Better business. A more peaceful world.
Business Peace Initiative helps leaders, researchers and partners understand what business makes possible for people and society — and how that contribution can become clearer, stronger and more useful in practice.
Move beyond doing less harm. Understand the good your business can do.
Businesses shape everyday life through their products, services, decisions and relationships. They can satisfy human needs, create opportunities and strengthen communities. They can also create exclusion, dependency or other harms. Understanding both sides matters.
Business Peace Initiative starts with a practical and fundamental question: How does this business contribute to a better life for people, and how could it contribute more?
That means looking at the core business itself — not only philanthropy, communications or sustainability reporting.
Dr Tilman Bauer
Business Peace Initiative was founded by Dr Tilman Bauer, a Finnish-German researcher and entrepreneur based in Helsinki. He earned his Doctor of Science degree from Aalto University School of Business in 2023.
His doctoral dissertation, Business for Peace: A New Paradigm for Making a Collective Living, examines what business is for, how peace can be understood beyond the absence of war, and how companies can contribute to human wellbeing and societal development.
The research was informed by management scholarship, peace studies, ethics and philosophy. It also included 20 expert interviews with business and thought leaders, including Paul Polman, and engagement with Stanford University’s Peace Innovation Lab.
Today, Bauer applies that foundation to practical company evaluations, strategic reflection and collaboration with leaders, researchers and educators.
Peace is more than the absence of war.
Business Peace Initiative treats peace as a broader condition connected to dignity, trust, wellbeing, justice and the conditions for constructive shared life. That wider perspective changes what businesses should notice, protect and strengthen.
Human needs and dignity
Ask what people need in order to live well, and how business activities help or hinder those possibilities.
Positive societal contribution
Examine the value of products, services and relationships, including effects that conventional financial measures may overlook.
Responsible leadership
Consider purpose, integrity, stakeholder inclusion and the longer-term consequences of decisions.
Business viability
Connect societal contribution with strategy, development and sustainable commercial success — without assuming that every good deed automatically creates financial returns.
The Business Peace Index
The Business Peace Index (BPI) is the practical framework developed from Bauer’s doctoral research. It does not reduce a business to one score alone. Instead, it guides a connected interpretation across eight dimensions.
For the detailed theory, see the Research page. For the practical company application, see the BPI Evaluation page.
Evidence, interpretation and decisions.
BPI is not a certification. It is a structured way to clarify contribution, interpret findings and turn them into better next decisions.
Understand
Discuss the business model, goals, products, stakeholders and the question that matters most right now.
Evaluate
Use interviews and relevant materials to build a reasoned qualitative picture of contribution, tensions and possibilities.
Prioritize
Translate the findings into concrete development priorities and a clearer conversation about next steps.
For researchers, educators and partners
Business for Peace connects management, philosophy, business ethics and peace research. Bauer welcomes inquiries about guest lectures, academic collaboration, conceptual discussion and appropriate use of the theory in further research.
If you are a researcher or educator, you may be especially interested in the dissertation, the conceptual framework, the interview-based development of the theory, and questions about how peace can be studied in relation to business.
For scholarly work, the original dissertation remains the authoritative source. Applications or adaptations should identify their assumptions and cite the relevant research.
What would you like your business to make possible?
Bring one decision, opportunity or question. We can discuss whether a BPI evaluation, a guest lecture or another form of collaboration would be useful.
Or email inbox@tilmanbauer.eu