What if we used our size and resources to make this country and this earth an even better place for all of us: customers, Associates, our children, and generations unborn? What if the very things that many people criticize us for—our size and reach—became a trusted friend? Excerpt from ‘Leadership in the 21st Century’, speech by […]
Insights
Wonder Tech and the Institution of Gender
“I didn’t realize that I was a woman until I went to the US.” This was the rather arresting comment of a keynote speaker at the WonderTech Summit in Copenhagen, organized by a group of, mainly female, IT professionals. The speaker in question (a Senior Vice President of a leading MNC and leader of a women’s innovation […]
A Taxonomy of Sustainable Business Model Patterns
In recent years, so-called “sustainable business models” are increasingly gaining in importance in both practice and research.[1] There is hope that business models and business model innovation could, for instance, support the diffusion of ecologically and socially-beneficial products and services in the market.[2] Despite the growing interest, there still exists a lack of systematically-generated knowledge about the […]
Bottom-up Sustainability: Let’s make CBS the First Business School with a Green Community Currency!
In an earlier BOS article, Louise Thomsen from CBS PRME asked the question whether universities are falling behind on the green transition. We, as students, might not feel resourceful enough to bring up the debate about sustainable development and large-scale transitions. But in fact, we have tremendous possibilities to help our own institutions walk the walk […]
Is Social Media Redefining the Pursuit of Social Change?
Summary. Social media has become a battleground where NGOs with global perspectives, corporations and new digital social movements all fight to shape public opinion in the pursuit of social change. Though often criticized for the low quality of online deliberation, social media has become one of the primary avenues for diffusion of information, and increasingly […]
The Ethical Blindness of Corporate Sustainability
Corporate sustainability (and related concepts like ESG and materiality) have been reduced to discussions around financial value. This makes these concepts “ethically blind”. We are in need of a resurgence of business ethics, otherwise the endless discussions of the “business case” for sustainability will turn out to be the error at the heart of true […]
Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives and Legitimacy
Private governance in a globalized economy While it is difficult to dispute the benefits of globalization, the integration of production and trade has made it increasingly difficult for even highly developed nations to regulate activities that extend beyond their borders. For example, how do we decide who is responsible for the negative externalities of global […]
How two CBS Alumni are Selling Ugly Fruits and Veggies for a Change
Never seen a 3-legged carrot in real life? You might not be alone, because you can’t find crooked fruit and veggies in Danish supermarkets, where all produce has exactly the same size, shape and colour. Give this a thought or two more and you might ask yourself: what happens to all those cucumbers, potatoes and […]
Challenges & Opportunities in Local Textile Production
Today the progressive digitalization of the economy is shaping the way in which the fashion industry operates. The overarching discourse often highlights new technical concepts and currents trends of automatization and data exchange in manufacturing (the so-called fourth industrial revolution) as the primary sources of product and process innovation. However, while exploring organizational tensions in ‘local’ textile […]
Entrepreneurship: The solution to Africa’s youth unemployment crisis?
Small-scale entrepreneurial activities currently provide livelihoods to a large proportion of the youth population in sub-Saharan Africa. In spite of a promising rise of entrepreneurship, we should be careful not to celebrate youth entrepreneurship uncritically. Africa is teeming with business activity managed by young people. In cities and towns, young traders are touting their goods in […]