LEAP Information Call

On August 13, 2018 at 7 pm CEST, we will host a LEAP Informational Call for all oikos members and alumni, who are eager to join a new LEAP Advanced cohort. We will explain the programme objectives, talk about its activities and timeline, and will answer participants’ lingering questions. Furthermore, LEAP alumni and coaches will talk about their experience and share their insights about the LEAP. 

If you want to join the call, register here: https://goo.gl/forms/ylXwjMNzl0zzC5LU2 

Learn more about the LEAP Advanced here: https://oikos-international.org/programmes/leap/leap-advanced/ 

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oikos International

posted July 24, 2018

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oikos Talk: It’s the Inequality, Stupid!

On July 18, at oikos Witten/Herdecke, Prof. Dr. Till van Treek (University Duisburg-Essen) will give a talk titled “It’s the Inequality, Stupid!” about the socio-economic effects of inequality on the economy and its interconnection with the financial crisis of 2008. He will discuss various theoretical approaches and will check if they live up to the empirics.

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oikos International

posted July 12, 2018

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oikos sustainability Day

On July 12, oikos Witten/Herdecke will host a Sustainability Day. They offer various workshops to teach you how to bake your own bread from scratch, how to do urban gardening and farming and more. At stations at the main hall you can repair your clothes, learn about a zero-waste lifestyle, green banking and about a local green energy provider or you can test-drive electrical cars. Furthermore, there’s a coffee-workshop from a social business situated at Witten/Herdecke University and a film screening of “More than honey”.

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oikos International

posted July 12, 2018

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oikos Talk: “Emergency state”

On July 5, at oikos Witten/Herdecke, Dr. Fred Luks (University of Economics, Vienna) will give a talk about his new book “Emergency state”, which deals with the dichotomy between western wealth as a basis of democracy and the impossibility of making this lifestyle the global standard.

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oikos International

posted July 12, 2018

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oikos Newsletter July 2018

Welcome to our newsletter!

We hope for many of you the university exam fever is over and you are ready to leave offices for a well-deserved vacation. Meanwhile, let us provide some updates on the oikos community.

In the July edition of our newsletter, you can read about a program of the upcoming oikos FutureLab 2018. This year, the FutureLab will take place in Geneva, Switzerland from 26 to 27 October.  You can also learn about the LEAP Meeting 2018, that will welcome over 60 participants in Leysin, Switzerland from 19 to 25 October.

We also share with you our perspectives on cross cultural management and an insightful oikos Guide to Pluralist Economics.

In the “30 seconds with…” segment meet some oikos LEAP Advanced participants from the class 2017/2018.  Friedrich Hilgenfeldt (Fred), Kathrin Zirn, Svante Bengtsson and Vladimir Leuridan decided to continue the LEAP journey and coach a new LEAP Advanced class.

Do not forget to register for the oikos FutureLab 2018.

Apply to join oikos LEAP Advanced Track 2018/2019.

Enjoy this July edition of our newsletter and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter to stay updated!

Happy Reading

Read the whole newsletter here

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oikos International

posted July 11, 2018

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oikos and Cross Cultural Management: Embracing differences and enjoying similarities

The world has shrunk immensely over the last few decades. As the access to mobility grows and connecting becomes easier, our offices are being filled with lively conversations held in the multitude of different languages, and our lunch breaks are lightened up with anecdotes encountered during business trips to the remote places of the world. But beyond this euphoria, we face a number of underlying challenges: experiencing new cultures might be intimidating, our skills of dealing with diverse groups fragile and our understanding of different cultures may be biased. Addressing these challenges becomes ever more important for organizations such as oikos, that gathers over 1200 members from 50 cities and 24 countries. The concept of Cross Cultural Management is, hence, gaining momentum to provide frameworks for understanding and managing our cultural peculiarities, as well as to offer some solutions and guidelines.

Cross Cultural Management is the study of management in a cross-cultural context. It includes the study of the influence of societal culture on managers and management practice as well as the study of the cultural orientations of individual managers and organization members. At the individual level the values, cognitive structures, and reactions of individuals to their cultural context and experience figure prominently.

To provide insights on Cross Cultural Management, we brought together our community and introduced different frameworks, like Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions and Kluckhohn and Strodtbeek’s Value Orientation Theory at the oikos webinar dedicated to the topic and organized by our leadership program – LEAP and the Knowledge Exchange Expedition. These frameworks can help interpret different cultures and may offer some direction on how to respond to unfamiliar cultural situations.

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory suggestions that there are 6 dimensions that distinguish cultures from one another:

  • Power Distance – Extent of inequality of power distribution from the perspective of the lesser powerful members of the society.
  • Uncertainty Avoidance – Extent to which people feel threatened by ambiguous situations and have created beliefs and institutions that try to avoid these.
  • Individualism Versus Collectivism – Tendency of people to look after themselves & their immediate family vs how people belong to groups or collectives and look after each other in exchange for loyalty.
  • Masculinity Versus Femininity – Dominant values in society are success, money, and things vs dominant values are caring for others and quality of life.
  • Long-term Versus Short-term Orientation – Valuing perseverance, thrift, adaptation to circumstances vs reciprocating social obligations, respect for tradition and personal steadiness and stability
  • Indulgence Versus Restraint – Society allowing relatively free gratification of basic and natural human desires related to enjoying life vs a society controlling gratification of needs and regulating it by means of strict social norms.

