Christoph Beuttler
Management, Birkbeck College
University of London
Systemic Strategies for Sustainability: Towards a More Holistic Paradigm

christophbeuttler@gmx.de

Christoph E. Beuttler is starting his 2nd year of part time doctoral studies in management at the School of Management and Organizational Psychology at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he is also teaching (since 2006) in the Philosophy of Science and Research Methods, Management Studies and the Industrial Relations, Economics and Labour Law program. He received his MSc (International Business) from Birkbeck College and his Diplom Betriebswirt (Business Administration) from the University of Applied Sciences, Heidelberg, Germany. He holds a Birkbeck College research scholarship.

Christoph's research focuses on holistic approaches to sustainability with a particular emphasis on systemic theories. Prior to this his research interests where in the field of knowledge management and organizational learning. He completed both his dissertations within this field. His knowledge in this field is grounded in consultancy projects at a multinational market research company (GIM) and as a project manager at the Institute of Work research and Organizational Consulting in Nuertingen, Germany. In addition to this, he co-founded and managed an advertising agency from 1998 until 2001. Currently Christoph is working as a Marketing Executive at Outsideline Ltd, a digital Marketing Agency in London, UK.

Since starting his doctoral program in 2007 Christoph has received extensive research training at Birkbeck College and UCL. His early findings have been presented at Birkbeck's annual PhD Research Conference and his proposal "Systemic Strategies for Sustainability: towards a more holistic paradigm" has received an A- from the ESRC this summer.

Systemic Strategies for Sustainability: Towards a More Holistic Paradigm

The aim of this thesis is to develop a more comprehensive framework of factors influencing sustainability than currently available. From a theoretical/conceptual view, a systemic perspective helps to integrate concepts from various disciplines in order to understand the relationships between them. Higher order questions like appropriate timeframes and the nature of growth (linear vs. exponential) are addressed. At the analytical level three main problems are looked at; resources, systems of governance and innovation.

The latter looks in depth at carbon offset concepts from a managerial perspective and proposes that they hinder innovation in the following rationale. Within this concept there are three main variables toward sustainability: population, innovation and carbon credits. Since a reduction of population is out of the question at the managerial level, actors a left with the decision weather to innovate or buy credits. Since innovation imposes uncertainty and therefore risk, actors will most likely buy credits rather than funding R&D.