Dissertation: Exploring Behavioral and Attitudinal Employee-Level Reactions to Corporate Environmental Management Practices

Congratulations! Our doctoral candidate Hans Jaich successfully defended his dissertation on February 23

As part of HSBA's cooperative doctoral programme, Hans Jaich dealt intensively with the implications of a growth-limited economy for corporate success factors and strategic options for action. As part of his dissertation, he conducted a real-world laboratory study on spillover effects in the context of socio-ecological transformation in his own company im-jaich. For the resulting outstanding impulses in the field of sustainable tourism in combination with scientific research, the family business was awarded first place in the German Tourism Prize in 2023.

"Hans Jaich's work has not only received multiple awards, but has also provided highly relevant new scientific insights into spillover effects of corporate sustainability on the private and public behavior of employees," said Sarah Jastram, Professor of International Business Ethics and Sustainability. "It was a pleasure to accompany Hans on this journey and a great collaboration between HSBA Hamburg School of Business Administration and Technische Universität Berlin."

Hans Jaich was supervised at HSBA by Prof. Dr. Sarah Jastram and at Technische Universität Berlin by Prof. Dr. Knut Blind. In a short interview, he talks about his field of research and the results of his work.

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How did you become interested in your field of research?

I am an entrepreneur myself and had asked myself how we could contribute to the socio-ecological transformation with our company. When designing corporate environmental protection measures, the question then arose as to whether we could also achieve an effect that would be transferred to the employees and thus have an impact beyond the formal boundaries of the company. This gave us a wonderful setting for a real-life experiment.

What is the focus of your doctoral thesis?

The focus is on investigating the spillover effects of corporate environmental protection measures on the environmentally relevant leisure behavior of employees.

What are the most important results of your doctoral thesis?

We were able to demonstrate experimentally that corporate environmental protection measures express social norms that give social preference to environmentally friendly behavior. The internalization of these social norms has significant effects on the private environmentally relevant behaviour of employees. Our study was the first time we were able to demonstrate this causal relationship experimentally.

Are there any results or discoveries that particularly surprise you?

The strength of the effects. This makes it clear that responsibility for the effects of entrepreneurial action does not stop at the factory gate. What we do in the companies leaves a footprint in the behavior of the employees and is thus also transferred to other contexts.

How relevant are the results of your work for your professional future?

Our strategic approach is to dovetail entrepreneurial action with scientific research practice in such a way that a dynamic is sparked through positive interactions. With this combination of business practice and theory development, we as a company want to contribute to the socio-ecological transformation. The results of my work are an encouraging basis on which we are already planning the next experiments.

 

As of October 1, 2024, we are looking for part-time doctoral candidates (m/f/d) in our cooperative doctoral programme for the research focus Marketing. Find more info here. 

 

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