New leadership centre at CBS intensifies collaboration with business leaders

The complexity of leadership continues to increase with the external challenges that firms are facing. These include the climate crisis, geopolitical disruption, cyber attacks and the push for greater inclusion. As a result, there is a need for new research and increased dialogue across industries and boundaries as well as between leadership practitioners and researchers. In order to facilitate such collaborations, Copenhagen Business School will establish a leadership centre to generate more knowledge and ensure a fruitful dialogue between practitioners and researchers. The ambition is to facilitate new ways to build resilient organisations and societies.

Copenhagen Business School has long been heavily engaged in leadership research and education. To further strengthen both research and education as well as the interaction with leadership practitioners, we are thrilled to announce the opening of the CBS Leadership Centre today.  

“Leadership is needed now more than ever. The future of business and society depends on innovative and sustainable leadership practice and research. There is a pressing need”, says Deputy President at CBS, Inger Askehave. 

“In many ways the world is facing significant paradigm shifts that require strong leadership skills. The climate crisis, geopolitical challenges and megatrends put enormous pressure on companies and generate an urgent need for strategic leadership. As a business university, CBS plays a very important role in this paradigm shift by educating the next generation of leaders. But the large transformations take place as we speak, so there is also an immediate need to bring knowledge to the table for those who are taking action now”, says Inger Askehave.

Gathering knowledge through the network
The research environments at CBS contain comprehensive knowledge about leadership. The new leadership centre will function as an international leadership research hub for leadership researchers across CBS with different research focus areas. To further strengthen synergies across different disciplines, the CBS Leadership Centre will have two academic co-directors representing different strategic research areas: Professor Marie Louise Mors from the Department of Strategy and Innovation and Professor Sara Louise Muhr from the Department of Organization. The plan is to rotate these positions every two years.

A precondition for the centre is outreach and impact to make sure that businesses benefit from the leadership research generated at CBS. 

“The centre will play an important role in CBS’ internationally recognised leadership programmes such as the Executive MBA, Master of Public Governance and the diploma programmes in business administration (HD). The centre will also facilitate research projects in collaboration with companies, just as we aim at developing specific ready-to-use leadership tools”, says Professor Marie Louise Mors, Academic Co-director of the centre.

Nordic frontrunners
Leadership is very much about developing organisations and the ability to lead transformation in light of important agendas like digitalisation, green transition, diversity and entrepreneurship. CBS has a very strong strong research capacity and research knowledge, and the new centre will bring this to the forefront of societal debates.

“We consider it our duty to actively help organisations navigate and push for the big changes in companies and society. We can do so by communicating relevant knowledge about leadership and by continuously studying how new challenges are handled. With the CBS Leadership Centre, we wish to position CBS as a Nordic frontrunner within leadership research and education”, says Professor Sara Louise Muhr, Academic Co-director, about the ambitions of the centre.

Think tank in the pipeline
The centre is part of CBS’ new strategy where leadership is an important strategic focus area. Among the first activities, the centre will launch a practical tool to deal with strategic leadership dilemmas developed by Thomas Ritter, Professor in Strategy and innovation at CBS. The tool will be presented to the public later this spring. A think tank on leadership for the future is also in the pipeline just as leadership research will be communicated in business media and at various public events. In addition, the centre will facilitate both interdisciplinary research and education projects in partnerships with companies.  

For more information, please contact: Eva Fog Bruun, e-mail efb.slk@cbs.dk, phone: +45 23 41 05 43