Johanna Försterling completed her PhD between 2018 and 2025 alongside her full-time role as part of HSBA’s cooperative PhD programme at the Ingeborg Gross Graduate Centre and Helmut Schmidt University. She was supervised by Prof. Dr Sarah Jastram at HSBA and by Prof. Dr Stefan Müller at Helmut Schmidt University.
We spoke to her about her field of research and the findings of her work.
How did you become aware of your field of research?
I came across my field of research in a rather ‘practical’ way. As part of an earlier study, I conducted a survey among companies in the Hamburg business community regarding the introduction of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive, the first mandatory EU directive on non-financial reporting. In doing so, I witnessed first-hand how companies deal with this new regulation, and what questions, uncertainties, but also opportunities arise from it.
What I found particularly fascinating was not so much the reporting obligation itself, but the underlying question: does such regulation actually bring about change within a company? Does it have a genuine impact on sustainability strategies and practices – or does much of it remain a mere formality? It was precisely this tension that sparked my interest in questions regarding the “impact of sustainability governance” and ultimately led to my research focus.
What is the focus of your PhD thesis?
The focus of my PhD thesis is on the question of what actual impact sustainability governance has on the achievement of sustainability goals. I am particularly interested in how this impact can be measured and assessed in the first place: what added value do the numerous rules, standards and reporting requirements offer, and how must sustainability be managed within a company to ensure that a real impact is achieved?
I deliberately take a broad view of sustainability governance: it is not just about government regulation, but also about internal corporate governance mechanisms.
Is there one finding from your research that you would like to highlight?
I wrote a cumulative doctoral thesis, comprising several studies that all address the same underlying theme. That’s why I find it quite difficult to single out ‘the one’ most important finding. If I had to summarise it, I would say the central finding is the conceptual refinement of ‘impact’ and the development of a model for measuring it. In practice and research, people very often talk about impact, although what is actually being described are merely outcomes – that is, results that are visible but do not necessarily represent a profound, sustainable effect. In my work, I therefore make a clear distinction between outcome and impact, drawing on an impact chain model. To ensure this distinction is not made solely on the basis of ‘short-term’ versus ‘long-term’, I have introduced two additional indicators: ‘Key Actors’ and ‘Type of Change’. This allows for a more precise understanding of who is actually affected by a change and what kind of change is taking place. This makes it clearer when we can truly speak of impact – and when it is more a case of ‘merely’ an outcome. For me, this model is a particularly valuable finding because it provides a basis for describing the impact of sustainability governance more clearly, measuring it more effectively and discussing it in a more informed manner.
Another finding from my doctoral thesis that I find particularly valuable is the realisation that the strong desire for quantifiability in the sustainability sector – particularly in reporting and ratings – has only limited merit. Whilst many stakeholders are guided by the logic of financial reporting and wish to translate everything into metrics and KPIs, However, my research shows that the nature of many sustainability issues is fundamentally different: more complex, longer-term and highly context-dependent.
What is important to me, therefore, is this: qualitative information is not a ‘nice to have’, but a central component of a serious assessment of sustainability performance – particularly where raw figures would oversimplify reality.
How relevant are the findings of your research to your future career?
The findings of my doctoral thesis are directly relevant to my future career. I work in the business world as a Senior Sustainability Reporting Manager, and the realisation that impact is complex and cannot be measured by just two or three KPIs is of enormous help to me in my day-to-day work. It helps me to put issues into the right context, set priorities and constantly remind myself of what ultimately matters: not to map every indicator down to the last detail, but to convey an honest, transparent overall picture of sustainability performance and impact.
The concepts developed in this work help to make sustainability performance more comparable, evaluate measures more thoroughly and align management more effectively with objectives.At the same time, the findings also have clear scientific relevance: the conceptual refinement of ‘impact’ and the proposed model facilitate the comparability of research results and strengthen the theoretical foundation in the field of sustainability governance.