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How Responsible Are Business Schools?

David Connor | Monday 2nd November 2009

How much responsibility do business schools have for the recent economic turmoil? Why should we expect organisations to demonstrate Corporate Social Responsibility if the lunatics running the asylums are ethically neglected by academia? The historical laser-like focus on traditional shareholder values of profit and growth has been shaken to the foundations by a turbulent financial period in combination with mounting global pressures from climate change, population growth, energy security and increasing consumer scrutiny of both products and companies. Academia's reaction has been staggeringly slow for those supposed to cultivate future corporate knights with the vision and ability to lead.

Corporate Social Responsibility and its ethical cousins (sustainability, corporate citizenship, etc.) have been largely driven by pioneering individuals with minimal specific formal education, abundant passion and an understanding of an complimentary approach to management, by creating a personal education pathof their own making. There have been far too few formal ethical elements of core management courses never mind focused courses across the agenda. It has been frustrating yet entertaining to witness the gold rush style race by business schools responding to industry criticism and growing demand from both students wanting an improved understanding and businesses requiring more intellectually mature Sustainability and CSR managers.

It was only 2007 when Ban Ki-Moon launched the United Nations Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) backed by sixty deans, born out of the recommendations of academic stakeholders of the United Nations Global Compact. Why did it take until then? The Aspen Institute's Beyond Grey Pinstripes research surveys have recorded the steady - but slowing - rise in MBA programmes that integrate CSR into curricula and research. I sincerely hope that any reduction in available funding, as a consequence of sadly inevitable belt tightening, isn't beginning to stifle what momentum had been gained.

Let's not forget that whilst, like the more enlightened corporations, some business schools did set their stall out to champion CSR; unfortunately the majority didn't. It will be interesting to watch curriculum development over the next few years as academic institutions, like every private sector organisation, have to deal with dramatically reduced budgets, especially those reliant on Government funding. Can business schools practice what they should be preaching; actively playing their part in taking the responsibility agenda to its next strategically robust evolutionary stage?

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Recent Comment

Jeff Mowatt | Posted: Today

Hi David,

Well, it was the work of P-CEDs founder on "inclusive capitalism" which opened the door to source a development initiative in Russia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusive_capitalism

it followed the 1998 collapse of Russia's economy and the efforts of Harvard's HIID, on which David McLintick wrote the article 'How Havard Lost Russia'

Setting up in the Uk in 2004 we both joined in the conversation on Skoll's Social Edge and other forums, to describe our efforts and were somewhat surprised to find the concepts we'd been practising for a decade being promoted as a 'new way of doing business' this year at Oxford .

http://oxfordhub.org/oxsef

Jeff

Anne McCrady | Posted: 17 November 2009

CSR education needs to begin early enough that business ethics are as deeply embedded as personal morality.

David Connor | Posted: 17 November 2009

Hi Joanne

CSR in academia is similar to that in business. Some institutions are definite leaders demonstrating an embedded core ethos, some are trying hard and far too many are either ticking legislative boxes or avoiding completely their wider obligations.

There are some great examples of CSR and Sustainability education and its great to hear of the excellent example taken by your school. Hopefully it will become a competitive advantage in education as it is in business.

David

David Connor | Posted: 17 November 2009

Hi Amber

I was surprised recently by initial reactions from a group of business management students during a lecture I gave at a prestigious University. Not only was there understanding very basic, but their attitude, considering their potential as future business leaders, was deeply disheartening. From an initial straw pole (and understanding many were to shy to raise their hands) it was obvious that the distance between business reality and the curriculum offered was as wide as ever.

We need to inspire and engage our future managers far earlier, especially in such an important area, not merely preach information at them.

David

David Connor | Posted: 17 November 2009

Hi Charles

It would have been easy to write much, much more and will return to the subject soon. I too have met too many students that have either no awareness or little respect if they are aware. There have been exceptions but the overall evidence demonstrates most schools are behind their private sector counterparts in accepting and providing for increasing moral obligations.

Joanne Lawrence | Posted: 6 November 2009

The international business school where I recently began teaching CSR has impressed me with the fact that CSR is actually a core MBA course that every student must take, and that it has been for quite a while. More recently, they have mandated that every professor in every discipline must integrate ethical decision-making into his/her course. Considering that our students come from all over the world, I feel we are helping to develop a new generation of global business leaders who see social responsibility not as an add-on or nice to do, but core to good business practices and stewardship of resources. Even better: the students agree and embrace the concept.

As far as educating current business leaders, more and more research is showing that behaving responsibly actually helps improve and sustain performance over the long-run: it is an investment, not a cost. Not only is CSR the 'right thing to do', it is actually the right thing to do for the business.

Joanne T. Lawrence

amber eckley | Posted: 4 November 2009

I'm currently in getting my undergrad in business management, and have been continually surprised by the lack of sustainability as a theme and the general big picture thinking that goes along with it; but it the problem doesn't seem to be with the curriculum so much as the professors as individuals. I imagine it's pretty difficult not to editorialize the material you teach a little bit, and sometimes that's how those ideas go missing. However, that absence hasn't stopped me from having a more progressive idea of what business can be, so hopefully my generation will still be able to reflect that in their future work.

Charles Fleeman | Posted: 4 November 2009

Too short a piece for such an important observation. I've been pointing the finger at business schools for years. All one has to do is hang out with business school grads for a short time to learn that the only shareholder that matters is the one they admire in the mirror each morning.