In spring 2022, Pauline Mengede took part in a course called „Managing War“ by Prof. Dr. Guido Möllering at the University of Witten/Herdecke. This bachelor course was based on course material of the Times of Crisis course „The Case of War and Armed Conflict“, co-organized by Prof. Möllering.

Inspired by this experience, Pauline then conducted a bachelor thesis on the topic “Shareholder- and Stakeholder-Orientation in the Context  of Corporate Political Advocacy using the Example of the Boycott of Russia by Companies due to the War in Ukraine“. Recently, Pauline was awarded the Serafin Research Prize for excellent theses at the University of Witten/Herdecke.

A summary of Pauline’s thesis can be found here.

We congratulate you, Pauline! What an excellent thesis and what a great example of how our Organizing in Times of Crisis course can also inspire young academic talents!

Today, I have started teaching the course Organizing in Times of Crisis: The Case of War and Armed Conflict at Leuphana Universität Lüneburg! The bachelor students will analyse the current Russian invasion of Ukraine through a management and organization theory lens, in order to better understand the impact of such a crisis on organizations, but also which role organizations play in such crisis. In the kick-off session, I used Lego Serious Play to visually unearth the expectations that students bring to such a course.

This is what they came up with:

Model 1: “Many things come together in this course, there are steps we will have to take in order to reach our goal (pass the class), we work collaboratively together, we will encounter many theories, and our discussions will „propel“ the course”
Model 2: (From right to left): “War is destruction, and in this course, we move across a bridge (build a bridge) to build a better future. We, as students, watch what is happening and try to make sense of it.”
Model 3: “We build a Ukraine flag and we show solidarity with Ukraine. We also hope that we learn about helping the affected people (red crosses!)” 
Model 4: “We wanted to show that love is what unites us all, and the flowers represent the various crisis that we have humankind currently face and collectively need to address.”
Model 5: From right to left: “We (us) try to look what is taking place beyond what the media (the wall) shows us, to really understand what is going on during the war.”

I think these models reflect ideally what we were aiming for when developing the course, and I am looking forward to the discussions that will follow my students’ presentations (mid of June)!