The Wiener Institut für Sinnkultur was founded to take seriously a question that organisational practice often pushes aside. What actually keeps people and organisations capable of action? Not efficiency gains, not better processes, but the ability to recognise meaning in what one does.
Vienna is not an accidental location. The city produced, through existential analysis and logotherapy, a psychological and philosophical tradition that understands the human being not as an object of optimisation, but as a meaning-oriented subject. The WIFS transfers this tradition into the present and into organisational contexts.
The Team
Robert Kiesinger
Founder, Management Consultant, Existential Analyst
Robert Kiesinger founded the Wiener Institut für Sinnkultur out of a conviction shaped over two decades of international leadership work, that organisations do not fail because of poor strategy, but because people lose sight of the why behind their work. He holds two MBAs and a background in logotherapy and existential analysis. His consulting work connects economic thinking with the depth of Viennese existential analysis. The WIFS is the institutional foundation of that connection.
Before founding the WIFS, he served as Chief Operating Officer at Battenfeld-Cincinnati China, building the company’s China business in Guangzhou, and as General Director East at Machinery Europe Ltd., leading the Eastern market from Moscow. He earned his two MBA degrees at California State University East Bay and IMADEC University Vienna, and trained in existential analysis and logotherapy at ABILE. Since 2025 he has led the WIFS as Managing Director.
Katharina Köck-Elliot
Psychotherapist in Training under Supervision, Existential Analysis and Logotherapy
Katharina Köck-Elliot combines business expertise with psychotherapeutic competence and a deep understanding of the challenges facing people and organisations. After studying European Business and Management, she spent many years working in national and international companies in communication and marketing. This experience continues to shape her practice-oriented view of leadership and collaboration.
Through her training in existential analysis and logotherapy at ABILE, the state-recognised training institute in cooperation with the University for Continuing Education Krems, she expanded this perspective with a solid grounding in psychotherapeutic competence. At the WIFS she is responsible for the institute’s therapeutic expertise and its methodological development.
Jakob Lackner
Network and Partnerships
Jakob Lackner has extensive experience in national and international leadership positions in sales and team management, with roles across a range of industries and market environments. He studied business administration in the United Kingdom and is currently pursuing further qualifications toward an MBA and a Master’s in Team Management and Leadership. He is also a certified mental coach and a certified sales and distribution manager.
He combines his practical leadership experience with a psychologically grounded view of team dynamics, motivation and personal development. At the WIFS he is responsible for building strategic partnerships and developing the institute’s network, with particular focus on its international orientation and on connecting entrepreneurial practice with meaning-centred leadership work.
What Guides Us
We work at the intersection of research, strategic consulting and education. Our aim is not to convey meaning. Our aim is to describe and create the conditions under which meaning can arise. That is a conceptual distinction that matters considerably in practice.
We work with organisations that are prepared to take this question seriously.
Contact
Wiener Institut für Sinnkultur
Stuckgasse 12/16
1070 Vienna, Austria
kontakt@wifs.at