Research and Consulting
We help our partners ask the right questions about corporate responsibility, develop strategies, and work alongside them to implement these strategies efficiently.
Economic, technological, and social conditions change rapidly, along with the challenges for dealing with socially relevant topics. Questions to be addressed include: How can new legal reporting requirements or standards be implemented? What new sustainability issues does “Industry 4.0” create for companies? What innovation opportunities are there for industries and individual companies? To answer these and similar questions, we conduct application-oriented research with and for companies with projects that take between six months and three years to complete.
Learn more about our research and development projects
Your Benefits
- With your input, we will develop innovative solutions and enable you to benefit from their pioneer status before they become common property. This will give you a decisive advantage.
- You benefit from an exchange with research institutions and other innovative organizations that have successfully broken new ground in the area of corporate responsibility.
- As a university of applied sciences, we have access to funding from the federal government and national foundations.
Some tasks require a timely solution that takes expertise, experience, and specific tools. Depending on your needs, we work closely with you to analyze the situation, provide an assessment, identify potential for improvement, and develop change processes.
We support our partners and customers in answering specific questions, such as:
- Are you addressing the really important sustainability issues? Are you taking sufficient account of opportunities, and do you do enough to identify and define the risks?
- Does your company use the elements of structure and culture in an effective, efficient, and integrated way?
- How good are you at reaching your target groups? How effectively are communication tools, such as the sustainability report, utilized? To what extent are the fundamental requirements of the more common standards met?
- Are you planning to expand your business to another country and would like to know which sustainability issues need to be addressed, or addressed more extensively, there?
Learn more about our consultancy projects
Your Benefits
- As a university of applied sciences, we are scientifically sound, independent, and non-profit-oriented.
- If necessary, we draw on the services of specialists from an extensive network to help us with specific aspects.
- BASF SE
- Basler Kantonalbank/Bank Cler AG
- Business & Human Rights Resource Centre
- BHP - Brugger and Partners Ltd.
- BSD Consulting
- Center for Corporate Reporting (CCR)
- Center for Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability (CCRS) at the University of Zurich
- Chiquita Brands International
- EBP
- Ernst Schweizer AG
- Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International, e. V.
- Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN)
- Fortisa AG
- Heineken Switzerland AG
- Inrate AG
- Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies
- Knecht & Müller AG
- Kuhn Rikon AG
- Kuoni Travel Holding
- Leuphana University of Lüneburg
- Neosys AG
- Nestlé S.A.
- öbu - Swiss Sustainable Business Network
- Pirelli & C. S.p.A.
- Raiffeisenbank Mischabel-Matterhorn
- RepRisk AG
- Solidar Suisse
- State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO)
- Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)
- Swiss Association for Standardization (SNV)
- Syngenta International AG
- University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland FHNW