Open Access

This cumulative dissertation "Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Communication: Four empirical studies on the German banking industry" presents how commercial banks in Germany communicate their ambitions and commitment regarding corporate responsibility - i.e., CSR. The results of the first article show that the quality of mandatory non-financial reporting needs to be improved and that certain characteristics (e.g., previous reporting experience, reporting format and standard) have a positive influence on reporting quality. The second article shows that the CSR reporting scope on bank websites also has room for improvement and that various banking characteristics such as size, capital market orientation, media visibility or public ownership have an influence on communication. The third article illustrates that credit institutions in Germany are increasingly using social media for CSR communication, but that CSR communication strategies differ (Facebook vs. Twitter). The fourth article discusses CSR communication using advertisements and shows that the conceptual design of advertisements should be in line with the credit institution's business model and is therefore beneficial.

Contemporary society is shaped by the idea that time is, above all, a scarce economic resource that must be used efficiently – “time is money” not to be wasted. Increasingly, however, scientific findings suggest that such a way of perceiving of time seems a major cause of the current global climate and sustainability crisis. So far, this research has often focused on mobility, energy consumption, or the structural conditions of the social organisation of time. Considerably less work has been carried out in relation to the role of individual time-related needs regarding unsustainable consumption behaviour, although consumer research has been addressing needs-oriented approaches to sustainable consumption for a long time. Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) is considered an essential strategy to achieve the global sustainability goals of Agenda 2030. Internationally, as well as on a national level, ESE is increasingly mainstreamed in educational curricula and practice, including in Germany. Given the relation between time, needs and sustainability, it appears valuable to inquire into this field from the perspective of ESE – where time as a resource for sustainability has received comparatively little attention so far. The core research interest of this cumulative dissertation is therefore the question of how the connection between time, our needs and sustainability can be conveyed through pedagogical approaches. The inquiry used an exploratory, qualitative research design to address this question. In a first step, the concept of sustainability-related time use competence was developed. This then served as a guiding concept for the understanding of time used in this work and as the overall objective for the educational intervention developed and piloted as part of the research. Next, a content analysis of German curricula was conducted with the aim of determining whether and to what extent these address the relation between time and sustainability. The results show curricula contain only a few starting points that encourage a connection between time and sustainability in school lessons. The study further indicates that an understanding of time as a scarce resource to be used efficiently has prevailed in school contexts so far. Accordingly, pedagogical approaches to time often focus heavily on time management. The next step involved developing and piloting a time use competence curriculum in cooperation with three partner schools, using an Action Research Approach. This intervention followed the pedagogical approach of Self-Inquiry Based Learning (SIBL) seeking to sensitise learners to the relation between individual needs and consumer behaviour. During implementation, which lasted one semester, students logged their time, were encouraged to reflect on their personal needs, and subsequently implement individual change projects related to time use. This was embedded in continuous reflective individual and group exercises. The results strengthen the hypothesis that there is a relation between time use and sustainability. Furthermore, the pedagogical approach of SIBL has proven suitable to enable students to reflect on their time use and to raise their awareness of the role of individual needs. Participants reported that changes in time use did indeed increase their personal well-being. This, according to existing evidence from sustainability science, has been found to potentially lead to more sustainable behaviour. At the same time, previous research found that behavioural changes that lead to an increase in well-being do not automatically lead to more sustainable consumption behaviour. Rather, personal attitudes and motivation regarding sustainability are important. This suggests that future ESE interventions aiming at changes in time use should always also contain sufficient opportunities for reflection of values and motives. A third empirical study was carried out, inquiring into students’ time use during the eriod of COVID-19-induced school closures, using a Grounded Theory Approach. Since the pandemic disrupted young peoples’ routines drastically, the research focused on which kinds of learning experiences students made during this time and which insights can be derived for ESE. The results of the semi-structured interviews with 69 participants show first that the narrative of students’ learning loss, which is predominant in the current educational science, policy, and media discussion, falls short. Instead, a variety of learning experiences are revealed, such as learning one’s own learning and everyday rhythms or creatively adapting consumption habits to the new situation of “lockdown”. Overall, a key finding of this work is that students are currently unable to adequately realise their time-related needs. In view of the findings from research on time and sustainability, one recommendation is therefore that everyday school life could give students more space to organise their time according to their needs. This might be done through pedagogical measures in the classroom, but would also require a stronger institutional anchoring, for example, within the framework of the Whole Institution Approach to Sustainability (WIA), to bring about lasting changes. Furthermore, it would be advisable to give the topic of time in connection with sustainability more space in curricula and in teacher training. This gives rise to future research needs, such as the need to explore how time use competence can be included into everyday pedagogical practice, for instance, by adapting the SIBL approach piloted in a school setting here. It would also call for longitudinal research designs, and it would be of interest to research how time use competence might be incorporated into school development processes. Given the ongoing debate about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on schools and education in general, the findings of the research can stimulate both further research and future ESE practice. The experiences during the pandemic have shown that schools and all actors involved including students and teachers, are so far insufficiently prepared to handle crises. Here, the approach to time use competence piloted in this work can offer valuable stimulations for ESE research and practice. This is especially true since it is compatible with existing approaches to key competencies for sustainability by seeking to complement them with a stronger focus on individual, needs-oriented time shaping.

