Inspirational Guide for the Implementation of PRME

Learning to Go Beyond

Alan Murray, Denise Baden, Paul Cashian, Alec Wersun, Kathryn Haynes, Alan Murray, Denise Baden, Denise Baden, Paul Cashian, Paul Cashian, Alec Wersun, Alec Wersun, Kathryn Haynes, Kathryn Haynes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351279789
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Since the inception of the United Nations Global Compact sponsored initiative Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) in 2007, there has been increased debate over how to adapt management education to best meet the demands of the 21st-century business environment. While consensus has been reached by the majority of globally focused management education institutions that sustainability must be incorporated into management education curricula, the relevant question is no longer why management education should change, but _how_?Following on from the Inspirational Guide for the Implementation of PRME: Placing Sustainability at the heart of Management Education, this casebook highlights the real implementers of responsible management education, and their stories are truly inspirational. The evolving picture underscores the important changes already taking place, and the role of PRME in effecting such change. The clear message is that continuous experimentation, innovation, and learning is required to transform constructs of management education. The new collection contains 27 case stories from universities and business schools spanning Asia, Oceania, Latin America, USA and Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This important compilation will be an inspiration for all forward-thinking business schools across the world, especially those who are keen to embrace the PRME principles and put sustainability at the heart of their operations.The Guide will be launched at the 2013 PRME Summit – 5th Annual Assembly, hosted by CEEMAN in Bled, Slovenia on 25–26 September, and offered for sale in print and eBook for the first time by Greenleaf Publishing.The first edition of the Inspirational Guide for the Implementation of PRME was presented at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development: Rio+20 Earth Summit in June 2012.Across the PRME community, different concepts are used; most frequently are corporate (social) responsibility, responsible leadership, and sustainable value for business and society.

Section 1
Beyond knowledge-only: Creating new competencies

1 Responsibility Day: A tool for setting expectations of incoming first-year bachelor students

Copenhagen Business School
Copenhagen, Denmark

Introduction

Each year about 2,700 new students start their first semester in one of 18 bachelor programmes at Copenhagen Business School (CBS). The students’ first day on campus, Responsibility Day, is dedicated to the topic of responsible management. The aim of the day is to provide students with an opportunity to reflect on social responsibility and ethical dilemmas, both in their new role as CBS students and in their future role as business managers. Furthermore, the aim is to set expectations for what role responsible management education should and will play in their upcoming years of study.

Faculty from each study programme are teaching on Responsibility Day, and as a result are engaged in developing the learning environment of the actual day. However, more important is the way in which the initiative impacts the general educational framework of responsible management by kick-starting curriculum development and facilitating the signalling of CBS’s values. Hence, by developing a learning environment for responsible management education in each study programme from the very first day, Responsibility Day creates extensive impact across CBS.

Challenges

When students attend business school they usually expect core courses, such as marketing and economics, to form the main part of their education. At CBS we want to signal our dedication to responsible management on the students’ very first day of lectures, as well as set students’ expectations for how their future study programmes will deliver responsible management education. In order to prove the relevance and strategic substance of responsible management education to individual bachelor programmes, we needed a way to perceptibly demonstrate the implementation of PRME and engage faculty and study programmes across the board at CBS. One approach for attaining these objectives was set in motion by the Dean of Education at CBS with the launch of Responsibility Day – on the first day of lectures for all incoming bachelor students CBS makes its commitment to responsible management education explicitly across all study programmes.

Actions taken

Responsibility Day starts with morning sessions where the students of each study programme, varying in number from 60 to 650 students, discuss a relevant case of responsible management together with a senior faculty member. In 2013 the case will focus on the philanthropic projects and supply chain of the iconic Danish apparel company, Hummel. In the afternoon sessions, the students are assembled and welcomed to CBS by senior management, which is followed by real-life examples of responsible management presented by keynote speaker, Christian Stadil, creative director and owner of the case company, Hummel.

On Responsibility Day, the students have the opportunity to start working with the case supported by a designated instructor, after which they have three weeks to finish a case solution for submission. A jury will select the three best-case solutions to be pitched during Green Week, when the winning group will be announced. During Green Week, CBS promotes sustainability to both students and faculty through company presentations, events, and student activities. By extending Responsibility Day into Green Week, CBS signals that commitment to responsible management is an integral element of our values and education.

