Edeltraud 'Edel' Günther (born October 10, 1965, in Augsburg) is a German business and sustainability assessment researcher, and university educator. Günther is currently the Director of the United Nations University Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources (UNU-FLORES) while on leave from the Technische Universität Dresden, where she has held the Chair of Business Management, esp. Sustainability Management and Environmental Accounting since 1996. She has also undertaken multiple international visiting professorships, and is the founding member of the Centre for Performance and Policy Research in Sustainability Measurement and Assessment (PRISMA).
Career
Günther received her Diploma of Business Administration from the University of Augsburg, where she specialised in Accounting and Auditing, Finance, and Operations Research from 1984 to 1989. She also studied Languages at the École de Traduction et d`Interprétation of the University of Geneva. From 1989 to 1994, she worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Accounting and Control at the University of Augsburg (Prof. Dr. Dres. h.c. A.G. Coenenberg) and undertook her doctorate to a Dr. rer. pol. with the dissertation topic, "Ökologieorientiertes Controlling" (Environmental Management Control). From 1994 to 1996, she was a research assistant and project leader in the Economics Department of the Bavarian Institute of Applied Environmental Research and Technology GmbH (BIfA) in Augsburg.
In 1996, Günther was appointed Chair of Business Management, esp. Sustainability Management and Environmental Accounting, at the Faculty of Business and Economics at the TU Dresden - a position she holds to this day. Under the leadership of Günther, the TU Dresden implemented an environmental management system according to EMAS (being the first German university of technology to do so), which has been regularly validated since 2002. Günther founded and now leads the Centre for Performance and Policy Research In Sustainability Measurement and Assessment PRISMA.
On 1 September 2018, Prof. Edeltraud Günther took up the position of Director at the United Nations University Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources (UNU-FLORES). Launched in 2012, the Dresden-based institute of the United Nations University develops strategies to promote the sustainable use and integrated management of environmental resources such as water, soil, and waste. To accommodate this appointment, Günther has been granted a leave of absence by the TU Dresden. As part of strengthening the connections between UNU-FLORES and the wider United Nations network, Günther was one of the establishing Directors and the first chair for the UNU Water Network, which was initiated in 2019. In 2020, she was appointed UNU Focal Point for the Environmental Management Group (EMG).
Günther was a visiting professor at the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, U.S.A. from August 2001 to February 2002, and later, from December 2005 to May 2016. In January 2015, she was a visiting professor at Kobe University, Kobe, Japan, and in the summer semester of 2017, a visiting professor at the NUST – Namibia University of Science and Technology.
Research emphasis
In her research, Günther works on ecological problems in economics, including environmental and sustainability performance, risk management, obstacle analysis, sustainable management, value-based management, as well as deceleration.