“The scientists honored with the KU - Ingolstadt BESH Legacy Award are not only distinguished by the fact that they enrich the academic community with top-class publications. With their research results as well as a broad and understandable communication, they also enable players from business, politics and society to make long-term decisions – closely connected with the objective of making regions more livable and the world a little better”, says Prof. Dr. Shashi Matta (Co-founder of the BESH Research Institute at the Ingolstadt School of Management and Professor of Business Administration, Innovation and Creativity).
“The research projects at the BESH Institute seek to develop solutions for pressing challenges facing mankind. They make an active contribution towards improving the lives of the people in our region. This is why the local population is involved in BESH’s activities and the developments and research practice at the KU’s academic institutions. Amongst others, there is an ongoing collaboration between the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and the City of Ingolstadt on civic participation that seeks to investigate and promote social acceptance of the rapid developments happening in many scientific fields”, explains Mayor Dr. Christian Lösel.
In his speech, Professor Stewart addressed the topic “Privacy and Personhood: Impact on Business and Society”. “There is a huge amount of schizophrenia about privacy more generally. Privacy is more intangible and it’s more diffuse than the right to property or the right to life.”, says Stewart. He also quoted Microsoft founder Bill Gates saying that while opening someone else’s mail was a felony, the entire internet activity was fair game for data collecting. Originally, privacy and the issues around it were not a product of the digital age. In this context, the age of enlightenment, where we began to think in terms of individuals with individual rights, has played an important role in the recognition of privacy. “Until the 1960s, much of the discussion about privacy was about privacy as a property right - you could not come onto my property, you could not look through my window and watch me in private.” But then, we began to see a shift away from this view – in part because of the advent of technologies – and we no longer considered privacy only in the context of private ownership.
In general, privacy can be seen to separate individuals from the state and business, which means that it is the individual person who decides who is let in and what is shared. “From this perspective, privacy is an unusable term. Rather, there should be a focus on freedom, autonomy and self-determination of the individual, being allowed to be one’s self, to think freely and to act within the law without hindrance.”, says Stewart.
In the digital era, it is important that consumers are fully informed in order to be in control and to be able to give their informed consent: What information to provide, to whom, for what purpose, over what time frame, at what price and for how long? At the end of his speech, the laureate requested: “The role for marketing is to help identify a consumer-centric definition of privacy which rests in the very definition of self. The consumer needs to be in the driver’s seat.”
About the award winner
Prof. Dr. David Stewart is President’s Professor for Marketing and Law at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is a renowned researcher and pioneer in his field and has issued more than 250 publications in renowned journals and written 12 books and has thus made an important contribution towards solving the most pressing social challenges of our times. He was the publisher of three leading international journals in the field of economic research and served as a mentor for many researchers (who are all professors today) and thousands of business students (many of whom meanwhile hold leading positions in the industry). Stewart was already awarded numerous Lifetime Achievement Awards and is still successfully and actively involved in research and teaching. He was a member of several supervisory and management boards.
On the “KU Research Institute for Business and Economics in Service of Humanity” (BESH)
In June 2019, the KU has established its new research institute “Business and Economics in Service of Humanity” (BESH) which is unique in its form throughout Germany. The institute pools skills and knowledge of four chairs from the field of business administration and economics at the Ingolstadt School of Management (WFI) of the KU. Its research interests mainly focus on the areas of health and general well-being, education, migration, distribution of income, financial education, responsible consumption, continuing education for employees as well as the development of smart and sustainable services. The institute was founded by Prof Dr. Alexander Danzer (Chair of Microeconomics), Prof. Dr. Jens Hogreve (Chair of Service Management), Prof. Dr. Shashi Matta (Chair of Business Administration, Innovation and Creativity) and Prof. Simon Wiederhold (Chair of Macroeconomics).