Main research topics
Today’s global society is confronted with grand societal challenges such as resource scarcity, social inequality or the climate crisis. Corporations are increasingly called upon to actively address these challenges.
Previous strategic approaches to this matter, such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) or sustainability management, place responsibility at the level of individual companies and are therefore not sufficiently effective in addressing grand challenges.
Both the academic literature and supranational organizations such as the United Nations (UN) or the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) refer to collective action as a promising approach for addressing social and environmental issues.
Collective action initiatives are collaborative, long-term cooperation processes between companies and other stakeholders with the objective to solve socially and entrepreneurially relevant problems. The JR Center CARe explores such collective action initiatives on the basis of the following five questions:
- What drives companies to engage in collective action initiatives?
- What basic conditions are suitable for the development of collective action initiatives?
- How can collective action initiatives be managed more effectively and what success factors can be identified?
- How can the success of collective action initiatives be measured?
- Where do collective action initiatives derive their legitimacy?