Within the framework of the professorship "Microeconomics of Competitiveness," practice-relevant studies on the competitiveness of Vienna as a business location will be carried out. Our companies benefit from this since a strong location is the basis for successful business.

As real estate developers, we have to deal with complex problems with social causes. In these cases, our firmly established values serve as our orientation. Recently however, these values have faded into the background in business life.

This is why it is so important to show students different approaches to business decisions that can and must be made. After all, long-term success can only be achieved in harmony with society and with concern for the individual and the environment.

This is why we are personally committed to making the Endowed Chair of Corporate Governance and Business Ethics an integral part of the academic program.

Berndorf AG is a group of companies operating in the metal industry, toolmaking and mechanical engineering. Today, more than sixty members of the Berndorf Group are active as production and service companies in over twenty countries. The company was founded in Berndorf in 1843.

The Berndorf Foundation has the mission of assuming social responsibility.

Berndorf AG and the Berndorf Private Foundation support charitable projects, initiatives and institutions, particularly in the fields of "entrepreneurship," "education" and "culture".

Manner supports the endowed professorship because the topics "values" and "ethics" also play a central role in our daily business. We want to set an example of how companies with high ethical codes can be competitive in the long term. This is why we are supporting the endowed chair to promote the inclusion of value management and ethics in university education.

We believe that future managers should be shown at an early stage that it is indeed possible to ensure the long-term and sustainable preservation of corporate value by following a code of ethics.

The term "ethics" was coined decades ago and has recently come back into focus in the context of various discussions about conventions and traditions.

Our company has always attached great importance to social ethics ⎯ we focus on human relations both internally and in relation to our customers. And in the implementation of business ethics, transparency and the creation of a win-win situation are two of our key criteria.

Ethics should be firmly anchored in the business world and receive much more attention than it currently receives.

Far-reaching changes in the economy and new challenges in the highly charged relationship between entrepreneurial activity and social development require both a genuine paradigm shift and a critical assessment of current values in many areas.

The initiative of FHWien der WKW to include an endowed professorship for corporate governance and business ethics in its academic programme for future managers in order to expand these central approaches is an important step. Its significance for the future cannot be overestimated.

As a responsible property developer, Kallco is proud to support this initiative.

We are convinced that each and every one of us can make a lasting difference, but that together we can achieve much more. We want to make shopping as easy as possible for our customers and, as a company, we act reliably and responsibly. Our core values include above all the conscious use of our valuable resources.

Sustainable business success can only be achieved by taking responsibility for society, nature and the environment. We also focus on this in our sustainability initiative "Today for Tomorrow".

As a reliable employer, we also bear responsibility towards our employees and create diverse, future-proof career paths and an environment in which they can grow in response to challenges, have confidence in themselves and make a difference. We know that we can only be as good as we set out to be together. That's why the partnership with FHWien der WKW is a clear investment in the future.

Dynamic changes in the business environment and in society as a whole require global companies to have a heightened sense of responsibility and entrepreneurial thinking on a large scale. And entrepreneurial thinking also means a sustainable way of thinking.

It is therefore a matter of concern to the Kapsch Group to actively support the anchoring of sustainability as a research and teaching discipline in the practice-oriented sciences of FHWien der WKW.