How can the economy become part of the solution to social challenges? What shape should the economic system take for this purpose? What responsibilities should companies be held accountable for? And what defines good leadership? – The aim of the international doctoral program “Ethics and Responsible Leadership in Business” is to promote research that develops scientifically well-founded, and practically applicable answers to these questions. The doctoral program is ideal for highly qualified, socially engaged, and globally thinking and active young scholars and practitioners from all over the world. These students are academically and financially supported during the course of their PhD projects. The Wittenberg-Center for Global Ethics (WCGE) hosts this doctoral program, and the Karl Schlecht Foundation (KSG) finances it.
The doctoral program, which is first of this kind in a German-speaking country, rests on four pillars: (1) It supports doctoral students with their research, which is supervised by leading professors of business, corporate, and leadership ethics. (2) Whilst completing their doctorates, the doctoral students attend various seminars and lectures relating to the study program. The study program provides them the opportunity to build a broad scientific and professional network. (3) Through an innovative dialog platform with field projects and jour fixes, doctoral students also gain access to partners in the field. Thereby, they can apply their own research into a broader social context and transfer it to current problems in the field. (4) The doctoral program supports doctoral students financially by awarding scholarships. Using this special structure, the doctoral program connects the findings by leading scholars, with the experience of decision-makers at international companies and the perspectives of non-state armed actors.