At today’s Global Compact Leaders Summit in Geneva, a new group of leaders is attending the proceedings: business school academics. The academic delegation is present to participate in the unveiling of the Global Compact’s new Principles for Responsible Management Education to Ban Ki-moon, United Nations secretary-general.
The principles – designed to introduce environmental and social issues into the research and teaching of management training and education – come as an unprecedented wave of social and environmental consciousness sweeps through business school campuses.
Beyond Grey Pinstripes, a biennial ranking compiled by the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Programme, has since 1998 tracked this wave in its surveys of how well business schools incorporate social and environmental issues into research projects and curricula.
Its last ranking in 2005 found that, among participating schools, the number requiring students to take one or more courses in ethics, corporate social responsibility, sustainability or business and society rose to 54 per cent, up from 45 per cent in 2003 and 34 per cent in 2001.
As it compiles its upcoming ranking, the Aspen Institute’s early results suggest that the is trend continuing. The first indication is in the increased number of schools participating in the survey – up from 91 in 2005 to 112 this year – and in the more international profile of participants, with institutions coming from 21 countries this year, against 14 in 2005.
Most remarkable, says Rich Leimsider, senior programme associate at the Business and Society programme, is the rate with which relatively new fields such as sustainability and corporate responsibility have made their way into the MBA curriculum.
In the current survey, the Aspen Institute has received information on about 3,500 courses around the world that address social and environmental issues – double the amount received for the previous survey. “The idea that a new subject area or topic would suddenly be apparent in dozens of schools is pretty incredible,” says Mr Leimsider. “This is lightning- fast change in the academic world.”
Anecdotally, too, academics are seeing more interest from students. “Five or six years ago I talked about climate change issues and got very little response,” says Geoffrey Heal, professor of public policy and corporate responsibility at Columbia Business School. Prof Heal last year taught a class on how businesses can anticipate and react to climate change regulations.
“Students are much more clued into these things,” he says, “and they now see this as part of the business scenery that they can’t ignore.”
Satisfying this growing demand among MBA students for content relating to sustainability and corporate responsibility are some of the top business schools. Among the schools that consistently rank highly in the Grey Pinstripes Awards is Stanford, where social, ethical and environmental dilemmas are included in mainstream courses as well as being available as electives. The school’s Centre for Social Innovation acts as a focus for research and course development.
Other top-performing schools in the Aspen rankings include Spain’s Esade, University of North Carolina’s Kenan Flagler Business School, Canada’s Schulich School of Business at the University of York and, in the UK, Nottingham Business School.
Several institutions are introducing courses and setting up research centres. Cranfield School of Management, for example, has recently established its Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility. Like a growing number of institutions, the school aims to bring corporate responsibility and sustainability into its core MBA programme.
“The plan over the next couple of years is to weave corporate responsibility where it’s appropriate into each of the existing courses – both compulsory and electives,” says David Grayson, director of the centre. “How you conduct a responsible business is a core issue that should not be bolted on.”
Given the emergence of new courses and institutions, the appearance of the Global Compact’s new Principles for Responsible Management Education is timely. The idea is that participating schools will pledge to stimulate curriculum development and promote research and be catalysts for change through the MBA students that are future business leaders.
“Because this is an initiative that’s coming from the United Nations, and not from any other kind of organisation, people will want to be part of it,” says Angel Cabrera, president of the Thunderbird School of Global Management and head of the international task force that developed the principles.
“So my hope is that the whole process will create the chain of effects that will help institutionalise a new way of thinking.”