Responsibility Day was launched in 2009 and is continuously being developed. In order to evaluate and improve Responsibility Day, a survey is given to students and instructors directly after the event. Study programmes differ significantly in size and nature, requiring, therefore, a high degree of coordination, logistical overview and engagement from our intro teams and programme coordinators. Such challenges are addressed and facilitated by formulation of the Responsibility Day Road Map in which experiences from the preparation and execution of the event are retained and updated each year.

Results and benefits

Responsibility Day aims to illustrate the concept of responsible management and how it relates to each study programme. Students learn to reflect on social responsibility, ethical dilemmas and the like, both in their new role as students as well as in their future careers. In 2012 we conducted six focus group interviews with students who had participated in one of the previous Responsibility Days. Along with feedback from faculty who participated in the event, these interviews indicated that both students and instructors viewed Responsibility Day as an initiative that gives an important foundation and frame of reference for the coming years of studying. Furthermore, it was evident that students clearly remembered Responsibility Day as their first day of lectures.

Moreover, Responsibility Day works as a catalyst for curriculum development. By engaging faculty in Responsibility Day, the initiative creates ownership and encourages study programme directors, instructors, and study board members to focus on responsible management throughout the bachelor programme. Hence, when approaching study programmes concerning PRME initiatives, such as curriculum development or faculty training, faculty are predisposed towards responsible management education and know how it is linked to their individual study programmes.

The role of PRME/sustainability principles

• Responsibility Day is CBS’s most important mechanism to signal the commitment to PRME to students and faculty. As it is the first day of lectures, every study programme and student alike are exposed to responsible management education.
• In terms of resources needed, Responsibility Day has proven to be an impactful way of reaching every new bachelor student at CBS.
• Responsibility Day serves as a catalyst for development and implementation of other PRME activities, for example, curriculum development.
• Responsibility Day enables the establishment of synergies and coherence by engaging CBS organisations and initiatives, such as oikos Copenhagen and CBS Goes Green, as well as the teams responsible for the bachelor students’ general introduction to CBS.

2 Improvement of 'sustainability literacy' of first-year business students through innovative business partnerships

Aalto University School of Business
Helsinki, Finland

Introduction

We approach sustainability-related education through two lenses at the Aalto University School of Business. On the one hand, we train sustainability specialists in our master’s programmes Management and Creative Sustainability. On the other hand, we aim at improving the ‘sustainability literacy’ of all business students, because the lack of knowledge of other managers in companies is one of the major challenges of present-day corporate responsibility officers in business. The latter is the main target of this case story, where we present new developments of first-year business studies at Aalto University School of Business.

Challenges

The corporate responsibility officers of large companies still face the challenge that their fellow managers have too little understanding of sustainability for efficient cooperation in the improvement of company performance. Even though we have offered a fair number of good-quality courses in corporate responsibility at our university, the integration of responsibility issues in the whole curriculum has been insufficient. As a result, many students have failed to understand the importance of corporate responsibility as well as how responsibility issues are related to other management subjects. This has led to rather low motivation towards the topic altogether.

Actions taken

Given the challenges discussed above, sustainability and corporate responsibility have been given more weight and impact in the new degree regulations that will come into effect in academic year 2013–14. Specifically, there will be four major changes:

First of all, the overall learning outcomes of the bachelor programme have been renewed. In the new learning outcomes, sustainability and responsibility issues play an important role; one of the five degree-programme learning outcomes states that when graduating, students are able to analyse business issues from the perspective of ethics, sustainability, and internationality. More specifically, this means that students can identify and analyse questions in their own area of expertise from ethical, social, economic, environmental, and international viewpoints. Including responsibility issues in the overall learning outcomes is hoped to encourage all instructors to bring these issues up in their own courses.

Second, the new degree regulations mean that there will be an introductory course on corporate responsibility and business ethics during the first year of studies. Until now, we have only offered a course in business ethics, which according to student feedback has not been seen as very motivating. The purpose of this change is to broaden the scope of the course so that it better integrates issues discussed in other courses.

The third change is closely related to the second one. We have recruited a specialist whose main responsibility is to ensure the alignment of courses and learning during the first year. This means encouraging the instructors of first-year basic business courses to work together in planning teaching content and methods. In the case of corporate responsibility teaching, this means that there is a dialogue between the responsibility-related issues taught in accounting, financing, marketing, business law, etc. In all basic courses that are taught during the first year, responsibility issues are brought up and discussed whenever appropriate. The specific corporate responsibility course, which is offered in the last period during the first year, will then build on the issues already discussed during other basic courses, referring back to the examples used earlier during the year. Through this dialogue, we aim at helping the students to really understand how responsibility issues are integrated in all business.

