The Center for Sustainable Economic and Corporate Policy (ZNWU) in Darmstadt is an institute of the Business Department of the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences (h_da) [Darmstadt Business School]. The ZNWU sees itself as an integral part of the university. The institute aims to increase the university’s research output and to sharpen the profile of the Business Department in research and teaching.
The ZNWU is guided by the idea that economic activity makes a declared contribution to the common good of this and future generations. The ZNWU brings together some of the business and economic research activities of the Department of Economics. These are primarily activities in which individual and macroeconomic issues are examined in the context of developments in society as a whole. The focus is therefore on the interplay between social and organization-specific transformation and expectation-formation processes.
Only “with the economy” will society be able to overcome the numerous ecological and social challenges of the coming decades and establish more sustainable forms of resource use and creation. Likewise, only with the help of society and the public will the economy and its organizations be able to overcome their specific internal challenges. In recent decades, there has been a dominance of economic categories that is increasingly perceived as problematic. This is not only posing ever greater challenges for politics and civil society. The decoupling of economic control cycles from overall social objectives is also becoming a problem in the control and management of organizations, and one that managers in particular are feeling the effects of in change processes. Rapid technological progress does indeed create pressure and innovation dynamics, but this dynamic is increasingly perceived as being socially embedded.
An important focus of the ZNWU is on organizations that are active in or contribute to economic life, but pursue complex objectives and meet requirements. They act as infrastructure for other economic sectors (as in the case of energy and financial companies), set goals that go beyond pure profit-seeking (as in the case of cooperatives and public companies, but also in the case of private institutions with the aim of contributing to public value creation) or provide framework conditions for sustainable economic growth (as in the case of public administrations). German society in particular is characterized by a high level of organizational diversity. Entrepreneurial action and innovation are often interpreted very differently. We see this as a strength of our society that is potentially of international interest.