Venice International University Summer School for Doctoral Students

 Organizing for Sustainable Futures: Micro and Macro-institutional Conditions of Transformation from June 5 – 8, 2023

#wehavetobemany – and participating in the Summer School on Organizing for Sustainable Futures 2023 was super exciting:

17 doctoral students from different countries participated, and we discussed and provided feedback.

The topics ranged from #circularity, sustainable #finance and #accounting, #tensionmanagement in oil and gas companies in the face of the #climatecrisis, #cultural practices, and #corporate social responsibility, among many others.

Prof. Vallaster’s lecture focused on “Transforming into a circular economy: Hybridity of organizations and related challenges to overcome”.

Linear economic thinking (“throwaway economy”), which follows an expansive economic model and is geared towards limitless growth, is reaching its limits: climate crisis, scarcity of resources or loss of biodiversity are just examples of the challenges that the society has to overcome. The circular economy (compared to the linear economic model) is a model of production and consumption in which existing materials and products are used as sparingly as possible, i.e. shared, leased, reused and recycled for as long as possible. Searching for new ways of doing business that fosters a transformation towards a circular economy comes with a wide array of managerial challenges. New forms of so-called hybrid organisations are emerging at the intersection of business, charity and politics emerge, which all have to manage the blending of identities, forms or logics that at first glance do not fit together: for example, conflict is bound to occur in the combination of pursuing for-profit and social-ecological objectives. This presentation addresses the major question as to what kind of conflicts occur due to the hybrid nature of organizations and how to overcome them in the context of circularity, specifically when it comes to forming new B2B relations.