Prof. Dr Heiko Kleve has led the WIFU Foundation’s Department of Organisation and Development of Business Families since July 2017. Since October 2020, Dr Kleve has steered the academic activities of the WIFU as academic director. He has also been a consultant, mediator, coach and supervisor for individuals, groups, teams and organisations/businesses for around 20 years.

After training as a data processing technician and working briefly in the field, Dr Kleve (born in 1969) studied social work and social education at the Alice Salomon University in Berlin from 1992 to 1996 and social sciences (sociology, political science and social philosophy) at the Humboldt University of Berlin from 1997 to 1999. In 1998, he gained a doctorate in sociology at the Free University of Berlin, achieving summa cum laude. He worked as a freelance social education worker in the psychosocial counselling of families, children and young people (sociopedagogic family counselling and care) and in sociopsychiatric outreach work with individuals from 1997 to 2002.

He was appointed as the chair of Theory and History of Social Work at the Alice Salomon University in 2002. He taught and researched at the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences as a professor of sociological and social psychological foundations of social work from 2005 to 2017. There, he was the dean of the Social and Educational Sciences Department from 2013 to 2017, as well as the director of a social work course specialising in families and the academic director of further training in systemic case management, systemic coaching and systemic structures.

Dr Kleve possesses additional certifications as a systemic consultant (DGSF), supervisor and coach (DGSv), systemic and teaching supervisor (SG), conflict mediator and case manager (DGCC).

Main areas of work, research and interest

• System theory for business families and family businesses
• Socialisation, education and growing up in business families
• Family governance/strategy
• Consulting, coaching, mediation and organisational development, especially in business families
• Theoretically analysing and practically dealing with ambivalent and paradoxical situations
• Systemic methods of researching business families/family businesses, particularly systemic structures as an analytical and research method
• Theory and practice in applied social sciences, especially social work as a postmodern discipline and profession

Publication list of Heiko Kleve
Google Scholar profile of Heiko Kleve
Research Gate profile of Heiko Kleve

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