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Leonie Anika Eising-Mertsch, M.Sc.

21335 Lüneburg, Universitätsallee 1, C6.227
Fon +49.4131.677-2027, leonie.eising@leuphana.de
Research associate, Professorship of Business Administration, in Particular Innovation Management
Associated member, Leuphana Center for Organization & Social Transformation

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Vita

Leonie Eising is a PhD researcher at the Chair of Business Administration, in particular Innovation Management. 

After her dual studies in Business Administration and her master's degree in Management & Business Development at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Leonie Eising worked from June 2018 as a Science Manager and in Quality Management in the Dean's office of the Faculty of Business and Economics. She joined the Institute of Management & Organization (IMO) in November 2019.

Leonie conducts research at the intersection of organization & management, entrepreneurship and sustainability transitions. Her current work focuses on how to navigate change towards more sustainability. Using qualitative and conceptual research methods, she explores citizen-driven, sustainability-oriented entrepreneurship that contributes to systems change.

Publications

Journal contributions

  1. Designing Understanding: Sustainability Entrepreneurs Connect with Adopters
    Leonie Eising (Author) , Ursula Weisenfeld (Author) , Maike Buhr (Author) , 17.06.2025 , in: Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings, 2025, 1 , 6 p.

    Research output: Journal contributions › Conference article in journal › Research › peer-review

  2. Frames of systems change in sustainability transformations: Lessons from sociotechnical systems and circular economy case studies
    Leonie Eising (Author) , Paulo Savaget (Author) , Thayla Zomer (Author) , Aoife Brophy (Author) , 10.11.2024 , in: Journal of Cleaner Production, 479 , 13 p.

    Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

View all publications

Activities

Prizes

  1. Best Paper Award 2024
    (Recipient) ,

    Prize: Leuphana internal Prize, Scholaships, distinctions, appointments › Research

  2. Teaching Award of School of Management and Technology 2024
    (Recipient) (Recipient) (Recipient) (Recipient) (Recipient) ,

    Prize: Leuphana internal Prize, Scholaships, distinctions, appointments › Education

  3. Teaching Award
    (Recipient) ,

    Prize: Leuphana internal Prize, Scholaships, distinctions, appointments › Education

  4. Nomination Best Paper Award in honour of Alistair Anderson
    (Recipient) ,

    Prize: external Prizes, scholarships, distinctions, appointments › Research

View all prizes

Courses

Advanced Perspectives on M&E: Grand Challenges & Citizen Entrepreneurship
Leonie Anika Eising
As the world faces growing grand challenges, such as climate change, resource scarcity, armed conflicts and many more, one approach to tackle these challenges may be “active citizenship“. The idea is that every citizen makes use of his or her skills and put them to work in a meaningful way to explore new ways of addressing social problems. If these citizen activists organize themselves in a business-like structure to achieve a certain goal, we speak of "citizen entrepreneurship". Using tools as online networking, private-public partnerships, corporate engagement or social entrepreneurship, these entrepreneurs strive for sustainable, systemic solutions in their community. Rather than short-term fixes and hand-me-down charity, they aim to build empowering communities and impactful organizations rather than fostering dependency.

In this course, you learn about citizen entrepreneurship with guest lectures, by using examples, discussing case studies, and performing a (practical) assignment: You can either find out how much citizen entrepreneurship lies within you and your ecosystem by looking at a citizen initiative you are involved in already, or you explore an existing "external" citizen entrepreneurship initiative and its ecosystem in-depth to enrich the research field. How much potential does citizen entrepreneurship have for solving grand challenges? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the concept? Together we will find out.

Citizen Entrepreneurship encompasses citizens' inclusion, integration, and engagement in the entrepreneurial process. As a conceptual framework, it represents a comprehensive view of how individuals within a community or society participate in entrepreneurship beyond the traditional profit-driven model. Citizen entrepreneurs create economic and social value by addressing local problems (e.g., in a city), often resulting from unsustainable development. The concept includes elements of, e.g., social or sustainable entrepreneurship, but it is not yet widely researched and represented in the literature.
Next appointment:
Monday, 2026-07-13 at 10:15
Room: C 12.015 Seminarraum