals in the midst of their working lives, impoverishing families through time lost at work and impaired employment prospects. Stress, compounded by social stigma and prejudice in workplace, educational and health care contexts, adds to the pressures on families and employment, and can enhance the vicious cycle of weight‐gain through “comfort eating.
For more information, please contact: Professor Lucia Reisch
The “I4S” Initial Training Network is designed to study sustainability-driven innovation (SDI) in support of the European Union’s strategic commitment to ‘smart, sustainable and inclusive growth’. Preliminary research and prospective studies suggest that SDI involves management competences and organisational capabilities rarely found in traditional business-led, technology-driven innovation. It draws on new platforms of actors or a blend of social and business innovation. It can also lead to new business models that create and capture value, providing for performance in economic, environmental and social terms (including models drawn from nature which can be used as inspiration for innovation)
For more information, contact Andreas Rasche
The Global Values project aims to develop a comprehensive and innovative framework for assessing the impact that Multinational Corporations (MNCs) have on issues like sustainable development, human rights, transparency and anti-corruption. The project will shed light on institutional arrangements; analyse systems of governance for responsible business practices; explore responsible competitiveness; assess the complementarity of public and private sector activities; and derive recommendations for decision makers in business, policy and NGOs.
For more information, please contact: Lucia Reisch
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
Global English as an international business language: the significancee of the mother tongue for speech production, reception and association
It is the main purpose of the project to test if the culture-bound mental universe connected with the mother tongue affects the production and understanding of English phrases by non-native English speakers - and if so, to identify which kinds of influence are manifested. The empirical data is derived from groups of 25 business people from China, Japan, Russia, Spain and Denmark, respectively. It is investigated how they perform various requests in English and how they understand variations of English texts typically associated with cultural encounters in the business world and its channels of communication (text messages, voice mail, e-mail and short memoranda). It is also tested how their associative networks function when confronted with English words. The results from the three tests will be compared with the results from similar tests conducted with a control group of 25 native speakers of British English. In order to increase comparability and make the context as realistic as possible, all participants work in the Carlsberg Group, or a company cooperating with Carlsberg.
The project was funded by the Carlsberg Foundation and ended in 2018.
Contact: Per Durst-Andersen, pd.ibc@cbs.dk
With the overall goal of uncovering the obstacles and prospects that exist in Europe for a sustainable green economy the EU-InnovatE project strives to uncover the underlying factors, challenges and opportunities linked with the transition towards a sustainable society from an economic, social and environmental point of view. Co-financed by the European Union the project endeavors to tackle this area of concern by focusing on how user-centred and user-driven Integration, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship can positively influence our transition towards a greener economy. Not only because user-driven change remains an area of largely untapped potential, but also because it at the moment remains a mostly unexplored research area.
For more information, please contact: Lucia Reisch
The FairSpeak research group at IBC develops tools and methods for analysing the condensed information found on food labels and for relating it to the ability of different consumers to understand it. Some of the key questions that the FairSpeak project addresses are:
How do single items on a food label catch the attention and how does the ever-present time pressure influence the process prior to a buying decision?
Do average consumers - respectively consumers below or beyond average - react differently to labels and claims?
Does unfair commercial practice expressed or suggested by words, text, pictures, labels and icons on the package deceive all consumers or are some particularly vulnerable to such practice?
Which general fair-speak guidelines could help industry as well as consumers and authorities?
Researchers specialising in language and cognition, knowledge management, consumer behaviour, packaging design, marketing and marketing law have joined efforts in this innovative and interdisciplinary cooperation in order to formulate guidelines to help food manufacturers improve their communication with the consumers through fair food labelling.
The group’s first project on food names and claims “Spin or Fair Speak – when foods talk” (2007-2013) was financed by the Programme Commission on Food and Health under the Danish Council for Strategic Research. This project was completed in 2013. Follow-up projects have applied the principles and methods identified by the Danish project to other markets, languages and cultures and develop them further - starting with a selection of some of the export markets relevant to the Danish companies participating in FairSpeak.
Further information about the project on: www.fairspeak.org
IBC Researchers involved in the project:
Viktor Smith , associate professor (project leader)
Henrik Selsøe Sørensen , associate professor.
Further researchers from CBS involved in the project:
Jesper Clement, assistant professor, Department of Marketing, CBS
Peter Møgelvang-Hansen, professor, Department of Law, CBS.
Contact: Viktor Smith, lektor (project leader), vs.msc@cbs.dk.
Mistra Future Fashion I
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 and Associate Professor Wencke Gwozdz
DanTermBank: 'Etablering af en dansk term- og vidensbank'
The aim of the project was to develop methods for automatic knowledge extraction, automatic construction and updating of ontologies. In the project methods were developed for automatic merging of terminological data from various existing sources, as well as methods for target group oriented knowledge dissemination.
The research carried out in the project was a prerequisite for establishing a national Danish term bank which can ensure development and quality of Danish LSP. When the term bank has been established, it will form the basis for various other research projects. The first phase of the project was supported by the Velux Foundation and ended in 2014.
Read more about the project at www.dantermbank.cbs.dk .
Contact: Bodil Nistrup Madsen, bnm.msc@cbs.dk.
Cognitive Analysis and Statistical Methods for Advanced Computer Aided Translation (CASMACAT)
This project sought to advance computer-aided translation, and integrate novel models into a new open source workbench, in order to improve productivity of human translators by addressing their needs for the right type of assistance at the right time. An important objective of the CASMACAT project was to gain insight into the cognitive processes involved in human translation. Relying on key logging and eye-tracking, we studied translator behaviour in computer-aided translation, and investigated the usefulness of visualisation options in post-editing and interactive translation, for different types of text, for different language pairs, and for translators with different degrees of expertise. The findings of this first stage provided the theoretical background for the CASMACAT work on interactive translation prediction and interactive editing, and were crucial for the development of the adaptable CASMACAT workbench. Based on the cognitive user model, it anticipates user behaviour and tailor visualisation to the users’ immediate needs.
The project was funded by the EU and ended in 2014. Partners: University of Edinburgh, Universitat Politècnica de València, Celer Soluciones, and Copenhagen Business School. Members from CBS (IBC): Arnt Lykke Jakobsen, Michael Carl and Christopher Teplovs.
Project website: http://www.casmacat.eu