Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability

Questions of sustainability, responsibility and ethics have moved to the forefront of technological in­novation, economic development, and global business conduct. In light of ever-more complex grand societal challenges – from climate change, ageing, energy transitions, all the way to the stability of global financial markets – business Schools around the world are responding to the growing demand of students, employers, and other stakeholders by putting these issues front and center.

TUM School of Management is no exception. Its Mission and Vision reflect the school’s deep institutional commitment to ethics, responsibility, and sustainability (ERS). As stated in the mission of the school, the School of Management seeks to “educate responsible talents and pursue relevant research” to “contribute to solutions for the grand societal challenges” of today’s highly technologized world. TUM School of Management recognizes that integrating principles of sustainability into business operations and finding ways to successfully balance economic with other societal objectives will be a critical skill for future business leaders and instrumental for achieving the necessary societal trust on which successful management practice will depend over the decades to come

Teaching

Education must be a key part of any strategy to imbue future entrepreneurs and business leaders with an appreciation for the ERS dimension of their work. As part of the school’s ERS strategy, we developed a range of curricula that raise awareness among our students aware for topics of responsible management, ethics and sustainability, and provide the necessary toolkit for students to become responsible future leaders who can successfully straddle economic, ecological, and moral constraints. The programs offered by the various chairs of TUM School of Management, inculcate ERS objectives into their study curriculum.

See full list of current ERS Courses

Education

Principles for Responsible Management Education’ (PRME) – a global movement transforming business and management education through research and leadership

Founded in 2007, the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) is a platform which brings educational sustainability to schools around the world. The United Nations-supported initiative leads the vision to create a global movement and drive thought leadership on responsible management education to advance sustainable development. To accomplish this, PRME has engaged over 800 business and management schools worldwide – TUM School of Management being one of them.

We are committed to delivering responsible management education based on high-level research. Over the last years, the TUM School of Management has been integrating sustainability in all areas of teaching, research and procedures. Operating within a technical university grants us as a management school the opportunity to interlink different disciplines and contribute to TUM’s mission to create a holistic strategy to act as a roadmap for our sustainability journey. The goal is to exploit the full sustainability potential of TUM across all key action areas, ranging from research and teaching to entrepreneurship, campus and operations. TUM School of Management Dean Prof. Dr. Gunther Friedl explains: “Together with our colleagues we are able to contribute to solutions to the grand societal challenges, such as climate change, digitization, infrastructure, urbanization and food security. We believe that we can benefit society with our research and the education of individuals who will become tomorrow’s leaders. This report presents details of our commitment to society, responsible management education and outreach. We are proud of how much we have achieved so far. In the coming years, we will develop an overarching sustainability strategy and further deepen our commitment to the core values of the UN-PRME initiative.

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Research

As a school, we are driven by the passion to contribute with our research to solutions for the grand societal challenges of our time, such as climate change, the digital transformations, sprawling urbanization, or food and energy security. We have a strong and internationally recognized footprint of research and promote research in these domains, as well as in responsible management practices. In the period from 2014 – 2015, researchers at the school published 67 papers in peer-reviewed journals. More than half of these papers had some kind responsible management, ethics, or sustainability focus, underscoring the central role ERS plays in the School’s research identity. To quantify our ERS research activities, we purposefully modified its university-internal publication management platform to keep track of ERS relevant publications by faculty members.

Part of our goal is to facilitate research that makes business processes more environmentally friendly and therefore more sustainable, as discussed in the below examples. Moreover, we actively engage in research on responsible leadership and ethical business practices. Our researchers reach out to companies to transfer the know-how created at the university and thereby aim to have a positive impact on processes in the industry and the mindsets of decision makers. Another pillar of our approach to foster ERS research is interdisciplinarity, which we encourage in accordance with its strategic position on the interface between business and technology.

See full list of ERS Publications

Partnership

It started with the development of an all-wheel drive for rural Africa. Today, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) are joining forces to create a Partnership for Innovation and Sustainable Development, particularly related to water, energy, environment, mobility, and global health. Building on a successful relationship, KNUST and TUM act together as change agents in the world combining capacity development with direct action aiming at an immediate as well as sustainable impact.

As a school, we are driven by the passion to contribute with our research and education of responsible talents to solutions for the grand societal challenges of our time, such as climate change, the digital transformations, sprawling urbanization, or food and energy security. Within our partnership with KNUST, several interdisciplinary projects have been established between researchers at the TUM School of Management and various faculties of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

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Institutional Activities

The School has launched various initiatives to strengthen Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability as a core part of its identity.

• UN Principles for Responsible Management Education
• Peter Löscher Chair of Business Ethics
• Munich Lecture in Business Ethics
• The Munich Center for Technology in Society
• CO2 Footprint Measurement

See full description of the Institutional Activites offered 

As part of a university, most of the codes and committees on ethics take place on university level. We would like to give an overview about the various relevant codes and committees we adhere to.

• TUM Code of Conduct
• Good Scientific Practice
• Ombudspersons