For the second time, doctoral students from the "Ethics and Responsible Leadership in Business" doctoral program have successfully completed a field project with Volkswagen AG.
Sub-Saharan Africa is a big potential market for western based companies. This is particularly true for large automotive groups such as Volkswagen AG. However, every new business model can harbor the risk of unintended negative effects. In the spirit of good corporate social responsibility, companies should use their resources to identify, address and ideally prevent these possible side effects.
In the joint field project with Volkswagen AG, the doctoral students focused on the topic of "new mobility services": Many already established providers are confronted with the accusation of increasing the risk of sexual harassment through their offers. The aim of the field project was therefore to firstly identify the causes of the problem, secondly to develop effective prevention strategies and thirdly to determine the contributions that companies can make. For this purpose, interviews with international experts from companies as well as from civil society organizations were conducted on the basis of intensive research. As a result, the team of doctoral students was able to show concrete starting points for entrepreneurial action.
The project was carried out from December 2019 to April 2020 under the academic direction of Prof. Dr. Philipp Schreck. The PhD students Gonzalo Conti, Dijana Galijasevic, Hannah Schragmann and Jacqueline Zimmermann formed the project team.