The EABIS team in Brussels is once again working to prepare an outstanding Annual Colloquium that this year will take place in Cranfield, UK, 11-12 September 2008.

Building on the popularity and success of previous years, we are happy to announce the production of the 4th Education and Training Exchange (ETE). The ETE is a platform for interactive exchange of successful executive learning and development initiatives between different stakeholders. This year the central theme of the ETE is: “Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability: Innovation and Better Practice in Executive Development for Organizational Change”.

The ETE will be launched via presentations of contributions and their publication in the Catalogue of Initiatives on Day 1 of the Colloquium and the elected winners will be honoured at the Colloquium’s annual International Gala Dinner on the evening of Day 1.

Contribution to the ETE will benefit your organization/institution by:

• Raising the profile of your organization’s innovative programmes around organizational change with respect to executive development and Corporate Responsibility.
  
• The opportunity to win an award for the most innovative in-company initiative, given to the company that has demonstrated pioneering change in executive development
  
• Facilitating exchange of best and innovative practices with other companies and business schools
  
• Enhancing your engagement in the field.

PROMITHEAS Network, The Energy and Climate Policy Network

The World Bank Robert S. McNamara (RMS) Fellowships Program provides support to young researchers working in academic and research institutions from eligible countries preparing a doctoral thesis.

The deadline for the RMS Fellowships Program has been extended through April 30, 2008.

The Energy Policy and Development Centre (KEPA) of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens invites - in the framework of this open call - PhD candidates to take advantage of this fellowship for promoting research cooperation between their institutions and KEPA. KEPA offers a properly equipped working place in a high standards working environment (www.kepa.uoa.gr).

KEPA is interested to promote scientific cooperation in two research areas:

1. Energy Policy (Energy markets, Energy corridors, Models for oil transfers through sea corridors, Energy policy planning)
   
2. Climate policy (instruments and interactions).
   

PhD researchers interested in these research areas are kindly asked to read initially the available information for the RMS Fellowship. If they are interested in this fellowship and fulfil the preconditions of the RMS Fellowships Program please contact KEPA (PROMITHEAS@kepa.uoa.gr), by sending a detailed CV and a short description (half a page) of the research area in which they are interested to work. Both documents should be in English or Greek. Due to the very short deadline we will try to contact you as soon as possible.

For more information, please contact: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Energy Policy and Development Centre at PROMITHEAS@kepa.uoa.gr

EABIS is pleased to announce the Final Academic Conference of the RESPONSE Project, the largest research project on corporate responsibility so far in Europe. This event will take place at Bocconi University in Milan on June 25/26, 2008.

Since 2004 RESPONSE has been the EABIS network's flagship research initiative, receiving € 1.1 million of funding from the EU Commission's FP6 Programme and supported by EABIS' corporate founding partners - IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Shell and Unilever.

Why Attend?

Participants in the Milan conference can benefit in several ways from attendance:

• Contribute to the development of a new research agenda building on the results of the project, with a particular view on coordination and collaboration for EU FP7 applications.
  
• Join an international platform for comprehensive debate of the implications of RESPONSE's findings for academic research and teaching, as well as their impact on managers', stakeholders' and policy makers' decisions.
  
• Receive multiple presentations and papers from the RESPONSE academic team, all derived from this 4 year long study.
  

Participants can also volunteer to be an external discussant for one of the main papers or presentations.

What is RESPONSE?

The RESPONSE Project has been a unique attempt to study systematically corporate responsibility as both an organisational practice and an individual behaviour. It focuses on external stakeholder interaction processes and on internal organizational change to explain both the degree of alignment between managers and stakeholders in their perception on corporate responsibility, as well as variations in social performance.

RESPONSE was the first and principal research effort initiated by academic partners of EABIS and supported by its corporate founding partners (IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Unilever and Shell), who provided critical but constructive input to ensure a balance of academic rigour and managerial relevance.

Under the guidance of Academic Director Maurizio Zollo, RESPONSE engaged 20 global companies and over 180 stakeholder organizations. Based on observations and data from 440 interviews and over 1,000 questionnaires, the research team examined a whole host of factors that could potentially distinguish the leading innovators in corporate responsibility from other companies, drawing evidence-based conclusions about which factors matter and which don't. In addition, the RESPONSE team conducted cutting-edge learning experiments to identify the most promising approaches to the problem of developing social consciousness in business managers.

The project sought to answer the following questions:

• What do managers consider to be their company's responsibility towards society and how that differs from what societal actors consider the company's responsibility to be?
  
• What internal and external factors explain the size of that perception gap between managers and stakeholders? What individual traits seem to influence socially responsible behavior by business managers?
  
• What impact do different training interventions have on the development of social consciousness in business managers?
  

For additional information to learn more about the RESPONSE Project, please have a look at the project website, or contact Professor Maurizio Zollo, Academic Director, at maurizio.zollo@insead.edu or maurizio.zollo@unibocconi.it.

In particular, please do so if you have an interest in being the discussant for one of the conference papers.

The official event website and registration channel will be launched in the next two weeks. NOTE - There will be no charge for participation, but delegates will be expected to cover their travel and accommodation expenses.

