Helmut Klages

Helmut Klages (2014)

Helmut Klages (born April 15, 1930 in Nuremberg ) is a German sociologist and administrative scientist .

Klages studied economics at the University of Erlangen . In 1955 promotion took place at Helmut Schelsky at the University of Hamburg Dr. rer. pol., 1961 the habilitation for the subject sociology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. In the same year he took on a department head position at the Social Research Center in Dortmund at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster and qualified as a professor at the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Münster. In 1964 he was appointed to a newly created chair for sociology at the Technical University of Berlin . After rejecting appointments to other universities, he accepted an appointment at the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer in 1975 , where he was rector from 1987 to 1989.

Together with Heinz Hermann Koelle, Klages was one of the founders of the interdisciplinary Center Berlin for Future Research eV In the early 1970s, he turned to research on values ​​and the change in values . One of the outstanding contributions to this field of research that he and his colleagues made was the discovery of the synthesis of values ​​as a decisive development direction of the change in values ​​in modern societies. Klages repeatedly opposed the view that values ​​are falling in modern societies . In contrast to this, he takes the position that the change in values ​​leads to the emergence of a new kind of human potential , which is most clearly expressed in the type of active realist . Klages was able to demonstrate this potential, among other things, in studies of volunteer work and in numerous employee surveys. He emphasizes, however, that this potential is still largely blocked by inadequate images of people, organizational principles and management practices.

After his retirement, Klages continued his research, opening up new areas of focus. He first turned to the question of new forms of citizen participation capable of activating broader sections of the population and initiated the development of guidelines for their institutionalization at the municipal level. A current focus of work can be put under the motto "party democracy in transition".

Since 1992 Klages has been a co-initiator of the Speyer quality competitions and of the "Innovation Rings" founded in Speyer . With these activities, significant contributions could be made to the promotion of a culture of innovation and comparison in public administration in Germany and other European countries. In addition to his scientific work, which was reflected in numerous publications, he devoted himself to extensive consulting activities and founded an office for administrative surveys at the German Research Institute for Public Administration (FöV). The extensive empirical data produced here provided u. a. the basics for finding an activating style of leadership that is capable of releasing latent motivation due to its motivating effect.

In May 2009 Klages was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon for his outstanding voluntary work.

Fonts

• with Hans Freyer and Hans Georg Rasch (eds.): Actes du XVIIIe Congrès International de Sociologie , Nuremberg, 10-17 September 1958. Institut International de Sociologie. 4 volumes. Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain 1961

Web links

• Literature by and about Helmut Klages in the catalog of the German National Library