New nar­rat­ives for a non-lin­ear world: CBS sym­posi­um ex­plores aca­demia’s role in trans­formation

The point of departure was that facts, data and figures rarely move societies by themselves. In a world marked by ecological crises, political instability, technological acceleration and fragile institutions, knowledge needs to be embedded in stories that make action imaginable. For business schools, this is central to their role as social-scientific institutions that study organizations, markets, supply chains and public life before others (e.g., companies, politicians, consultants, social media or AI systems) turn complexity into powerful stories.

Opening the symposium, Morten Frederiksen, Dean of Research, Innovation and Societal Impact at CBS, welcomed participants to a conversation about the public responsibility of research. Leon Iden then framed the political-economic landscape through societal resilience under overwhelming uncertainty. He argued that crises have created mandates for public institutions: regulation, expertise, coordination and the ability to connect actors who would otherwise remain separate. Rather than viewing governance as either control or bottom-up emergence, he proposed the image of public governance as “shepherding”: guiding societies away from danger while keeping space for adaptation.

Julia Brune extended this path from linear control to non-linear transformation through the social-ecological landscape. Starting from climatic tipping points and planetary boundaries, she showed how dominant climate narratives often create a paralyzing “doomsday” feeling or remain trapped in incremental ideas of doing less harm. Her alternative was a narrative of social tipping: small interventions, groups and practices can reach critical mass and rapidly change norms, values and behaviour. In this view, academia can help replace despair with agency.

Andreas Wieland steered the discussion towards supply chain management. Using metaphors, he showed how different images of supply chains produce different ideas of resilience. The “metro map” metaphor suggests persistence and command-and-control. The “forest metaphor” metaphor suggests adaptability. The “dance floor” metaphor suggests transformability. Reimagining supply chains therefore means asking not only how to return to normal, but also how to enable safe-fail experimentation and guide transformation. He also discussed the role of social innovations in transforming supply chains, for instance in guiding their transition from fossil-based to fossil-free systems.

Robert Habeck connected academic narratives to the public sphere. He compared how narratives are built in academia and politics, emphasizing that successful narratives need to connect the dots built by facts. Using the contrast between “petrol states” and “electric states”, he showed how ecological alternatives need to be framed as economically beneficial for citizens if they are to become credible public projects. He also distinguished between narratives that divide and narratives that unify, suggesting that transformation depends on whether people can see themselves as part of a shared future.

Anton Shevchenko challenged sustainable supply chain management to widen its unit of analysis. Rather than starting from the buying firm and tracing suppliers upstream, he proposed a footprint perspective that begins in the localities where social and ecological impacts materialize. His example of palm oil and deforestation showed that cutting off a problematic supplier may clean up one firm’s supply chain while leaving the underlying harm untouched. Sustainable SCM, he argued, must become accountable to places, communities, regulators, workers, NGOs and ecosystems.

Kristian Steensen Nielsen shifted attention to behaviour, inequality and climate mitigation. He argued that the opposition between individual and system change is unproductive: individuals act within systems, but systems are also shaped by citizens, workers, parents, investors and communities. His presentation highlighted climate inequality (who causes emissions, who suffers consequences and who influences mitigation) and called for systematic behavioural data.

Christian Huber closed the speaker sequence by asking whether numbers speak for themselves. From option pricing and university rankings to climate targets and Scope 3 accounting, he showed that numbers do not simply represent reality. They can perform it. The challenge for academia is not to abandon calculation, but to use numbers critically to create better plots: narratives that make new protagonists, responsibilities and futures actionable.

Together, the symposium demonstrated the value of social science at a business school. Its speakers moved across political economy, ecology, supply chain metaphors, public narrative craft, footprint thinking, behavioural science and interpretive work on calculative practices. The message was clear: in a non-linear and interconnected world, academia cannot only analyse narratives after they have shaped reality. It must help develop them carefully, critically and imaginatively—before others do.