Research and consulting on ecological sustainability conducted by our Institute for Applied Research (IAF) and the recently founded Institute for Industrial Ecology (INEC) has a long standing tradition at our University. The INEC is mainly focused on the analysis of material and energy flows in operational production or product systems and the optimization concerning economic and ecological effects. In addition to their research portfolio research projects in the field of social sustainability, mainly focused on CSR topics, are established and will be further developed continually mainly in cooperation with companies.

In order to underline its engagement in integrating sustainability issues Pforzheim University was one of the first 100 participants to sign the PRME initiative in March 2008. We aim at ensuring a coordinated and systematically responsible management education for all our students. Our further developed elective module Ethics and Social Responsibility for all our Bachelor students, the compulsory module Sustainable Globalisation of our MBA in International Management program and our new Bachelor degree program Resource Efficiency Management (REM) with several new staff specialized in sustainable development issues can be highlighted as major engagements in this field. Our main goal is to enable our students to apply long-term critical thinking and innovative sustainable management solutions for global business challenges. We aim at enabling them to competently and critically analyze ethical and sustainability issues and to understand how, e.g. CSR or resource efficiency management can transform challenges into win-win-situations for both, company and society. Our efforts in implementing the goals of PRME into our curricula are accompanied by the support of other academic activities, e.g. guest lectures. Furthermore, we are continually engaged in fostering our business contacts in order to learn from corporations? experiences in implementing sustainable development and corporate responsibility strategies.

Pforzheim University