EU Funding Opportunity for EABIS Members:
"Fostering CSR in European Industrial Sectors"
- A DG Enterprise and Industry Public Call for Proposals - 

Objectives:
Support for multi-stakeholder initiatives to promote CSR in a limited number of industrial sectors Promote greater uptake of CSR amongst enterprises, including SMEs Facilitate joint action between industry and other stakeholders Further explore the links between CSR and competitiveness.

Budget:

• € 510 000 total of funding allocated
  
• € 150 000 maximum per project (3-5 in total)
  

NOTE - EU Commission financial contributions are limited to 50% of the total eligible costs. Partners are expected to co-finance the balance.

Duration of Projects: 12-18 months

Submission Deadline: 23 MAY 2008

Further Information: Please download the full Call

Please feel free to contact Bart Neerscholten, EABIS Research Manager, with any related questions or comments.

We are pleased to announce the deadline has been extended for the third in the Marie Curie Core series of conferences on ‘The potential of CSR to contribute to the implementation and integration of EU strategies’.

The third conference is on the topic ‘The potential of CSR to drive integration in an enlarged EU’.

Please Note: Acceptance of a paper means automatic funding for one delegate!

Papers might address such questions as:

• Can CSR contribute to the integration of new member states into the EU?
• What distinctive CSR challenges face companies, civil society and governments in new member states?
• How do companies operating in old and new member states manage their CSR across borders?
• How do companies in new member states learn about and practice CSR?
• What are the drivers for companies in new member states to develop CSR?
• Are there distinctive government and civil society roles in the CSR of the new member states?

Full Funding is available for the following groups of researchers:

• Early-stage researchers
  
• Mid-career researchers
  
• European Researchers active outside the Union
  

Theme of the Special Issue

There is a growing literature on the so-called business case for sustainability. Scholars seek to determine if and under which conditions it pays off financially for companies to act environmentally and/or socially responsible. We acknowledge that research based on this win-win paradigm represents a promising starting point to gain acceptance in mainstream research and business practice. It is, however, based on a critical assumption, namely that the different aspects of corporate sustainability are mutually reinforcing.

This sharply contrasts the complexity and multidimensionality of sustainable development where trade-offs and conflicts between economic, environmental, and social aspects represent the rule rather than the exception. Such trade-offs have been systematically under-researched in the corporate sustainability literature.

Therefore, in this special issue we invite submissions that explicitly address trade-offs in corporate sustainability. Contributions could focus on different levels of analysis and/or address the role of different actors. We further encourage papers that investigate and/or develop management tools and corporate strategies to effectively deal with trade-offs in corporate sustainability.

Contributions that also address conflicts between different environmental and social concerns beyond their financial implications are particularly welcome. From a societal perspective sustainable development will most likely - like any development - produce winners and losers.

This is particularly interesting for industry level analyses and refers to questions such as:

• How are companies of different sectors affected by the structural changes that sustainable development is about to bring?
  
• What role do companies play in the transition toward more sustainability - particularly if organisational survival on the individual firm level is in conflict with the benign development of society?
  
• Should companies in environmentally harmful sectors persist when they provide high levels of employment?
  
• Are strategies such as the shift from food plantations to energy seeds beneficial?
  
• Relevant research questions on the organisational level could address corporate strategies, management tools, incentive systems and measurement approaches that help to ensure that corporate conduct leads to positive overall sustainability effects in the presence of trade-offs.
  
• In which cases is it worth from a sustainability point of view to sacrifice some environmental and/or financial performance in favour of large positive social effects or vice versa?
  

This also raises the question on the strategic approach of companies to dilemma situations:

• Which companies adopt a proactive strategy and expose themselves as sustainability leaders?
  
• How are conflicts between economic, environmental, and social aspects solved in strategy development?
  

At the individual level of analysis, research questions focus on how managers and other corporate stakeholders (such as consumers or investors) deal with trade-offs between different aspects of sustainability. Papers might address the perception of trade-offs by different actors, their influence on individual behaviour, and the requirements and incentives for more sustainable decision making when there are trade-offs.

Examples for dilemma situations on the individual level include conflicts for consumer decisions between organic trade and local sourcing, trade-offs between higher stock returns vs. controversial business areas for investors, or conflicts between short term bonus payments and ethically sound managerial conduct.

This special issue is open to papers from various academic disciplines. Papers should go beyond the win-win paradigm and explore how corporate contributions to sustainable development could be achieved in the presence of trade-offs between economic, environmental, and social aspects. The deadline for paper submission is 15 September 2008.

Papers will undergo a double-blind review process, following standard BSE guidelines. Submissions should be sent electronically in word format to one of the guest editors and should be written in accordance with the "Instructions to Authors".

Please note that due to space restrictions we cannot accept papers that exceed 7,000 words.

Any questions regarding the Special Issue can also be addressed to the guest editors.

Contact details of guest editors:
Dr Tobias Hahn
IZT – Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment,
Berlin, Germany
E-mail: t.hahn@izt.de;
Tel: +49-30-803088-24

Prof Frank Figge
Queen’s University Management School,
Belfast, UK
E-mail: f.figge@qub.ac.uk;
Tel: +44-28-9097-1363

Dr Jonatan Pinkse
University of Amsterdam Business School,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
E-mail: j.m.pinkse@uva.nl;
Tel: +31-20-5254106

Dr Lutz Preuss
School of Management,Royal Holloway,
University of London, UK
E-mail: Lutz.Preuss@rhul.ac.uk;
Tel: +44-1784-414151