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Urs Jäger is a strategist, researcher and teacher, specialist in strategic change management, leadership, business ethics, entrepreneurship and impact management with extensive experience in Europe and Latin America.
He is the Senior Director of Impact and Sustainability and Associate Professor at INCAE Business School, and Executive Director of VIVA Idea. He guides his work from approaches of action research methodology, sustainability, entrepreneurship and social innovation, with a focus on the inclusion of formal and informal markets, working in emerging countries.
He holds the VIVA Idea Schmidheiny Chair in Sustainability at INCAE Business School, in joint leadership with other colleagues. The Chair focuses on developing solutions that enable leaders to manage their impact and develops solutions based on an action research approach.
As executive director of VIVA Idea, an organization that is part of the VIVA Trust ecosystem of organizations that supports sustainable development throughout Latin America, he executes processes of action, accompaniment and training for leaders of companies, foundations, governments, non-governmental organizations and communities in managing impact. Impact management means the way in which leaders can make decisions and act to promote social progress. In this process, VIVA Idea collaborates with the Chair at INCAE Business School.
Urs Jäger's research focuses on collaborations between actors in unequal situations (such as indigenous peoples and multinational corporations), drivers of informal market development and governance practices that strengthen informal market development with a focus on social and economic progress. Together with his teams, he has developed action-research studies in Europe, Indonesia and more than ten countries in Latin America.
2013 to date: Associate Professor. INCAE Business School (Costa Rica)
2013 to date: Research Director. VIVA, in collaboration with INCAE Business School (Costa Rica).
2007 to date: Associate Professor (Privatdozent). University of St. Gallen (Switzerland).
2011 to 2012: Visiting Research Professor. INCAE Business School (Costa Rica)
2006 to 2011: Founding Co-Director. Center for Leadership and Values in Society (CLVS-HSG), University of St. Gallen. 2006: Visiting Scholar. Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, Los Angeles (USA).
2003 to 2006: Assistant Professor. Institute of Management, University of St. Gallen.
2000 to 2003: Management Accountant/Financial Services Project Manager and Human Resource Consultant. Lufthansa Group (aviation company) (Frankfurt, Germany)
1999 to 2000: Research Associate. Institute for Leadership and Human Resources Management, University of St. Gallen.
1998 to 1999 : Portfolio Management Analyst. Investment banking firm (Zurich, Switzerland).
1998: Junior Consultant. Management Centre of St. Gallen (MZSG). (St.Gallen)
1997 to 1998: Project Member. Institute for Business Ethics, University of St. Gallen.
1997: Consultant. Consulting Group for Nonprofit-Organizations (BSU). (Stuttgart, Germany)
1996: Researcher. Institute of Work Psychology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) (Zürich, Switzerland).
1991 to 1992: Corporal. Swiss Military Service (Switzerland)
