Prof. Dr. Ludger Heidbrink

Principal Investigator, Kiel Centre for Globalization
Chair of Practical Philosophy, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel
Email: heidbrink@philsem.uni-kiel.de
Tel.: +49(0)431-880-2826

Research Interests:

  • Theories of Responsibility
  • Economic and Corporate Ethics
  • Political Philosophy
  • Social and Cultural Philosophy
  • Theories of Behaviour and Rationality

Virtue Ethics between East and West in Consumer Research: Review, Synthesis and Directions for Future Research

19th November 2021
KCG Secretary
Authors: Guli-Sanam Karimova, Nils Christian Hoffmann, Ludger Heidbrink, Stefan Hoffmann (Journal of Business Ethics, 2020, 165: 255–275)

This literature review systematically synthesizes studies that link consumer research to differences and similarities in virtue ethics between the East and the West, with a focus on early Chinese and ancient Greek virtue ethics. These two major traditions provide principles that guide consumer behavior and thus serve as a background to comparatively explain and evaluate the ethical nature of consumer behavior in the East and the West[...]

Interfaces of occupational health management and corporate social responsibility: a multi-centre qualitative study from Germany

18th November 2021
KCG Secretary
Authors: Ludger Heidbrink, Eva Kuhn, Sebastian Müller, Christoph Teusch, Grit Tanner, Marlies Schümann, Carolin Baur, Eva Bamberg, Stuart McLennan, Alena Buyx (BMC Public Health, 2021, 21:1042)

The workplace has been identified as a priority setting for health promotion. There are potential advantages of systematically integrating Occupational Health Management (OHM) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). However, OHM and CSR are usually overseen by different management branches with different sets of values, and there is a lack of empirical research regarding interfaces between OHM and CSR. Germany offers a particularly useful setting due to legislation requiring health to be promoted in the workplace. This study aims to examine key stakeholders’ views and experiences regarding interfaces between OHM and CSR in German companies.

KCG Managing Director Holger Görg is Invited to Join a Hearing on Supply Chain Law Today

28th April 2021
KCG Secretary
Today there will be a hearing on “Supply Chain Law” in the Environment and Agriculture Committee of the State Parliament of Schleswig-Holstein. Prof. Holger Görg, Ph.D. (KCG Managing Director) is invited to provide his views on this topic. In total, 16 experts and representatives of environmental and development organisations as well as industry/business associations are expected to share their opinion on the topic from various aspects at the hearing[...]

KCG Policy Paper No. 7: Ein Lieferkettengesetz für Deutschland?

12th February 2021
KCG Secretary
Authors: Holger Görg, Aoife Hanley, Ludger Heidbrink, Stefan Hoffmann, Till Requate

Ein Lieferkettengesetz kann einen starken Anreiz dafür setzen, dass deutsche Unternehmen sich für nachhaltige Sozial- und Umweltbedingungen in globalen Lieferketten einsetzen. Dabei sollte jedoch überdacht werden, ob es zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt nicht sinnvoller wäre, eine gesetzlich vorgeschriebene Haftung durch eine zunächst zeitlich befristete Selbstverpflichtungsphase zu ersetzen oder zu ergänzen[…]

The Ethics of Workplace Health Promotion

10th July 2020
KCG Secretary
Authors: Eva Kuhn, Sebastian Müller, Ludger Heidbrink, and Alena Buyx (Public Health Ethics, 2020, 13(3): 234–246)
Companies increasingly offer their employees the opportunity to participate in voluntary Workplace Health Promotion programmes. Although such programmes have come into focus through national and regional regulation throughout much of the Western world, their ethical implications remain largely unexamined[...]

Heidbrink Emphasizes the key Relevance of Self-Responsibility for Dealing with Climate Challenges

12th December 2019
KCG Secretary
On Dec. 11, 2019 Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the EU Commission, announced the European Green Deal, a roadmap with actions aiming at making Europe climate-neutral by 2050. In so doing, it should also be able to further support the economic development, provide better care for nature, improve the quality of life and encourage social inclusion at the same time. The EU Commission thus plans to present the first European Climate Law within 100 days[...]

Best Paper Award to KCG Research on Global Standards and Philosophy of Consumption

26th November 2019
KCG Secretary
A recent KCG paper titled “Global Standards and Philosophy of Consumption: Towards Consumer-driven Governance of Global Value Chains", co-authored by Guli-Sanam Karimova (KCG Fellow), Prof. Dr. Ludger Heidbrink (KCG Co-Head), and Prof. Dr. Johannes Brinkmann (BI Norwegian Business School & KCG External Research Fellow) received the Patrick Primeux Best Paper Award 2019 at the 26th International Vincentian Business Ethics Conference (IVBEC) on October 24-26, 2019 in Dublin[...]

Virtue Ethics Between East and West in Consumer Research: Review, Synthesis and Directions for Future Research

14th November 2019
KCG Secretary
Authors: Guli-Sanam Karimova, Nils Christian Hoffmann, Ludger Heidbrink and Stefan Hoffmann (Journal of Business Ethics, 2019)

This literature review systematically synthesizes studies that link consumer research to differences and similarities in virtue ethics between the East and the West, with a focus on early Chinese and ancient Greek virtue ethics. These two major traditions provide principles that guide consumer behavior and thus serve as a background to comparatively explain and evaluate the ethical nature of consumer behavior in the East and the West. The paper first covers Eastern and Western[…]