Finally, we will introduce two new 1 credit (ECTS) courses to the first-year curriculum, Real Case 1 and Real Case 2. The former takes place already during the students’ orientation week before they start studying, and includes an introduction of a case company as well as an introductory session of the different majors offered at the School of Business. The purpose is to give students an understanding of different functions in organisations and help them understand questions related to them in business activities. Real Case 2 takes place at the end of the first year. During that course, the students need to integrate the knowledge and skills they have learned during the first year to solve a real business case presented by another case organisation. In both these courses, corporate responsibility is included as a subject among others, and students need to address responsibility issues in both cases.

Results and benefits

We expect the above discussed changes to benefit our students and teaching staff in three main ways. First, we expect students to gain a strong overall understanding of the role and importance of corporate responsibility and sustainability issues in business, because this understanding will be built course by course. Second, we expect the students to become more motivated to consider responsibility in their own and businesses’ behaviour, as they can see that every subject area has critical responsibility issues that might significantly harm business performance if not considered properly. Finally, through encouraging interaction between the instructors of first-year basic business courses, we expect the instructors to become more interested in providing students with a broader perspective to business studies – a perspective that includes corporate responsibility issues at its core.

The role of PRME/sustainability principles

• Development of capabilities (Principle 1)
• Improvement of incorporation of corporate responsibility (Principle 2)
• Improved educational frameworks (Principle 3)

3 Addressing global challenges with actionable foresight

Mendoza College of Business University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana, United States

Introduction

Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame is a premier Catholic business school that seeks to foster academic excellence, professional effectiveness, and personal accountability in a context that strives to be faithful to the ideals of community, human development and individual integrity.

In January 2008, Mendoza College of Business became signatory to PRME. In doing so, it joined business schools and academic associations worldwide in committing to align its mission and strategy, as well as its core competencies – education, research, and thought leadership – with UN values embodied by the Six Principles of PRME.

Mendoza continues in its concerted efforts to create measure-able progress towards the fulfilment of these Principles, including Principle 3 to create educational frameworks, materials, processes, and environments that enable effective learning experiences for responsible leadership. At Mendoza, research opportunities are vital to gaining a deeper understanding of the power of business and its impact on the environment and the human community. This case story shares one example of these efforts, through the realisation of an undergraduate course called Foresight in Business and Society.

Foresight in Business and Society is a signature course required for all undergraduate business majors. Each academic year since Fall 2009, 500–700 students are challenged to identify and evaluate major issues, trends and uncertainties impacting business and society, and to explore potential business opportunities that can drive sustainable innovation.

The course provides students with a framework, based on foresight skills, for thinking critically about change and decisions regarding the future. It exposes students to quantitative and qualitative methodologies to identify trends, to consider the implications of change, to plan for alternative futures, and to suggest strategies leading to preferred futures. Foresight challenges students to demonstrate critical, creative, and systems thinking skills in order to fully understand complex change and how business can drive positive outcomes across all stakeholder groups. The students apply these thinking skills and the foresight framework in a semester-long team project on a topic of their choosing that combines a significant issue facing the world today with business implications and opportunities in light of moral and ethical concerns. Past projects have addressed a wide variety of topics including health, water, food, energy, education, and sustainability related issues around the world. At the end of the semester, the student teams present their projects at a public presentation using a variety of multimedia options.

Since the team projects involve areas of business where change is imminent, likely to be disruptive, and evolving in real time, there is tremendous opportunity for students to learn from professionals currently working in these areas. Student teams are, therefore, given the opportunity to work with corporate executive mentors that can offer their experience and knowledge throughout the project creation process. Past and current corporate mentors include IBM, GE, Rocky Mountain Institute, Interface Carpet, Dean’s Beans, and Changing Our World Inc.

As a result of this course and immersion in their team project, students emerge with a better understanding of how business is addressing global trends and issues, and how they, as future business leaders, can utilise the power of business for societal good.

Challenges

Foresight is a project-based course that is both time and research intensive. The primary challenge for delivering this course is the pace at which teams must proceed through the various stages of the foresight process. The challenge encompasses both in-class design and the design of the project development process. It is critical that students ‘buy in’ to the value of the process, hav...