Encouraging Responsibility

There are numerous sustainability initiatives at WU. Students, faculty, and staff are all aware of the importance of this topic and are willing to take responsibility. With the Competence Center for Sustainability Transformation and Responsibility (STaR), WU has created an interdisciplinary center for facing the grand challenges of our time.

What does STaR do?

• Organize events to promote knowledge transfer
• Provide the WU community with support and networking opportunities
• Encourage and support students’ commitment
• Connect WU with international academic sustainability networks
• Sustainability@WU – Gather facts and information on activities, reports, resources, and initiatives on sustainability at WU and make them available to the WU community

Activities 2020

In 2020, STaR’s most important events were the two-day interdisciplinary conference “Intercultural Aspects in CSR-Communication” organized by the WU Department of Foreign Language Business Communication and the CSR communication research group, and an event in the series ‘WU matters. WU talks.’ on the topic “Responsible leadership during the corona crisis.”

The STaR Intellectual Community initiative encourages young researchers at WU to collaborate and to publish their research results and third mission activities on the internet. The goals of the STaR Intellectual Community include organizing workshops and research seminars, teaching as guest lecturers in other group members’ courses, and cooperating on joint funding applications. 15 assistant professors and PhD students have already joined the group, and 30 more are interested in receiving regular updates.

STaR is particularly committed to supporting the WU community in its sustainability efforts by providing state-of-the-art information, administrative support, and in-house networking opportunities. In 2020, STaR again supported a wide range of different units at WU.

WU educates its students to become responsible managers and experts in business and economics. For this reason, one of STaR’s most important jobs is to support students and student groups in their commitment to sustainability. We do this in a number of ways: by providing resources and expertise for events, for example, or by connecting students interested in writing sustainability-related theses with supervisors and topics. Students can present their work in interviews published on the website. STaR also cooperates with student organizations, introduces its services to potential master’s students, and was involved in establishing the international volunteer movement StudentsAgainstCorona in Vienna.

STaR works closely together with other national and international sustainability networks, for example:

• Alliance of Sustainable Universities in Austria (Austria)
• Climate Change Center Austria (Austria)
• Copernicus Alliance (international, European focus)
• EU (international, European focus)
• Network for Business Sustainability (international)
• Principles for Responsible Management Education (international)
• Regional Centres of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development (international)
• Societal Impact and Global Management Alliance (international)