The new oikos International Board for 2021 was elected at the Legislative meeting on November 29. The new board consists of 7 members who will be starting the onboarding in December ahead of their one year long mandate.

The Board 2021 members are:

Mike Brodersen, oikos Hamburg
Asif Gurbanov, oikos Baku
Carolin Lemke, oikos Reutlingen
Arthur Mària, oikos Barcelona
Darija Miletić, oikos Belgrade
Ikshek Misri, oikos Bangalore
Luisa Pütz, oikos Bayreuth

Since the beginning of the corona pandemic, the virtual world has become an ever-more tangible reality for many who shifted to remote work from their home office. The oikos community, and in particular the international team, has found their new work base in the clouds already as of 2016 and has been pioneering with new, creative approaches ever since. Besides our onsite events, all our conversations and the coordination behind the curtain happen online. Since early 2019, every oikos International team member except the president works remotely from a place of their choice, making oikos live and explore its full international potential. That’s also why, when the Corona pandemic hit the world, we rather found ourselves bulletproof and with a high ability to adapt quickly. One element that is missing to embrace this way of working: the location of the president – and our physical office in St. Gallen, Switzerland.

With the remarkable state of the world and the entering of a new president, the oikos board now agreed and approved to take a leap: we wish to enable the president to serve the community from a location with a more global embrace and a place with a social support network of her/his choice. While remaining a Swiss organization that is based in the canton of St. Gallen, the physical office in St. Gallen will become obsolete and is not needed any longer. At oikos, we perceive this as an opportunity to reduce structural obstacles to impartiality and nurture our team culture and health. It enables us to be very intentional about strengthening long-standing partnerships and exploring further international links and networks. We are proud of our Swiss roots and just as excited to see where we might grow from and with them.

The recent pandemic renders a new era and we, as a student initiative, sense that there is an increased opportunity for us to contribute to a bigger leap in society and in our own community as such. For doing so, we have to recenter ourselves and align our setup with our increasingly complex environments and the world’s requirements – while living up to what we preach content-wise. This also means looking at the sustainability of our structures and mindsets as an organization. 

Considering these points, the step of going remote is intertwined in a broader strategic discussion about our ways of working and about setting a general direction for the future of oikos. Looking into the patterns of the future of work and management shows that there will be a focus on relational, participatory, virtual, purpose-driven and self-organized practices. Amidst, or even because of the incredible pace and fluctuation in a very creative and innovative student environment, oikos is already moving on these paths and perceives itself as a study case for re-designing our set up in collaboration with our network. What can we learn from each other?

We consider the removal of a physical office as a step closer to embracing the world and our international community of student change agents. Nevertheless, the symbolic power and legal benefits of certain physical locations cannot be denied – therefore, this step is a contemporary, safe first move and the conversation shouldn’t stop here. Bundling the discourse with the aim of becoming a future-fit organization, we wish to invite contributors from the broader oikos network to the table in order to collaboratively strategize and help strengthen the organization for the turbulent times on the horizon.

You wish to join these reflections & actions? Any questions?

Feel free to reach out to board@oikos-international.org!

Date: Nov 24, 2020
Time: 2PM CET | 06:30 PM in Mumbai, Kolkata, New Delhi

Sign up here!

As part of a 3-day series on the need for better economics for climate change, we have organized a workshop for you that would explore the key areas of change needed in the curriculum with respect to climate change and sustainability.

Moderator:
oikos International is an international, student-led non-profit organization for sustainability in economics and management. Based in Switzerland, it empowers student change agents worldwide to embed sustainability in academia and from there into day-to-day business, government, and personal activities. The programs undertaken by Oikos integrate environmental and social perspectives in economics and management education and equip its members with the necessary tools to become today’s and tomorrow’s responsible leaders. The heart of the organization is its student members who turn ideas into action and tackle local sustainability needs in over 45 chapters around the globe.

Organisers:
The Rethinking Economics India Network is the National Network of the global Rethinking Economics movement. It operates as a nation-wide ecosystem of stakeholders in the space of pluralist and heterodox economics. It looks to interface with individuals, universities, civil society, and the private sector in order to encourage teaching, learning, and discussion for scaling collaborative efforts towards a better, more inclusive economics for India, and contribute towards the global movement at large.

The Parley Project is a student-led initiative that focuses on research-driven solutions for global agendas. Started in 2020, the project aims to be a platform where students like us can voice their opinions and hone the understanding of the world around them. We aim to connect students and professionals for mutually insightful discussions through various youth conferences and carefully curated agenda-specific events and provide new insights to contemporary issues and come up with solutions for the same.

We are delighted to announce that a new chapter of oikos International is now open at Alexandria, Egypt. It is a historic moment as it is the first ever oikos chapter in Egypt.

We give the warmest of welcomes to oikees from Alexandria into our oikos Family!

The oikos 2020 Case Writing Competition encourages the writing of high-quality cases on sustainability topics that can stimulate innovative teaching and learning experiences. The Competition was launched back in 2003 and since then aims at giving students the possibility to approach their faculty to start embedding sustainability into curricula through the use of case studies.

The case studies are meant as tools to encourage innovative teaching & learning mechanisms and to include sustainability into curricula. 

The third prize went to Dr Sonal Purohit, Chandigarh University, India for her case study Transaction to Trust: Sustainable Business in Gift Economy. The case study introduces the business model of a café built on the concept of the gift economy. This community-based café was built on principles of involvement, participation and support and offered locally produced meals on a participatory and voluntary basis. 

The second prize was assigned to the case study Challenges of Promotion Sustainable Innovation Through Biomimicry Case of Biomimicry Institute, submitted by Prof Arpita Agnihotri, Assistant Professor from Penn State University-Harrisburg and Dr Saurabh Bhattacharya Lecturer (Marketing), Newcastle University Business School. The case study presents the Biomimicry Institute’s initiatives to foster biomimicry, an approach which aims to respond to human challenges with sustainable solutions using mother’s nature patterns.  

The first prize was won by Shwetha Kumari and Prof Muralidhara Gv, ICFAI Business School (IBS) – Bangalore for their case study Nigeria’s Hello Tractor – Leveraging Technology to Provide Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture. The case study focuses on the Hello Tractor enterprise, an agricultural technology social enterprise aiming at improving food and income security throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. The company developed a Uber-like platform allowing Smart Tractor owners to rent them out to other farmers.

The cases all include innovative teaching notes aimed at professors and students who want to benefit from the cases’ use on programs in sustainability in management, entrepreneurship and finance. 

For further information on the Case Program and to find out more on the cases themselves visit the oikos Case Program page. On this page you can also find the Free Collection of Cases available for everyone to use in teaching.