Back to Better: Leadership and Sustainability in a Post-Pandemic World

At this year's inauguration ceremony of the PhD program "Ethics and Responsible Leadership in Business", four new doctoral students were accepted into the program. Eleven graduates received their graduation documents.

 

Under the title "Leadership and Sustainability in a Postpandemic World", this year's inauguration ceremony of the doctoral program took place on October 15 as a hybrid event. The relevance of the topics of leadership and sustainability was reflected in the two practical presentations: Christian Paetzke, CEO of Roche Diagnostics Germany, explained in his presentation "Future of Leadership: Learnings from the Corona Pandemic" to what extent collaboration has changed since the beginning of the pandemic and saw the future of leadership and collaboration in agility. Markus Beckmann, Professor of Corporate Sustainability Management at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, spoke about what sustainability can look like in a post-pandemic world and argued, among other things, that not only efficiency but also resilience of systems must be a central criterion in the future.

Four new doctoral students were welcomed to the program: Cassandra Grützner, Usochi Ilozumba, Stephan Gebauer and Artur Klingbeil will conduct research on issues of business, corporate and leadership ethics in the coming years and regularly review their findings for practical applicability in dialog with representatives from business and practice. The scholarships are provided by the Karl Schlecht Foundation, which also finances the doctoral program, and the Stiftung der deutschen Wirtschaft. In addition, the HaVo Foundation awarded a scholarship to a doctoral student of the college for the first time this year. The HaVo Foundation, based in Ludwigshafen, was founded in 2008 by former BASF Board of Executive Directors and Supervisory Board Chairman Dr. Jürgen Hambrecht and Eggert Voscherau, who have long been associated with the WZGE.

At the end of the program, Lisa Schmalzried, scientific director of the program, ceremoniously presented eleven graduates with their certificates: Sabine Wiesmüller (3rd cohort), Adrian Gombert (4th cohort), Benedikt Kirner (4th cohort), Nils Kruse (4th Cohort), Raphael Ng (4th Cohort), Magdalena Wallkamm (4th Cohort), Gonzalo Conti (5th Cohort), Dijana Galijasevic (5th Cohort), Lili Jassemi (5th Year), Alexander Reese (5th Cohort) and Marie Schwimmer (5th Cohort).