Erik Fritzsche stands for reliability, perseverance and truthfulness – values that create trust and shape long-term cooperation. With trained expertise, Erik Fritzsche supports companies not only in fulfilling legal requirements, but also in strengthening their reputation, minimizing risks and securing and sustainably increasing corporate value.

As a Senior Consultant at WeichertMehner, he heads the ESG Risks and Resilience division.

Value

With a clear concept of change and uncertainty, Erik Fritzsche creates perspectives and solutions that strengthen companies making them champions of the future. Creating reputation, acceptance and leadership more effectively and efficiently with conceptual clarity.

Erik Fritzsche’s strategic consulting services cover the following key areas:

• Strategic Corporate Communication: Development of impactful communication concepts that directly support your business objectives, such as revenue, profit, and value creation, while achieving maximum impact with your target audiences.
• ESG Reporting and Communication: Development and implementation of strategic approaches that convey your messages in a targeted, effective, and cost-efficient manner – enhancing your appeal to customers, employees, investors, and suppliers.
• Compliance Communication: Boost competitiveness and security, ensure readiness for bids and pre-qualifications, and achieve efficient compliance by streamlining and optimizing communication.
• Corporate Political Communication: Position your organization credibly and professionally on politically sensitive issues while avoiding unnecessary attacks on your reputation.
• Developing and Leading with Guiding Principles: Support in creating guiding principles for companies or projects that provide genuine orientation, foster identification, and avoid clichés, empty phrases, and buzzwords.
• Developing Modern, Lean, and Effective Communication Departments: Enhance efficiency and reduce costs through consulting on the challenges of modern corporate communication – from AI-driven transformation and media diversity to the advancement of organizational structures and personnel.

Track Record

Erik Fritzsche has helped numerous studies and action plans to achieve better results – including in the areas of education policy, integration policy, sustainability, regional development, dealing with populist and extremist parties and movements as well as in risk management for industrial companies. He has been involved in numerous strategy processes and provided guidance.

At WeichertMehner

Dr. phil. Erik Fritzsche advises companies and organizations at WeichertMehner in the areas of corporate, change and ESG communication. He provides clients with conceptual clarity, order, orientation and effective communication. He studied political science, history and law at the University of Excellence TU Dresden. He received his doctorate in 2016 with a thesis on organizational and institutional analysis. He has been advising clients in politics, business, administration and civil society for over fifteen years. His in-depth knowledge includes strategy, strategic communication, ESG (strategy, reporting, communication), acceptance communication and organizational development of communication departments. From 2016 to 2024 he was chairman of a regional association for the promotion of moderate prosperity models and sustainability. He is a former scholarship holder of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (student funding) and the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (doctoral funding).

Classical Outcomes

Typical outcomes for his clients include

• Communication strategies and action plans for effective communication with relevant stakeholders – for: Reputation management, greater acceptance of projects, corporate capacity building, mission statement development, strategy development – and thus orientation and process security for clients for themselves and in front of others in complex communication networks.
• Concepts for individual measures, e.g. websites, white papers, events for information and / or participation, ESG / CSR reports, press briefings, journalist trips, background discussions, writing workshops, interviews, or also: content and document, competition and industry analyses as well as derived recommendations – and thus a basis for the effective implementation and orchestration of various service providers.
• Project management and orchestration of complex communication projects, for example ESG reporting, mission statement processes, sales-supporting PR and media work, issues and topic management – and thus freeing up resources for the day-to-day aspects of your work.

Typical fields of action

• Typical fields of activity are: Construction projects, legislative projects, public affairs campaigns, change, ESG reporting, ESG communication, compliance communication, corporate communication, communication by public authorities and administrations, communication by political actors.

Strategic and ESG projects of more recent date

• TAKRAF Group: Consulting on the set up of a report in accordance with CSRD / ESRS, double materiality analysis (incl. internal / external stakeholder analysis), implementation of data collection, editing (project period: January to December 2024)

• SachsenEnergie: Consulting on the creation of a sustainability strategy and strategy strategy (April to June 2024)
• DAS Environmental Experts: Consulting on the establishment of a report in accordance with CSRD / ESRS, double materiality analysis (incl. internal / external stakeholder analysis) (since January 2023; project currently ongoing)
• Verbio Green Solutions: Consulting on the transition from GRI to ESRS, integration of ESG into global corporate communications (January to November 2022)
• HZwo e.V.: Consulting & creation of a communication concept for cluster communication (May to September 2022)

A current pitch deck for WeichertMehner ESG consulting is available on request.