Kluckhohn and Strodtbeek’s Value Orientation Theory holds at its core an assumption that cultures respond to universal problems (relation to the environment, the relationship among people, mode of human activity, nature of human beings, orientation to time and space) by choosing one of the limited value-based solutions. For example, according to the theory, there are only 3 value-based solutions to the problem posed by relation to the environment:

  • Subjugation to the Environment: Perception of being dominated by physical forces and/or subject to the will of a Supreme Being.
  • Harmony with the Environment: Behave in concert with the physical environment and other systems in the world around us.
  • Mastery over the Environment: Perception of being in control of the environment.

Those who live in harmony with or try to master the environment might find it hard to communicate with the cultures that place full trust in divine powers. “There was a country I went to that had a strong religious tradition. Adapting to their ideals was tough because you do not necessarily agree with everything, especially when there are inequalities between gender, age, etc.” – says Anita Negri, former oikos President, an Italian living in France. However, Anita is quick to point out that she found a way to try and overcome the problem: “In that case, I tried to understand their motifs and I tried to share my motifs too.”

Eike Haas, former oikos EB member and a German based in Switzerland explains: “Whether you want to achieve goals as a part of a multicultural team or get along with locals when backpacking a foreign country – I believe you need to create common realities, continuously build moments of understanding. When humans from different cultures interact, they may interpret mimics, gestures and verbal communication differently – even if they speak the same language. Because they learned different connotations and communication patterns in their respective cultural environments and associate different meanings with seemingly universal communication elements. Adaptation in this context means to reflect on the other’s reactions and identify those differences – to assimilate the other’s cultural environment. And this is required from all team members, from foreigners as well as locals.”

At oikos, keeping an open mind, considering our differences and enjoying similarities is a key to a successful cross cultural communication. “We are more sensitive to everyone in the team, that helps in smooth functioning. For example, I remember during the FutureLab 2016, the organizing team had considered the dates for Diwali which is a big festival celebrated in India. This enabled everyone to be available” – says Nimisha Ghorpade, our alumni from India, currently residing in Mumbai. “While we’re all different, we all share the same passion for sustainability – which connects us, however significant our differences. That allowed me to connect with these peers and deepen my understanding of different cultures, how they approach sustainability – and also to identify and overcome some prejudices in my thinking” – points out Eike.

But we have to recognize that even our most enriching and diverse experiences provide only a limited understanding of a different culture. “I think we can never stop learning about each other’s cultures. Since it would be difficult to perfectly understand every single person’s reactions, crossing those with his/her culture, circumstance, traditions, and the many many more aspects that make a human being… Maybe what we should all learn about each other’s cultures is: not to make stereotypes the only story, not to be offended so easily, not to take ‘normal’ behaviors or habits for granted, not to see everything as a zero-sum game but to comprehend the spectrum instead. Most importantly we should understand that we are lucky to have certain technological means nowadays that enable interconnectedness and unification, so let’s create opportunities out of that instead of issues. It is just a matter of keeping our minds open!” – explains Anita.

The open, interconnected world offers many exciting opportunities whether at the workplace or beyond the walls of our offices. We have to embrace differences, rather than fear it; delve into our similarities, rather than merely glance at them; and come to term with an idea that there are limits to how much we understand about a different culture, but never to how much we want to know about the world beyond our milieu.

Learn more about our interviewees:

Anita Negri is oikos Maastricht alumna and served as a President of oikos International from 2014 to 2016.  She was born in Italy and worked and studied in over 15 cities. Anita has always had a passion for education, sustainability leadership and HR development and engaged in these throughout her studies and work experiences. Currently, she works in Paris, France. Read her full interview here

Eike Haas  is oikos Witten alumnus and was an Executive Board Member of oikos International in 2011 and 2012. Coming from a small town in north Germany, Eike has worked in France, India and Sub-Saharan Africa in cross-cultural teams.  He has researched, lectured, and co-published on inclusive finance topics. Eike works in Zurich, Switzerland. Read his full interview here

Nimisha Ghorpade is oikos Pune alumna. She was one of the organizers of oikos FutureLab 2016 and was part of the oikos newsletter team for a couple of years. She has experience in projects revolving around biodiversity conservation, water management, and sustainability. Currently, Nimisha resides and works in Mumbai, she is still actively involved in oikos and is one of our Alumni Ambassadors in India. Read her full interview here

To learn more about Cross-Cultural Management visit https://hbr.org/topic/cross-cultural-management

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oikos International

posted July 10, 2018

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oikos LEAP Meeting

oikos LEAP Meeting 2018 will take place in Leysin, Switzerland from 19th to 25th October. The meeting is a gathering point for oikos LEAP President and Advanced Track Participants, who will spend a week engaged in intensive workshops directed towards enhancing their personal and professional skills.

To learn more about LEAP Advanced and apply, visit our LEAP program page here: https://oikos-international.org/programmes/leap/leap-advanced/  

About oikos LEAP 

oikos LEAP is designed to inspire young leaders to become more responsible in their decision making and equip them with insights, knowledge and tools to do so.

oikos LEAP challenges participants to reflect on themselves and their values. Whilst adopting and sharing the lessons learnt in their chapters, participants practice sustainable leadership. The result is strengthened chapter performance and greater impact in line with the oikos mission. These basics will, moreover, accompany participants throughout their lives and result in change towards sustainability.

LEAP Advanced is the most intensive of three LEAP tracks. The program is open to all oikos members.

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oikos International

posted July 6, 2018

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Edutopia

Edutopia is a two week summer academy that prototypes how the future of university should look like. We want to create a collaborative learning space which fosters a completely different learning approach fit to awaken the responsibly thinking changemaker in every learner. We will focus on an overall sustainable world while taking into account personal growth and reflective awareness. In Edutopia we are looking for open-minded and creative people to step into action and work on real challenges of organisations while co-developing future higher education.

Learn more here: https://www.edutopia-vienna.org/ 

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oikos International

posted July 4, 2018

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