Research questions In the study, predictive models for predicting therapy outcome are created using the dataset from E-COMPARED project (see section 4.1), which belongs to type 3 according to Table 1. These models aim to classify patients into two groups, improved and nonimproved. Since it is important to determine whether the models contribute to improvement of treatment, research questions that can contribute to the usage of type 3 models are established. The study focuses on the following three questions: 1. How accurately can the therapy outcome be predicted by various machine learning algorithms? Answering this question can let the people concerned obtain information about the reliability of contemporary predictive models. In addition, if the predictive power of the models is good, it is more likely to be used to assist therapists’ decisions. 2. Which kind of data is more important in predicting the therapy outcome? The answer to this question can show which dataset should be considered first to make better predictive models. Therefore, it can be helpful for researchers who want to make predictive models in the future and eventually help to facilitate personalized therapy. 3. What are the features with strong predictive power? The answer to this question can affect the people concerned, especially therapists. Therapists can use the most influential features revealed to adjust and improve future treatments.

This research report presents a transdisciplinary student research project on developing climate resilience of communities in Marine Protected Areas in the Lesser Antilles. For the second time, the Leuphana University Lüneburg and the Sustainable Marine Financing Programme (SMF) of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) partnered up. The first project on the Caribbean Island Dominica showed that community resilience is a complex concept that is not yet well understood. Building on these findings, this year’s project broadened the scope in addressing the effect of varying local conditions on climate resilience on four different Caribbean islands: Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. For the GIZ, the research project aimed at improving the understanding of the socio-ecological resilience framework for tackling problems of Marine Managed Areas (MMA) and Marine Protected Areas (MPA). Also, it enabled new thoughts on how the GIZ and other development agencies can more effectively assist island states to better cope with the challenges of climate change. The role of the students from the “Global Environmental and Sustainability Sciences” programme of Leuphana University included the design of four transdisciplinary research projects to study the effect of varying local conditions in disaster-prone regions in the Southern Caribbean on climate resilience. The developing island states in the Caribbean are extremely vulnerable to more frequent and intense natural hazards while relying on ecosystem services that are threatened by extreme weather events, in particular Hurricanes. After such adverse events, low economic stability leads to a dependency of the states on international assistance. To decrease the vulnerability to shocks, counteracting measures that encourage learning and adaptation can increase the resilience against extreme weather events and their consequences. Concepts that were considered during the design of the transdisciplinary research projects were the adaptation of systems, diversity and stakeholder participation and resilience-focused management systems. Building on the results from last year in Dominica, the establishment of a four islands design allowed for greater comparison to better understand community approaches to solve a concrete sustainability problem: securing livelihoods while protecting natural and cultural resources. The research methods of a literature review, stakeholder mapping, semi-structured interviews, scenario development and visioning were used in the projects. A comparison of the four TD projects revealed four overarching lessons. First, all countries recognise a need for restoration and conservation projects, i.e., nature-based solutions implemented and managed by the local community in the MPA. Furthermore, all four cases show that the limited participation of local people in the management and organisation of the MPA is a factor constraining community resilience. Third, this TD project highlights the importance to distinguish climate change as an event or as a process. When climate change occurs as a series of disaster events (e.g., hurricanes, floodings, and heatwaves) in combination with s gradual degradation of natural ecosystems (e.g., coral bleaching and ocean warming), people in MPA communities show highly adaptive and restorative behaviour. Finally, this project was an attempt to realize a cross-cultural and virtual transdisciplinary project. The research approach of transdisciplinarity links different academic disciplines and concepts, and non-scientific stakeholders are included to find solutions for societal and related scientific problems. A major learning was that in virtual TD projects particular attention needs to be paid to setting clear boundaries and be explicit about success criteria. Nonetheless, the findings of the projects provide valuable learning lessons to be applied in practice and that can prove useful for future research.

