Biographical learning processes of Sustainability Entrepreneurs

Projekt: Dissertationsprojekt

Projektbeteiligte

  • Timm, Jana-Michaela (Wissenschaftliche Projektleitung)

Beschreibung

The private sector has been accounted for a key force in creating a sustainable world. Especially when it comes to finding creative solutions, the business world has to be involved, given its prominent role for economic activity of society on Planet Earth (Schaltegger 2002; Robinson 2004; Abrahamson 2006; Cohen & Winn 2007). For this, innovation, creativity and the ability to promote new business ideas towards sustainability within an existing enterprise or by starting up a new company have been identified to be crucial for the transition to a more sustainable world (Gerlach 2006; Abrahamson 2007b). Vital change agents driving sustainability innovation within established organisations are refered to as “Sustainability Intrapreneurs”, while people starting a new business with the goal of contributing to sustainability are called “Sustainability Entrepre-neurs”. In order to refer to both kinds of innovators at once the term “Sustainopreneurs” has been introduced by Schaltegger in 2000 and developed further for example by Gerlach (2003) and Abrahamsson (2007a).
However, by not only focussing on understanding Sustainopreneurs’ today’s characteristics or their motivations of doing business in a different way (compared to the “mainstream”), particularly the path of how becoming a Sustainopreneur is of interest for the presented research. A basic assumption is that these people have experienced a process that “made” them to Sus-tainopreneurs; they have not becoming Sustainopreneurs “just like this”. This process includes learning processes that take place throughout their lives and finally lead to being a Sustainopre-neur. This belief in “people learn when they go along” is in accordance with the social construc-tivist perspective.
In order to investigate learning processes, educational scientists have been discussing the biographical research approach (e.g. Fuchs 2012; Koller 2012). Especially the “educational theory-oriented biographical approach”, which is based on the more broader concept of the biographical approach, emphasises that people’s own interpretation reveals their learning processes, and, thus how they see themselves and the world around them (Fuchs 2011). To get greater insight into how people have developed in terms of becoming what they are and how they act, the autobiographical-narrative method has been identified as a promising data collection technique since it assumes that people’s personal life stories may reveal their learning paths (Marotzki 1990; Koller 2002; Schulze 2002; Krüger & Marotzki 2006).
Based on these research experiences from the educational science, the presented doctoral research project has been using the educational theory-oriented biographical research approach and seeks to answer the research question: “What can personal life narratives of Sustainopreneurs reveal about their learning processes?”. In order to elaborate on this question, learning theories from the educational science constitute the research foundation while the autobiographical-narrative interview method according to Schütze (1983) and Rosenthal (2011) has been used for the data collection. The data will be analysed by applying the text and thematic field analysis method according to Rosenthal (2011).
First experiences from the research show that the chosen research approach enables doing educational scientifically grounded research that is yet sufficiently open to allow finding out more about the structure and the conditions making Sustainopreneurs’ learning processes possible.
StatusLaufend
Zeitraum01.09.10 → …

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Forschende

  1. Nadine Lüpschen

Publikationen

  1. On the Epistemology of Computer Simulation
  2. A Motion-Sensorless Control for Intake Valves in Combustion Engines
  3. Use of lignins from sugarcane bagasse for assembling microparticles loaded with Azadirachta indica extracts for use as neem-based organic insecticides
  4. Skill learning as a concept in life-span developmental psychology
  5. How to Explain Major Policy Change Towards Sustainability? Bringing Together the Multiple Streams Framework and the Multilevel Perspective on Socio-Technical Transitions to Explore the German “Energiewende”
  6. Improving Human-Machine Interaction
  7. Adapting and evolving-learning place cooperation in change
  8. Continuous Casting with Mid-Process Alloying
  9. Theorizing path dependence
  10. Synthesis, self-assembly, bacterial and fungal toxicity, and preliminary biodegradation studies of a series of L-phenylalanine-derived surface-active ionic liquids
  11. Einführung in Grundlagen der theoretischen Informatik
  12. Learning processes for interpersonal competence development in project-based sustainability courses – insights from a comparative international study
  13. CASE via MS
  14. Heterogeneity and Diversity
  15. Inventory of biodegradation data of ionic liquids
  16. Gasteditorial
  17. Advancing science on the multiple connections between biodiversity, ecosystems and people
  18. Social group membership does not modulate automatic imitation in a contrastive multi-agent paradigm
  19. Anticipated imitation of multiple agents
  20. Three-dimensional microstructural analysis of Mg-Al-Zn alloys by synchrotron-radiation-based microtomography
  21. Entwicklung und realisierung eines computer-basierten lernprogramms zur GMP-schulung/Programm-entwicklung und benutzer-akzeptanz
  22. Perceptual latency priming
  23. Impacts of urban real-world labs: Insights from a co-evaluation process informed by structuration theory in Wuppertal-Mirke
  24. Targeted metabolomics of pellicle and saliva in children with different caries activity
  25. Public service media, innovation policy and the ‘crowding out’ problem
  26. Flexible Manufacturing of Concave–Convex Parts by Incremental Sheet Forming with Active Medium
  27. On melting summits
  28. Myth/Mythology
  29. Young children spontaneously recreate core properties of language in a new modality
  30. Over here and over there
  31. German Version of the Relationship Problems Questionnaire