International business ethics and sustainability

A Foundation Professorship for International Business Ethics and Sustainability was established at the Cologne Business School in cooperation with the Dr. Jürgen Meyer Foundation at the beginning of 2011. The Foundation is an independent, non-profit foundation with its headquarters in Cologne.
According to the will of the deceased benefactor, the entrepreneur Dr. Jürgen Meyer, who passed away in 2007, ethics in business life is the focus of the Foundation's purpose.

The Foundation Professorship deals with employees and managers from internationally operating companies who are confronted with economical ethical challenges in a variety of functions and situations. The study "Middle Management / The Invisible Top Performers" carried out in 2010/11 is intended to demonstrate the significance of middle management in Germany, the special requirements of this group of people as well as analysing their specific problems and working out recommendations for action for the characteristic problems recognised within this group of employees.

The Foundation has also defined the areas of Education and Research as focal points of its activities. All degree courses and different business departments at the Cologne Business School will be involved in order to already establish ethical questions and according management concepts during the education of future managers. Therefore, the up-and-coming managers should be accustomed to these specific requirements. With this integrative approach, the Foundation Professorship plays an innovative pioneering role in the German educational landscape.

Within the scope of these efforts, the Foundation will bestow the "CBS Ethics and Sustainability Award" for the first time this October, with the objective of supporting students who are involved with the topics of Business Ethics, Sustainability or Corporate Social Responsibility and the initiation of new social projects as well as supporting existing ones.

Prof. Dr. habil. Matthias Fifka has held the Foundation Professorship since April 2011. Following his doctorate in May 2004 on the subject of Company Associations in the USA, Dr. Fifka habilitated with a thesis on the subject of Corporate Citizenship in Germany and the USA in February 2011. In Teaching and Research, he works on Sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Governance as well as economical ethical questions and also business-government relationships. Furthermore, he has been a member of the German Bundestag Advisory Committee for the promotion programme "Social Responsibility in Small and Medium-Sized Companies" since July 2011.

Further information about the Dr. Jürgen Meyer Foundation is available here.