Examining responsible-management education
Concordia’s John Molson School of Business (JMSB) played a key role in the first-ever meeting of the minds on how to best integrate sustainable and responsible thinking into the curricula of Canadian business schools.
JMSB and the University of Guelph College of Management and Economics co-convened the initial Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) Canada Regional Meeting, held June 11 and 12 at the MacEwan School of Business in Edmonton. The meeting brought together about 100 people from across the country.
JMSB was represented at the conference by Management Professor Paul Shrivastava, director of Concordia’s David O’Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise.
The PRME were established in 2007 as part of the United Nations Global Compact. By signing on to the principles, business schools express their voluntary commitment to rethink and revise their curricula, research, teaching methodologies and institutional strategies to incorporate sustainability and corporate responsibility.
“JMSB was one of the first signatories of PRME in 2008,” says Shrivastava. “Concordia integrated sustainability into its business departments by hiring research faculty with an interest in sustainable enterprise and by establishing courses with a focus on ethical and responsible business.”
The business school now houses two research centres dedicated to scholarship in the area of sustainability, two responsible-business-related internship programs and a certificate program for investment professionals interested in sustainable investing.
JMSB’s efforts have been recognized by Corporate Knights magazine, which in 2012 ranked the school third in Canada and first in Quebec in its annual survey that examines how well business schools incorporate sustainability into their activities.
“We are committed to playing a global leadership role in the advancement of sustainability-related knowledge creation,” says JMSB Dean Steve Harvey. “We strive to reinforce the notion that social responsibility should be considered in everything that we do. Incorporating the PRME framework into our operations helps ensure that our students, faculty and staff continue to focus on making a positive social impact.”
Shrivastava reports that the regional meeting produced some fascinating exchanges about how to best expand the list of Canadian PRME signatories and help sustainability penetrate and embed itself into the core activities of the signatory schools.
“Curricula in mature b-schools are often an accumulation of brilliant insights and follies of past years,” he says. “In an atmosphere of tough turf battles and tenure pressures, there is rarely an opportunity to do wholesale revision, so changes are bolted on incrementally. So too with corporate responsibility additions. We need to look at what intellectual next steps are for enterprise sustainability.”
Related links:
• John Molson School of Business
• David O’Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise
• PRME Canada Regional Meeting
• Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME)
• Global Compact
• Corporate Knights ranks John Molson MBA third in Canada