About leonidobusch

Professor of Organization at University of Innsbruck | Co-founder Momentum Conference and Momentum Institut | ZDF Verwaltungsrat | Blogging at netzpolitik.org

‘Organizing in Times of Crisis’ wins Aspen Institute’s ‘Ideas Worth Teaching Award’ 2020

Hosted by the the Business & Society Program within the renowned Aspen Institute, the “Ideas Worth Teaching Award” is one of the most prestigious awards for teaching in business and management education. And we are very happy and proud to announce that our course “Organizing in Times of Crisis” is among the nine winners of the 2020 competition – selected out of over 100 nominations.

As recipients of the award, Elke Schüßler (University of Linz) and Leonhard Dobusch (University of Innsbruck) were invited to introduce our joint course in no longer than 45 seconds – check out the video below:

New article by Gümüsay and Dobusch: “This is not (digital) businss as usual”

Ali Aslan Gümüsay and Leonhard Dobusch, both contributors to the collaborative open course “Organizing in Times of Crisis”, have have published a brief reflection piece on organizational coping-strategies with the Corona crisis from reactive to proactive in MIT Sloan Management Review: “This is not (digital) business as usual”.

Practitioner interview with Urs Bolter (Blum GmbH) on challenges and opportunities amidst the Corona crisis

Urs Bolter (Blum GmbH) interviewed by Leonhard Dobusch (University of Innsbruck)

Urs Bolter is member of the Management Board of Blum, an international and family-owned manufacturer of furniture hardware with its headquarter in the Austrian province Vorarlberg. Blum employs close to 8.000 people and, in addition to Austria, has production plants in the United States, in Poland and in Brazil.

In this interview, Leonhard Dobusch, Professor of Organization at University of Innsbruck, speaks with Urs Bolter about the challenges Blum faces in managing (through) the ongoing Corona crisis.

Lessons for Covid-19 from fighting against Ebola

Daniel Geiger, together with two co-authors, recently published a brief article in BMJ Leader entitled “Managing enduring public health emergencies such as COVID-19: lessons from Uganda Red Cross Society’s Ebola virus disease response operation”. The abstract reads as follows:

In this piece, we translate insights from our study of routine coordination in the Ebola virus disease response operation by Uganda Red Cross Society (URCS) for managing long-lasting public health emergencies. We further show how these lessons are relevant to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. Commonly, emergency response organisations, like the URCS or hospitals, are ill equipped to handle longer lasting emergencies. These emergencies require special measures that combine ad-hoc action, continuous awareness over longer time periods, and the collaboration of multiple actors such as the government, public health institutions and other non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

The article is available online as an open access full text.

Open social innovation in times of crisis

Thomas Gegenhuber investigates in his lecture new and alternative forms of organizing and how they can contribute to coping with the crisis. An example he uses during his lecture is the #wevsvirus [#wirvsvirus in German] hackathon hosted by the German Federal Government. The hackathon also falls into the category of open social innovation: a bureaucratic organization, such as the German Government, making an open call to civil society in search of solutions for the crisis at hand.

Thomas wrote an article where he reflects on the hackathon’s lessons learned. Stanford Social Innovation Review published this article as part of an ongoing online series dedicated to “rethinking social change in the face of coronavirus.” If you want to learn more about research related to the #wevsvirus hackathon, also check out the website opensocialinnovation.net.

The consequentiality of metaphors in fighting the corona pandemic

Dennis Schoeneborn, Professor of Organization, Communication, and CSR at Copenhagen Business School, and Visiting Professor of Organization Studies at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, discusses our use of metaphors when discussing the Covid-19 pandemic. He argues that the “current crisis situation is also a crisis of collective imagination and sensemaking”. Check out the full blog post at the Business of Society blog.

New paper on inequality and COVID-19

Linking to our session on inequality, organisations and COVID19, Hari Bapuji and his colleagues (2020) recently published a research paper on how inequality links to the COVID19 pandemic. Please find the paper “Corona crisis and inequality: Why management research needs a societal turn” here: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/6552/ 

Now online: Syllabus, Readings and Assignments

As of today, we proudly present version 1.0 of the standard course syllabus as well as all readings and assignments for the twelve classes of the course. Of course, we expect and encourage instructors who teach the course to tailor the course syllabus and assignments to their individual needs. So take the syllabus as one potential way of teaching the course.

Videos of the mini lectures will follow over the course of the next two weeks, so stay tuned.

Mini Lecture on “How to Essay”

A key task for students in the course “Organizing in Times of Crisis: The Case of Covid19” will be to write a research essay at the very end of the course. Reflecting on all they have learnt, the essay shall focus on one issue and deliver one point of insight gathered throughout the course. The mini lecture by Leonhard Dobusch on “How to Essay” focuses on the difference between research essays and seminar papers and offers a brief introducion on writing research essays.