Professor, Dr. Boris Braun, and his research scholars Mark Starmanns and Christian Dietsche from Department of Geography, University of Bamberg Germany were in Kanpur on Feb 14 & 15, 2006. They visited Kanpur to study the compliance/non-compliance of environmental standards and environmental impacts by leather industries of Kanpur.

Their research project “Intercultural risk management of societal claims in transnational networks” focuses on the global value chain of leather and shoe production, shrimp and garment industry. It is based on case studies of German companies that are cooperating with Indian suppliers. The main question is, how these companies react to environmental standards set by legislation and to environmental demands raised by of NGOs in India and Germany. The aim is to develop strategies like stakeholder dialogues, codes of conduct etc. for companies to deal with the environmental concerns raised by different stakeholders in Germany and India. The project aims to conduct a network analysis i.e., it will look at the kind of relationship between companies and their different
stakeholders.

The project is part of the Research Association FORTRANS “Transnational Networks” (www.fortrans.net), which seeks to analyse how small and medium enterprises can reduce risks in networks. The project is financed by the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and supported by Indo-German Chamber of Commerce.