Food for thought: The role of the business school in food systems organising

RO workshop
This workshop is first of Responsible Organising (RO) workshop series under the heading “Envisioning the School of Organising”, posing a simple question: “How could we reimagine teaching, research, and administration in a way that embody our deepest aspirations for human organising?”

Register here! 

Date: 25.05.2023 10.00 - 13.00

Location: Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki. (partially streamed)

Within business schools worldwide, there is barely any research or teaching on food. Nor is there much engagement with food system actors, such as farmers, peasants, food growing communities, food policy makers, etc. This is strange, given that we all need to eat on a daily basis. In this talk, Steffen will analyse why this lack of engagement with the food domain is reminiscent of deep-seated problems with the way business schools are functioning today. After outlining the problem, he will then propose six principles of how business schools should engage with food: (1) food is a regenerative system that involves humans and nonhumans; (2) food is an everyday, cyclical practice; (3) food requires cooperation; (4) justice needs to be at the heart of the food system; (5) food requires inter- and trans-disciplinary research and education approaches; (6) food is a pluriverse.

The workshop will be held in person at Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, with the presentation streamed online. Participants who register for the presentation online will receive a link to Teams.

If you have any questions, please contact responsible.organising@hanken.fi. 

Steffen Böhm is Professor in Organisation & Sustainability at University of Exeter Business School. He was previously Professor in Management and Sustainability at the University of Essex. He’s also held visiting positions at Uppsala University, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden, as well as at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and St Andrews University, Scotland. His research focuses on the political economy & ecology of the sustainability transition. He has published seven books: Repositioning Organization Theory (Palgrave), Against Automobility (Wiley-Blackwell), Upsetting the Offset: The Political Economy of Carbon Markets (Mayfly), The Atmosphere Business (Mayfly), Ecocultures: Blueprints for Sustainable Communities (Routledge), and Negotiating Climate Change in Crisis (Open Book Publishers) and Climate Activism (Cambridge). More details at steffenboehm.net