Steinbeis team acts as collaboration partner at the sustainable management award ceremony
Steinbeis Global Institute Tübingen, the Steinbeis Transfer Institute, joined forces with other project partners to present this year’s Green Management & Leadership Award (GreenMLA®) to two companies: Rational and SchwörerHaus. These two sustainable businesses were honored during an award ceremony at the global FUTURE EUROPE – SUSTAINABLE EUROPE conference, which took place virtually on July 5.
For the GreenMLA® corporate benchmarking initiative, which spotlights the sustainability of companies, 27 firms were assessed on environmental, social, and corporate governance criteria spanning seven areas of business management. Steinbeis Global Institute Tübingen, the Steinbeis Transfer Institute, is the scientific partner in this initiative for conducting the assessment of company data and preparing individual evaluations for each participating company based on quantitative and qualitative values. Following business audits of the firms with the highest ratings, Quimron from Stuttgart, Rational from Landsberg am Lech, and SchwörerHaus from Hohenstein-Oberstetten were nominated as the Top 3 Companies.
In their statement to the jury, Steinbeis experts Professor Dr. Rolf Pfeiffer and Professor Dr. Bertram Lohmüller concluded that two companies achieved the same scores and were thus both entitled to go home with the award: Rational and SchwörerHaus. Rational, a producer of large-scale and industrial kitchen equipment, won over the jury with (among other things) its green corporate philosophy, which has been in place since the company was founded, its sustainable customer benefits delivered in terms of ergonomics, energy savings and product life, and the resource-saving qualities of buildings used by the company. SchwörerHaus, a German manufacturer of prefabricated housing, already introduced a sustainability committee at the company almost 35 years ago. Its group of experts convenes four times a year. The company organizes sustainability initiatives such as its Trainee Forest and a daily break during work called Schwörer Move for employees to enjoy supervised exercise. The firm has also been carbon-neutral since 2021. Quimron, a software company with 20 employees, was also certified as a Top 3 Company. “Its focus lies in long-term and sustainable benefit to customers, and sustainability issues are regularly discussed at team meetings,” summarizes Bertram Lohmüller.
The award ceremony, which was organized by the Maleki Corporate Group, was attended by Manfred Zöllner and Thomas Trunzer (co-managing directors of Quimron), Peter Wiedemann (chief technology officer at Rational), and Johannes Schwörer (SchwörerHaus CEO). As part of a panel discussion, all were given an opportunity to present their companies and outline their underlying motivations for engaging in sustainable corporate management. The focal topic for the overall event was sustainability activities past and present, as well as any future plans made by the companies in the field of sustainability.
To assess nominations, the GreenMLA® Green Management & Leadership Award considers the following aspects of sustainability: the environment, social factors, and corporate governance as part of a holistic approach to management. Each company participating in the awards receives a formal evaluation of its individual performance when it comes to sustainable management, including an anonymous comparison with other companies. The idea is to help companies position themselves more successfully and sustainably in the market.
The partners working on the project are Export-Akademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, Steinbeis Global Institute Tübingen (a Steinbeis Transfer Institute), DZ Bank, and Maleki Corporate Group. The GreenMLA® project was set up to enable companies to evaluate and understand how they translate sustainability principles into processes, services, and products. For further information and documentation on GreenMLA 2022, go to www.greenmla.de.
Contact
Prof. Dr. Bertram Lohmüller (author)
Steinbeis Entrepreneur
Steinbeis Transfer Institute Steinbeis Global Institute Tübingen (Tübingen)