Did you miss the Responsible Organising conference this year? You can still watch one of the keynote debates online

Stella Nkomo

You can watch the keynote debate Reimagining the Futures of Work until the 26th of August 2021 here.

The annual conference is organised in collaboration between three research institutes at Hanken: CCR - Centre for Corporate Responsibility, GODDESS, which is a Research Institute for Gender, Organisation, Diversity, Equality, and Social Sustainability, and HUMLOG, an institute with the primary aim to conduct research in humanitarian logistics and supply chain management. Sustainability and responsibility are themes included in Hanken's Areas of Strength, and the conference is part of the Area of Strength Responsible Organising and its focus on societal impact. The conference’s target audience is the broader public. 

Stella Nkomo, Professor at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, participated in one of the two panel debates held during the day. She highlighted that we need an extended dialogue in order to understand the breadth and depth of many of the global challenges that we face today.

She strongly emphasized the need to conduct research based on the reality in and of the global south. 

 “Many of the theories applied, for example, in South Africa have been created in Western countries. They are in many cases irrelevant to the reality that we live in,” Nkomo commented.       

Professor Juha Suoranta (University of Tampere) and Sergio Wanderley (University of Grande Rio) also participated in the panel debate moderated by Martin Fougère, Assistant Professor at Hanken. 

Can the future of working life be predicted? 

In the second panel debate, Reimagining the Futures of Work, the future working life and what it might look like was discussed.  

Aaron Benanav, researcher at Humbolt University, and one of the participants in the panel, recommended analysing recent history when developing visions of the future.

“The trends that have developed over a longer period of time are likely to continue. These include, among other things, that working life has become more insecure for many groups, and that productivity has decreased. I believe that we need more public investment to remedy this,” he remarked.    

The other participants in the panel were Signe Jauhiainen (Kela) and Maija Mattila (Kalevi Sorsa Säätiö). The discussion was moderated by Mikko Vesa, Assistant Professor at Hanken.

The discussion was sponsored by the Nordic Council of Ministers' discussion series Nordic Talks.