KCG Researchers Investigate Consumer Roles in Collaborative Consumption

9th August 2019
KCG Secretary
The rapid development of new digital technologies has facilitated the formation of new e-business ideas. Many of these ideas can be seen as the implementation of a new collaborative form of consumption and production and are expected to have their potential economic impact beyond national boundaries. Here economic agents take both roles of consumers and suppliers. This makes them different from the traditional business models where the classic supplier-consumer dualism usually applies[…]

Nudges, Transparenz und Autonomie: eine normativ gehaltvolle Kategorisierung von Maßnahmen des Nudgings

12th July 2019
KCG Secretary
Authors: Ludger Heidbrink and Andrea Klonschinski (Vierteljahreshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung, 2018, Vol. 87(1), 15-27)

The debate on the legitimacy of nudging is hampered by the absence of a clear definition of what a nudge is. Given that the attempt to limit the term “nudge” to interventions exploiting cognitive biases has not been accepted in the literature[…]

KCG Co-hosted the Consumer Social Responsibility Workshop in Kiel, Germany

2nd July 2019
KCG Secretary
KCG was pleased to co-host the successful workshop “Consumer Social Responsibility” on May 23 – 24. At the workshop which took place at the Science Park (Wissenschaftspark) in Kiel, Germany, senior and junior scientists from Germany and abroad presented their ongoing related projects and discussed the scientific, social and political relevance of Consumer Social Responsibility (ConSR) and its relation to the very established concept of Corporate Social Responsibility[…]

Guli-Sanam Karimova Presented at the 5th EIASM Workshop on Business Ethics in Brussels

20th June 2019
KCG Secretary
KCG Researcher, Guli-Sanam Karimova, joined the 5th EIASM Workshop on Business Ethics where she also gave a presentation based on her recent paper “Global Standards and Philosophy of Consumption: Towards Consumer-Driven Governance of Global Value Chains”. This paper, an output of  the KCG Project “Cross-cultural differences in the perception of corporate social responsibility and consumer social responsibility along global supply chains”, is a joint research work with Prof. Dr. Ludger Heidbrink (KCG Senior Fellow; University of Kiel) and Prof. Dr. Johannes Brinkmann (KCG External Research Fellow; BI Norwegian Business School)[…]

KCG will Co-organise a Workshop on Consumer Social Responsibility on May 23-24 in Kiel

25th April 2019
KCG Secretary
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KCG works on an interdisciplinary research agenda that analyses the economic and social consequences of global supply chains, focusing particularly on related ethical issues. One key aspect here is the role of consumers and their social responsibility along the global supply chains. The KCG Project “Cross-cultural differences in the perception of corporate social responsibility and consumer social responsibility along global supply chains” thus aims at analysing, amongst others, how consumers in[…]

KCG Welcomes Prof. Dr. Stephen Arthur LeMay as a KCG External Research Fellow

28th March 2019
KCG Secretary
It is our pleasure to announce that Prof. Dr. Stephen Arthur LeMay recently joined the Kiel Centre for Globalization as a KCG External Research Fellow. LeMay is an Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing, Supply Chain Logistics, and Economics at the University of West Florida. He has extensive expertise and research experience in the fields of supply chain management and logistics, particularly with special emphasis on human resources, supply chain management and ethics, as well as customer and consumer relevant moral issues[…]

KCG Researcher Works on a New Project as to Finality and Growth Criticism

25th March 2019
KCG Secretary
Prof. Dr. Ludger Heidbrink, KCG Senior Research Fellow and Chair of Practical Philosophy, is engaged in a new research project “Finite world and open future. Finality and growth criticism in contemporary political thought” in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Tine Stein from the University Göttingen. This project is concerned with the impact of secularised conceptions of time and progress on economic growth theories and their ecological critique. The underlying research hypothesis is that secularisation led to the development of modern ideas of progress and growth that stem from a transfer of life-based conceptions of time to world-based conceptions. The linkage between life-time and world-time did not only contribute to the persistency of the modern idea of growth, but led equally to a crisis of the growth-based model of society[…]

FAZ Article on Corporate Morality and Manager Behaviour by Ludger Heidbrink

15th March 2018
KCG Secretary
Business ethics has been a widely discussed topic for years. The need for further research to gain more insights into this area has been enhanced particularly against the background with more and more business scandals emerged in the real life like VW’s software manipulation in diesel powered vehicles and diesel emissions tests on monkeys and humans[…]

Ludger Heidbrink Joined Discussion on Consumption at 3SAT

13th July 2017
KCG Secretary
Prof. Dr. Ludger Heidbrink (Kiel University), KCG Senior Researcher and Co-Head of the KCG Project “Cross-cultural differences in the perception of corporate social responsibility and consumer social responsibility along global supply chains”, joined a TV discussion on consumption at 3SAT on June 29, 2017. At the discussion „I buy, therefore I am“ moderated by Gert Scobel, Heidbrink discussed with Prof. Frank Trentmann, Ph.D. (Birkbeck College, University of London) about the role of consumption in general and the meaning of responsible consumption in a globalized world in particular. The discussion is expected to encourage the audience to reflect on consumer ethics, the role of culture in economic globalization and potential solutions to the challenges related to the global consumer culture from different perspectives. […]

Ludger Heidbrink and Guli-Sanam Karimova Joined National Conference on Sustainable Consumption in Berlin

30th March 2017
KCG Secretary
National Conference on Sustainable Consumption initiated by the German Federal Government took place on March 23rd in Berlin. The Conference aimed at encouraging public discussions among key stakeholders and experts from academia, NGOs, business and politics to collect valuable feedback and suggestions for the newly adopted National Program on Sustainable Consumption in Germany. Ludger Heidbrink and Guli-Sanam Karimova joined the conference to gain more insights into the topic of sustainable consumption that is relevant for a current KCG research project […]