Does the presentation of travel experience affect personal prestige of tourists? Prestige enhancement has been considered a motive for travel by tourism researchers for decades. Yet, the question whether representation of travel experience actually leads to personal prestige enhancement has been widely neglected so far. The study of prestige benefits of travel is a necessary endeavour to develop suitable methodological approaches toward the concept, in order to close critical knowledge gaps and enhance scientific understanding. The present thesis lays out the rationale and results of three research projects which shed light onto the relationship between touristic self-presentation and its effects on personal prestige evaluations of the social environment. The empirical studies conducted in the frame of this dissertation conclude in the following main findings: Leisure travel is a useful means for people to self-express in a positive way, and material representations of travel are frequently displayed to others. Tourists make use of travel experience to self-present in a positive way by uploading photos on social media, collecting and displaying souvenirs, wearing jewellery and clothing from their last trip, or talking about their trips to others. They express positive self-messages about personal character traits, affiliation to social in-groups and proof of having travelled somewhere. The findings ascertain the utility of travel representations for positive self-expression, showing that travel experience is an effective vehicle for conspicuous consumption and self-expression as an antecedent for personal prestige enhancement. Personal prestige is an element of social relations, and holds capacity to affect perceptions of social inclusion and social distinction, so it has to be conceptualised as a multidimensional construct. In a tourism context, personal prestige is reliably measurable along the four dimensions of hedonism, social inclusion, social distinction and prosperity. The herein developed Personal Prestige Inventory (PPI) is a valid, reliable and parsimonious measurement tool which substantially enhances methodological approaches toward empirical research into personal prestige. The way in which people represent travel experience to others measurably affects how their personal prestige is evaluated by social others. Empirical evidence of a series of experimental studies provides support for the assumption that representation of travel experience has an effect on the social evaluation of tourists’ personal prestige. Experimental variance suggests small to moderate effects on personal prestige depending on the amount of leisure information given about a person, participation in tourism, and the destination and type of travel represented. This evidence is reasonable basis to conclude that whether and how people travel, and whether and how they share travel experience with others, does measurably affect social other’s evaluation of their personal prestige. By providing qualitative evidence for positive self-presentation through leisure travel, and the subsequent development and experimental application of the Personal Prestige Inventory (PPI) in a tourism context, the present dissertation enhances scientific understanding of personal prestige in the context of leisure travel and provides useful methodological advancements for further research into the topic.

The academic literature holds high expectations of crowdfunding to foster sustainable development by closing the funding gap for sustainable entrepreneurs. In particular, crowdfunding is considered a promising instrument for transforming existing socio-technical regimes by financing radical innovations of such entrepreneurs. However, this potential has not yet been fully explored. Large knowledge gaps exist especially in the area of investment-based crowdfunding. Therefore, this dissertation addresses the overarching research question of how sustainable entrepreneurs can exploit the full potential of investment-based crowdfunding to develop from niche operators to actors in the socio-technical regime. Five journal articles and one book chapter are included in this PhD project, which use a wide range of quantitative methodologies. In the framework paper, the findings are conceptually evaluated on a meta-level by applying the multi-level perspective. The key insights can be assigned to four categories, including the financing and marketing function, the target group, and the project presentation. The analysis shows that investment-based crowdfunding is suitable to equally fund and market the business ideas of environmental entrepreneurs, since the quest for entering the mass market is highest for such ventures. In contrast, purely social entrepreneurs tend to conduct crowdfunding projects on a smaller scale and probably aim to stay in the niche. Nevertheless, profit-oriented social entrepreneurs are still encouraged to use investment-based crowdfunding for funding and marketing purposes. The prominent display of environmental effects (e.g. the amount of compensated greenhouse gases) and financial incentives (e.g. high interest rates) has a high impact on the investment decision of individuals on investment-based crowdfunding platforms. The findings also suggest that the typical supporter of sustainability-oriented crowdfunding projects is younger than 50 years, has achieved at least a university degree and holds low levels of self-enhancement and conservative values. The case of fairafric is used as a best practice example to demonstrate how crowdfunding can be a stepping stone for sustainability-oriented niche actors to enter the mass market. The fair-trade and organic chocolate manufacturer has undergone six crowdfunding campaigns which enabled it to grow and build a strong community of supporters. The outcomes of this dissertation clarify how sustainable entrepreneurs can unleash the potential of investment-based crowdfunding for financing and marketing purposes.

