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Copenhagen Business School
Greta Thunberg has become the Joan of Arc of climate action. Millions idolize her, while others are downright enraged by her. But how did a 16-year-old girl have this effect? And how did she – and not researchers – succeed in making global warming and other climate challenges the hot topics of our time? CBS WIRE explores the Greta Thunberg effect.
CBS can do more to improve its research communication. This includes supporting its researchers in strengthening their communication skills, as well as giving researchers time to focus on third-party communication, argues the Head of Analysis at the Think Tank DEA. She believes an overemphasis on the number of published articles is a barrier to better communication.
“Luck is not a business model” – these are apparently the words of the American celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain. But if luck isn’t a business model, where does that leave us? In this podcast, you’ll meet Thomas Ritter, professor at the Department of Strategy and Innovation at CBS. He has researched companies, and how they earn money, for pretty well all his life, and he’s certainly the man to consult about Business Models.
It is too difficult to figure out what research CBS researchers do, if you ask Mette Fjord Sørensen, Head of Research, Higher Education and Diversity at the Confederation of Danish Industry. And at a time when natural sciences are in the spotlight, humanities and social sciences need to step up and show how they can be useful to society and companies, she argues.
Diversity is a vital aspect of disrupting and innovating, but you cannot acquire it simply by hiring a diverse work force, argue Florence Villeséche and Alex Klinge, researchers at CBS. As co-organizers of this year’s Diversity Day on October 8, they are aiming to investigate how diversity and innovation go hand in hand and what role research plays in making diversity a success.
Two CBS alumni have started the company Matter Pension, which invests people’s pensions sustainably. “When asked if they are interested in financing global warming, most people say no. But most pensions give them no choice,” says co-founder Emil Stigsgaard Fuglsang. An expert in pensions at CBS explains that pension companies are playing a major role in the green transition and have made large investments over the past few years.
Two CBS researchers claim that writing articles no one cares to read is a waste of time and money. The Dean of Research at CBS, Søren Hvidkjær, disagrees, arguing that conducting research implies that you don’t always make useful discoveries. However, he admits that CBS should be better at showing how society benefits from CBS research.
Rankings of researchers and universities are based on the number of scientific articles published. And that’s a huge problem, argue two CBS researchers. They think researchers should also be measured on their ability to conduct and disseminate research valuable to society. One of the researchers is taking the matter to the Minister for Higher Education and Science.
The phenomenon of flight shame is spreading, but researchers don’t know why we feel like this or what the consequences of it are. Assistant Professor Florian Kock from CBS is going to investigate the nagging feeling that, according to him, can end up making even more people choose to fly. It’s quite paradoxical.
CBS’ three PhD schools are facing reorganization as they merge into one by January 1, 2020. According to the Dean of Research it’s a “natural” consequence of department mergers in recent years and part of strengthening CBS’ PhD environment which has suffered from a drop in the number of students.
So far, the REFLOW project has taken up most of Associate Professor Cristiana Parisi’s time. Weekends, holidays, spare time, work time. And she’s totally fine with it. The project involves 27 partners and covers 10 European countries, with the aim of turning waste into a resource and making the six cities of Amsterdam, Berlin, Vejle, Paris, Milan and Cluj-Napoca in Romania circular. Also, the project is the largest of its kind at CBS.
“Five years ago, you wouldn’t see sustainability-related research published in the big, mainstream journals. Now it’s a natural part of them,” explains CBS Professor, Andreas Rasche. With the Director of CBS Sustainability, Jeremy Moon, he reflects on the outcomes of the five-year collaboration between the Velux Endowed Chair in Corporate Sustainability and the Governing Responsible Business World-Class Research Environment that just came to an end.
For this year’s Academy of Management conference in Boston, 88 people from CBS have been chosen to participate. This will cost about 300,000 kilograms of CO₂ if everyone goes by plane. The Dean of Research explains that they’ve started to track emissions from flight travel and have found that researchers appear to be skipping conference travel. We talked to one researcher who ditched this year’s AOM conference in order to reduce his carbon footprint.
Transgressive behavior in the public domain is being discussed far and wide. But how do you deal with it at a festival like Roskilde Festival? Two CBS researchers went to Roskilde to find out. They argue that transgressive behavior is becoming a question of crowd safety, which needs to be dealt with.
CBS has its first PhD association, PAC. It is initiated by PhD students who longed for a proper community to connect with, and a place to develop opinions and strategies for PhDs at CBS. And they also want to have fun.
Just like a fear of heights, people can have a fear of unfamiliar food and culture, also known as xenophobia. But do xenophobes even travel? Two tourism researchers from CBS investigated this question for the first time ever. And the surprising answer is yes. But they do it in a specific way! And a lot of us might have a slight tendency to suffer from tourism xenophobia, as the researchers call it.
The Independent Research Fund Denmark receives about a third fewer grant applications from women compared to men. At CBS, it’s even worse. The Vice Dean of Research at CBS argues that female scholars miss out on chances for promotion when not applying and thereby a possibility to bridge the huge gender gap at professor level.
The merger between the Department of Organization and parts of the former Department of Business and Politics resulted in a huge pile of books that no one wanted to use. They’d become discarded knowledge. That’s until three PhD students picked them up. Now, they’ve been turned into a piece of furniture.
If teachers want to be perceived as warm people, they should try adding a few smileys to their emails, argues Associate Professor at CBS, Antonia Erz. She’s just completed a research paper about the use of emojis in online communication between students and teachers and offers advice to colleagues on the matter – like why teachers should stay away from the winking smiley.
More funding for research is set aside for specific fields or types of research. This leaves less room for researchers to be innovative and can potentially turn universities into just “hotels for researchers,” argues Professor Majken Schultz. Together with the Committee on Science Policy from the Royal Academy of Science and Letters, she has written a white paper with recommendations on how to ensure freedom of research, which is otherwise at risk of becoming yet more controlled.