SBE’s Spearhead Fair and Smart Data – the Currency for Global Sustainability (FSD)

Global value networks derived from business activities are often complex, limited in inclusivity, and limited in transparency, partially because they have been historically designed in this manner, often to the benefit of multinational corporations. This current design limits the development of sustainable value chains that are competitive, inclusive, and fair.

The complementary partners in the FSD Spearhead see strong opportunities for implementing digital technologies and new business models that can improve social and environmental sustainability across the globe, next to economic prosperity. Digital technologies can create ‘smart’ data, that is transparent and traceable throughout the value network. This smart data can also become ‘fair data’ which provides civil society with ownership of their data and related intelligence it produces.

The FSD Spearhead will use boundary work theory as the transdisciplinary approach over several years to prove and validate the concept of fair and smart data for global sustainability and then scale up for delivery.

Partners in the FSD Spearhead are the Brightlands Institute for Supply Chain Innovation (BISCI), Marketing & Supply Chain Management (MSCM-UM), Maastricht Sustainability Institute (MSI-UM), Maastricht School of Management (MSM-UM), Data and Analytics Department (DAD-UM), Solidaridad Network, and Rabobank. The consortium opens up the research for others at SBE and elsewhere, and there will be education at SBE and beyond, and sharing of best practice on boundary work. Contact person at MSI is Ron Cörvers (r.corvers@maastrichtuniversity.nl).

Maastricht Observatory on Resilient, Responsible & Sustainable Enterprise and Economy (MORSE)

MORSE is an initiative of the School of Business and Economics (SBE) of Maastricht University (MU). Duration: 2021- 2025 (5 years).

The objective of MORSE is to mobilize and bring together researchers in UM and beyond around the challenge of building more resilient, responsible and sustainable enterprises and economies in Europe and globally as three distinct but related challenges. The 2008-2009 financial crisis and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic have clearly illustrated that countries, firms and citizens are vulnerable to shocks. This spearhead asks: How do we build sustainable systems that are efficient and competitive in normal times and resilient in response to crises?

A related challenge for enterprises and economies is to become more sustainable, responsible, just and fair. The call for responsible companies is getting louder. Society rightly demands more responsible leadership as an unethical organizational business culture has devastating economic and social consequences. The imperatives for change are clear but the solutions are not. The knowledge base for getting to solutions needs to be build. This brings us to the second question of MORSE: how can we build back something better: more sustainable, responsible, just and resilient?

MORSE will motivate and inspire researchers to work across disciplines and fields on complex, real-world questions, with stakeholders. By pooling the different expertise on the topics of resilience, responsibility and sustainability, MORSE aspires to having a visible and real-world impact on the topics of resilience, sustainability and responsibility, via education, outreach and new research projects.

Special attention will be given to collaboration with partners in the Limburg area and the Euregion. Concrete ideas for this are: a R4-Hub for Repair, Remanufacture, Reuse, Recycle Hub for a Sustainable Circular Economy, student projects on social entrepreneurship, participation in platforms and public events and post-graduate trainings in purposing, impact valuation and resilience. MORSE is an initiative from the School of Business and Economics of Maastricht University, and led by Prof René Kemp and Prof Mark Sanders.

MORSE has money for funding workshops and special events and serves as a contact point for science-stakeholders interactions. Budget: 5x150k euro.

If you wish to interact with SBE experts on the above topics, please contact the project leaders. Contact person at MSI is René Kemp (r.kemp@maastrichtuniversity.nl +31 43 3883285 / 2662.