Who is taken into consideration when we talk about the citizens, about the people or the activists? Often it is a rather unquestioned privileged positionality, which is taken to be the standard that most of the time it is actually not. In this quote, the activist Madjiguène Cissé, from the transnational Sans-Papiers movement, raises that just because someone or something is not visible—to the broader public or a particular public—it does not mean that they have not been there for a long time. Migrant rights activism is not a new phenomenon but has intensified and become more networked and visible over the past years (Eggert & Giugni, 2015). This study explores group contexts of activism by, with and for refugees and migrants in Hamburg, the claims, interactions, challenges and processes that activists experience, discuss and deal with. I have approached activists experiencing political organizing in this context from a constructivist grounded theory perspective. This allowed me to develop conceptual perspectives grounded in activist groups’ realities and was advanced through existing literature on this social movement but also theories from other research fields. Solidarities emerged throughout the research process as a more concrete focus. This research sets out to answer the questions: What does solidarity mean in social movements, and how do migrant rights activist practices result in negotiating, enacting and challenging it? This publication is a revised version of my dissertation thesis.

In political and academic debates, there are increasing voices for a sustainable transformation that culminates in the demand for collaborative human action. Collaborative governance is a promising approach to address the difficult challenges of sustainability through global public and private partnerships between diverse actors of state, market and civil society. The textile and clothing industry (hereafter: textile sector) is an excellent example where a variety of such initiatives have evolved to address the wicked sustainability challenges. However, the question arises whether collaborative governance actually leads to transformation, also because the textile sector still faces various sustainability challenges such as the violation of workers' rights, agriculture and water pollution from toxic chemicals, and emissions from logistics that contribute significantly to climate change. In this dissertation, I therefore question whether and how collaborative governance in the textile sector provides space for, or pathways to, sustainability transformation. In three scientific articles and this framework paper, I use a mixed-methods research approach and follow scholars of sustainability science towards transformation research. First, I conduct a systematic literature review on inter-organizational and governance partnerships before diving into a critical case study on an interactive collaborative governance initiative, the German Partnership for Sustainable Textiles (hereafter: Textiles Partnership). The multi-stakeholder initiative (MSIs) was initiated by the German government in 2015 and brings together more than 130 organizations and companies from seven stakeholder groups. It aims at improving working conditions and reducing environmental impacts in global textile and clothing supply chains. In two empirical articles, I then explore learning spaces in the partnership and the ways in which governance actors navigate the complex governance landscape. For the former, I use a quantitative and qualitative social network analysis based on annual reports and qualitative interviews with diverse actors from the partnership. Then, I use qualitative content analysis of the interviews, policy documents and conduct a focus group discussion to validate assumptions about the broader empirical governance landscape and the social interactions within. Finally, in this framework paper, I use theories of transformation to distinguish forms of change and personal, political and practical spheres of transformation, and reflect on the findings of the three articles in this cumulative dissertation. I argue that collaborative governance in general and MSIs in particular provide spaces for actors to negotiate their diverse interests, values and worldviews, which is a valuable contribution to social learning and interaction for transformation. However, private governance structures and the diversity and unharmonized nature of initiatives in the landscape hinder the realization of the full potential of such partnerships for practical transformation. My case study shows that in such partnerships, structures emerge that impede the full engagement of all actors in constructive conflict for social learning because they create structures in which few are actively involved in making decisions. This traces back to a practical trade-off between learning and achieving governance outcomes. I argue that decisions should not be rushed, but space should be provided for the confrontation of different values and interests to arrive at informed solutions. Additionally, actors in such partnerships are completely overwhelmed by the multiplicity of different and mostly voluntary initiatives and partnerships, which bring different, non-harmonized commitments, so that actors take on varying and sometimes conflicting roles. MSIs are thus limited by the need for stronger state regulation, which in Germany is now leading to the implementation of the Due Diligence Act in June 2021. Collaborative governance initiatives are thus critical platforms where different actors are able to negotiate their values and political interests. However, they need to be embedded in governmental framework conditions and binding laws that transcend national borders, because the industry's challenges also transcend borders. Only in this way can they contribute substantively to transformation. Further research should focus on the interplay between state and private regulation through further case studies in different sectors and foster inter- and transdisciplinary research that allow for spaces for social interaction and learning between science and practice.