Workbook Sustainability

In addition to his consultancy work, Erik Fritzsche is co-author of the “Workbook Sustainability: Understanding ESG factors, mastering change, implementing CSRD”, which he wrote together with Constanze Reinsberg and Robert Weichert. This practice-oriented book offers companies a sound introduction to the topic of ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance). It shows the origin and significance of ESG criteria and shows how they can be implemented effectively. A central component is a 5-step plan developed by the authors, which enables the direct application of the knowledge gained in corporate practice.

In the Media

Erik Fritzsche in the media:

• Der Aufsichtsrat: „Qualität und Wert der ESG-Berichterstattung: Wie Aufsichtsräte Wesentlichkeitsanalysen und CSRD-Berichterstattung für ihre Arbeit bewerten und nutzen können„, Ausgabe Heft 3/2025.
• PRMagazin: „Werttreiber: Whistleblower sind keine Verräter, sondern wertvolle Frühwarnsysteme“, Ausgabe Dezember 2024 / Januar 2025 // PRMagazin: “Value Driver: Whistleblowers Are Not Traitors, But Valuable Early Warning Systems”.

WeichertMehner Publications

Erik Fritzsche’s WeichertMehner publications include:

• Das »gute« Unternehmen und die ESG- Revolution / The “good” company and the ESG revolution: Orchestration and communication to secure reputation and earnings for managing directors, board members, supervisory board members and strategists, together with Constanze Reinsberg and Robert Weichert
• Die neue Whistleblower-Richtlinie / The New Whistleblower Directive: Opportunities and risks for corporate communications, together with Constanze Reinsberg and Robert Weichert

Scientific Publications

His scientific publications include works on methodology and social science organizational research:

• Why the Confusion: Reasons for Shortcomings and Progress in Modernization Theory, Journal of Democratization, 2020, gem. mit Anselm Vogler
• Systemtheorie der Integration: Auf dem Weg zu einer Synthese der Integrationstheorien in praktischer Verwertungsabsicht, in: Bochmann, Cathleen/Döring, Helge (Hg.): Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt gestalten, S. 305-326, 2020, gem. mit Anselm Vogler
• Fraktionsgeschlossenheit und Regierungssysteme: Empirische und normative Einsichten aus weitgespannten Vergleichen, Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2019
• Prognosen in der Politikwissenschaft: Aufgaben für eine nach Wertverwirklichung strebende Politikwissenschaft, in: Meißelbach, Christoph/Lempp, Jakob/Dreischer, Stephan (Hg.): Politikwissenschaft als Beruf: Perspektiven aus Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft, S. 243-259, 2018
• Braucht Demokratie Wirtschaftswachstum? Forschungsstand und legitimitätstheoretische Überlegungen zum Zusammenhang von Wirtschaftswachstum und Demokratiequalität, in: Mannewitz, Tom (Hg.): Die Demokratie und ihre Defekte: Analysen und Reformvorschläge, Wiesbaden: Springer VS, S. 57ff, 2018, gem. mit Anselm Vogler
• Das politische System des Islamischen Staates, in: Totalitarismus und Demokratie 2/14, S. 201-232, 2017, gem. mit Sebastian Lange.
• Die jüngste deutsche Immigrationspolitik als Ausdruck der ‚Risikogesellschaft‘: Skizze einer institutionentheoretisch-gesellschaftsstrukturellen Betrachtung von Risiko und Resilienz, in: Rothenburger Beiträge, Hg.: Dirk Dahlberg., 2016
• Ankommen in der deutschen Lebenswelt. Migranten-Enkulturation und regionale Resilienz, Europäisches Journal für Minderheitenfragen 2016/1-2 und Wissenschaftsverlag Berlin, gem. mit Vogt, Matthias Theodor; Meißelbach, Christoph, 2016

Eriks‘ Sources and Passions

In his consulting work, Erik Fritzsche uses mental models from various sciences. With this multidisciplinary approach to thinking and analysis, he develops perspectives and solutions that go beyond the fashionable hypes of many business books. He is guided by the tradition of creative and practically oriented polymaths: from Benjamin Franklin to Charlie Munger and Li Lu.

Erik Fritzsche is also a passionate reader – including of fiction. His favorite authors include Peter Handke, Michel Houellebecq, Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann as well as Jean-Luc Bannalec, Fred Vargas and Alex Lépic. When on vacation, he likes to pick up the landscape books from Prestel Verlag.