11^th edition of the annual oikos Case Writing Competition awards leading teaching cases on sustainability in management and entrepreneurship

St. Gallen, 26th May 2014 – oikos, the international student-driven organization for sustainable management and economics, announced the winners of its annual oikos Case Writing Competition. The first prize in the corporate sustainability track is awarded to Professor Dietmar Sternad from Carinthia University of Applied Sciences (Austria) for his case “Organic Growth at Sonnentor“. In the Social Entrepreneurship track, the first prize goes to Raymond Paquin from Concordia University (Canada), as well as Dror Etzion, James Povitz and Benjamin Gruber at McGill University (Canada) for their case entitled “Communauto: A Big Idea for a Big Market“.

The annual oikos Case Writing Competition promotes the development of new high quality case studies on sustainability in management, entrepreneurship and finance. An international panel of more than 30 leading faculty evaluates the cases in a double-blind review process and gives written feedback to all authors. For each of the three tracks on corporate sustainability, social entrepreneurship and sustainable finance the judging committee selects the winners and runners-up. The first prize amounts to CHF 5000, the second prize is CHF 2000 and the third prize CHF 1000. The jury may decide, as was the case for this 2014 edition in the newly launched third track on “Sustainable Finance” not to award a prize, if none of the submitted cases meet the high requirements in terms of educational excellence, sustainability focus and innovativeness defined by the competition.

Partners of the program include Ashoka, a global organization that identifies and invests in leading social entrepreneurs; caseplace.org, a dedicated and curated library of teaching resources provided by the Aspen Institute to support the integration of sustainability in business education; The Case Centre, the biggest collection of management case studies worldwide; the University of St. Gallen, a front-runner in higher education business courses;  and WWF, one of the world’s largest and most respected independent conservation organizations.

In its eleventh edition of the competition – since its launch in 2003 – more than 40 cases written by scholars of 15 different countries were submitted. The complete list of winning cases is shown below:

Corporate Sustainability Track
1st Prize	"Organic Growth at Sonnentor" by Dietmar Sternad (Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Austria),
2nd Prize	"IKEA and the Better Cotton Initiative'" by Stefano Pogutz (Università Bocconi, Italy)
3rd Prize	"Accenture Development Partnerships (A) (B)" by Michelle Rogan and Christiane Bode (INSEAD, France)
Runner up	"Barrick Gold: A Perfect Storm at Pascua Lama" by Craig Smith and Erin McCormick (INSEAD, France)
Runner up	"Terra Nova (A)" by Gilles van Wijk and Alireza Ahmadsimab (Essec Business School, France)

Social Entrepreneurship Track
1st Prize	"Communauto: A Big Idea for a Big Market" by Raymond Paquin (Concordia University, Canada), Dror Etzion, James Povitz and Benjamin Gruber (McGill University, Canada)
2nd Prize	"Clean Water Grow: 'Go or No Go?'" by Simon Ngawhika and Scott Marshall (Portland State University, USA)
3rd Prize	"Wellcome – Growth of a Social Enterprise" by Karin Kreutzer and Magdalena Kloibhofer (European Business School, Germany)
Runner up	"MokshaYug Access (MYA) in India: Enriching India’s Dairy Farmers" by Rajan Shah (Amity Research Centers, India)
Runner up	"Mannat Foundation: Building Social Enterprise for the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’" by Trupti Karkhanis, Ritu Sinha and Anurag Pratap (Indian Education Society – Management College and Research Centre, India)

Further information including inspection copies for each case is available at:
https://oikos-international.org/cases

About oikos

oikos is an international student-driven organization promoting the integration of sustainability issues in research and teaching at faculties for management and economics. The organization comprises a global community of 40 student chapters at universities around the world as well as faculty, alumni, advisors and partners. Its program consists of conferences, seminars, fellowships, and other events as well as a variety of action-based learning platforms that support the integration of long-term economic, environmental and social trends in research and teaching. More: http://www.oikos-international.org/.

Contact oikos Cases Project Leader Jordi Vives Gabriel for any questions you may have.