For a long time, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainable Management have been regarded as add-on topics in the field of business administration. We are here to change this! Sustainability has been considered somehow important for a while now but it never (or only very rarely) reaches the core of management practice. Businesses have mainly followed a defensive approach directed at compliance and sponsoring. However, the tide seems to be changing: global issues such as climate change or limited resources, as well as mega trends such as digitalization and automation, are leading to a substantial transformations of markets.
Innovators around the globe disrupt traditional business models by the second. Thus, the question of how to sustainably manage an organization becomes crucial for the survival of companies. What we need is systemic sustainable management for the whole company and this requires courageous change-makers and responsible business leaders to “walk the talk” and clear the path for a new management paradigm. CASM aims at contributing to the development of systemic sustainable management by educating young professionals, creating knowledge and bringing together people who believe in the same mind-set.
This management paradigm does not only affect how we define the relationship between business and society. It changes the way we conduct business in the 21st century. Finding new strategies, processes and instruments to shift this paradigm lies at the core of CASM’s work. We believe that only if businesses and academia rethink how business works, it will be possible to adequately educate and prepare our leaders of the future. As businesses need to change, so does management education.
This vision has been the key for building up a motivated team of young researchers and motivated lecturers. Together we strive to find innovative partners around the world to generate a global impact on academia, businesses and society. Making sustainable management the new normal drives us as a team. We aim to advocate for a new management sector which sees no contradiction in being profitable and having a positive impact on society. Only if we are able to overcome this trade-off mentality, it will be possible to successfully tackle global challenges.
Since CASM’s founding in 2016, we have made valuable connections with people from around the globe that think and act in a similar direction. We were able to establish strong relationships with key companies in the field of sustainable management as well as with chambers of commerce, ministries, NGOs, think tanks and leaders locally and internationally. Together, we are working towards making sustainability the new norm in business practice and management education.