Considering the recent success of right-wing populist candidates and parties in the United States and across Europe, there has for some years now been talk among scholars (and the wider public) about a worldwide democratic recession. Levitsky and Ziblatt paint a very gloomy picture when they write that democracy is at risk of dying. Others are not as pessimistic, but they still argue that democracy is in a state of serious disrepair. The younger generations appear to be especially unsupportive of democracy’s liberal principles and more willing to express support for authoritarian alternatives. What these authors overlook, however, is that the publics of advanced industrial societies have experienced an intergenerational value shift. In fact, populations in industrial democracies have become more liberal overall, but not everyone’s mindset is changing at the same speed. It is mainly – but not exclusively – the members of the lower classes that do not keep up. While societies have generally become more liberal, there is increasing alienation between the social classes over these liberal values. Drawing on a more recent trend in social class research with a social cognitive approach, this dissertation contributes to the study of growing anti-democratic tendencies around the world by analyzing the interplay between inequality dynamics and value orientations. The focus lies on investigating the effect socio-cultural polarization (i.e., ideological polarization between social classes) has on civic culture in the mature democracies of the West. The findings suggest that it is not ideological polarization between the social classes that has the greatest negative effect on civic culture, or general civic attitudes and behavior, for that matter. It is the increasing dissent in society about whether the country’s elites are still to be trusted with making the right decisions to increase the average citizen’s quality of life. This difference in opinion manifests itself in a decline in some civic attitudes.

The transition of our energy system towards a generation by renewables, and the corresponding developments of wind power technology enlarge the requirements that must be met by a wind turbine control scheme. Within this thesis, the role of modern, model-based control approaches in providing an answer to present and future challenges faced by wind energy conversion systems is discussed. While many different control loops shape the power system in general, and the energy conversion process from the wind to the electrical grid specifically, this work addresses the problem of power output regulation of an individual turbine. To this end, the considered control task focuses on the operation of the turbine on the nonlinear power conversion curve, which is dictated by the aerodynamic interaction of the wind turbine structure and the current inflow. To enable a power tracking functionality, and thereby account for requirements of the electrical grid instead of operating the turbine at maximum efficiency constantly, an extended operational range is explicitly considered in the implemented control scheme. This allows for an adjustment of the produced power depending on the current state of the electrical grid and is one component in constructing a reliable and stable power system based on renewable generation. To account for the nonlinear dynamics involved, a linear matrix inequalities approach to control based on Takagi-Sugeno modeling is investigated. This structure is capable of integrating several degrees of freedom into an automated control design, where, additionally to stability, performance constraints are integrated into the design to account for the sensitive dynamical behavior of turbines in operation and the loading experienced by the turbine components. For this purpose, a disturbance observer is designed that provides an estimate of the current effective wind speed from the evolution of the measurements. This information is used to adjust the control scheme to the varying operating points and dynamics. Using this controller, a detailed simulation study is performed that illustrates the experienced loading of the turbine structure due to a dynamic variation of the power output. It is found that a dedicated controller allows wind turbines to provide such functionality. Additionally to the conducted simulations, the control scheme is validated experimentally. For this purpose, a fully controllable wind turbine is operated in a wind tunnel setup that is capable of generating reproducible wind conditions, including turbulence, in a wide operational range. This allows for an assessment of the power tracking performance enforced by the controller and analysis of the wind speed estimation error with the uncertainties present in the physical application. The controller showed to operate the turbine smoothly in all considered operating scenarios, while the implementation in the real-time environment revealed no limitations in the application of the approach within the experiments. Hence, the high flexibility in adjusting the turbine operating trajectories and structural design characteristics within the model-based design allows for efficient controller synthesis for wind turbines with increasing functionality and complexity.