Reducing that deficit is the main goal of non-profit Industry Immersion Africa (iiAfrica), which is hoping to stem the brain drain of talented students to the West when they are so badly needed on the continent to contribute to the economic transformation of Africa.

Assisted by business professors in Germany and Canada as well as Academics Without Borders, iiAfrica delivers a program that teaches business fundamentals and provides workplace internships to top STEM graduates like Marima.

Since 2017, the Industry Immersion Program has graduated 274 STEM students from 27 African countries. All of them, says iiAfrica managing director David Attipoe, “have remained on the African continent, working for businesses here, and most have gone on to be managers.”

Key to iiAfrica’s early success is a partnership between the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT), a Berlin-based private non-profit business school, and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), based in South Africa with campuses in other African countries. Initially, ESMT professors travelled to South Africa to teach business principles to AIMS students for five weeks before the students moved into a three-month (at least) company internship.

More than 80% of graduates have landed meaningful jobs within one year of graduation, according to iiAfrica.

The lure of STEM scholarships

When founding ESMT dean Wulff Plinke was a guest lecturer at AIMS in 2014, he found the students were passionate about math but not, as had been assumed, interested in teaching careers. Instead, he says, “they wanted to use mathematics in the economic world.”

Plinke knew from experience that well-intentioned scholarships from Western institutions often lead African students to stay abroad after their studies instead of returning home.

With iiAfrica’s program, he adds, “it is not in our vision that anyone would leave Africa after the program. We want to bring them into employment, and we did.”

You can educate people until the cows come home, but if the jobs aren’t there, then it gets to be really tough.

–David Dunne, a business professor at the University of Victoria

Currently, students at AIMS campuses in South Africa, Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal and Cameroon and at Strathmore University in Kenya pay no tuition for the program and earn a certificate in business administration. University partners pay for internet access, housing and tutor support.

Marima, who is from Harare, Zimbabwe, joined the program in 2018. She says the business studies curriculum “opened doors to a world that I had no idea existed.” Though well-versed in statistics and math through her AIMS degree, she notes that “you don’t get to learn much about business from those disciplines.”

After the academic component, Marima landed an internship with B. Braun, a German medical and pharmaceutical device company with an office in Harare. After three months, she joined the company full-time and now is a human capital and strategic development manager overseeing a staff of 30 people. She plans to earn a master’s in business administration from the University of Zimbabwe.

A Canadian business school connection

Since 2019, iiAfrica has partnered with Canada’s Academics Without Borders (AWB) to scale up the program across Africa. Business professors from Canada volunteer their time in the classroom and train campus-based African tutors at each participating university, ultimately replacing themselves.

With this train-the-trainer model, African universities build capacity, says AWB executive director Greg Moran. “We try to collaborate with partners in the developing world to make changes they can sustain themselves.”

Like iiAfrica, AWB believes that part of its mission is to stem the exodus of graduates from Africa. One way to do that, says Moran, “is to help them build capacity in their own programs.”

Still, challenges remain: iiAfrica aims to add one African university each year to the program, but too often participating universities lack financial resources to pay their share of costs. As well, as enrolment climbs, so does pressure to secure internships, in-person or virtual.

David Dunne, a business professor at the University of Victoria and a former AWB board chairman who coordinates scale-up efforts with iiAfrica, is developing a template to add African university partners. “You can educate people until the cows come home, but if the jobs aren’t there, then it gets to be really tough.”

Attipoe agrees: “We need a lot of support from organizations around the world who believe in the transformation of STEM graduates in Africa.”

The post How one business program is fighting the brain drain of African graduates to the West appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Previous Top 40 MBA Rankings

2021 Better World MBA

Better World MBA: Top 40 ranking

2020 Better World MBA

2020 Better World MBA ranking results

2019 Better World MBA

2019 Better World MBA results

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Laudable, say youth activists, sustainable business leaders and those tracking school performance, but still not good enough to equip tomorrow’s corporate leaders for purpose beyond profit.

“The pace of change is definitely not as fast as it should be given the climate crisis and the social crisis we are in, and the ambition is not high enough,” says Maxime Lakat, executive director of Re_Generation, a youth-led campaign for business schools and companies to incorporate human and ecological wellbeing in decision-making.

No less impatient is Mette Morsing, head of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education, the largest global initiative on transforming leadership to address the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “We know what to do, but progress is slow,” says Morsing, whose organization was founded in 2007 and now has 880 business school signatories. “If you look at business school curriculum, it is still very much driven by an agenda set in another time.”

Including purpose, not just profit, means business schools must prepare a different kind of future corporate leader.

“We want [MBA students] to think not just about profit maximization, shareholder supremacy and short-termism,” says Morsing. “We want them to think long-term, because that is what business needs – to think stakeholder orientation and to think about society at the centre of the stakeholder model, not the corporation.”

As schools reimagine themselves, the corporate-sector response is sometimes paradoxical: eager for a new generation of sustainability leaders but not always translating that aspiration in job postings.

“There is a gap between what is being taught and a company’s human resources and talent acquisition department knowing what is being taught,” observes Bernt Blankholm, founder and chief executive officer of Highered, the career arm of the European Foundation for Management Development, a global business school network. “I wish the recruitment industry would pay better attention to what is being taught,” he says. Too often, he adds, chief executive commitments on sustainability fail to trickle down to job descriptions for operational positions at the firm.

That said, businesses are clearly keen for school curricula that embed sustainability in core courses.

“There is no CEO of a company tomorrow that cannot understand sustainability,” predicts Tim Moerman, sustainability and ESG director for global brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev in Europe. He argues that MBA students, no matter their focus (finance, marketing or supply chain), must be well-versed in carbon emissions, packaging and water, for example, and their social and environmental impact. “If business schools don’t provide these kinds of competencies, students will not have jobs,” he warns.

The pace of change is definitely not as fast as it should be given the climate crisis and the social crisis we are in, and the ambition is not high enough.

-Maxime Lakat, executive director of Re_Generation

Among schools reimagining their MBA programs (see 2022 Better World MBA Top 40 ranking), common patterns emerge: increasing integration of sustainability in core courses, research relevant to the SDGs, and expanded opportunities for students to work with underserved communities.

At the Berlin-based European School of Management and Technology (ESMT), a private non-profit business school, 26% of fulltime MBA content links to ethical, social and environmental issues, including relevant case studies, according to the school. Students can work on social-impact projects at the school’s FUTURE Institute for Sustainable Transformation. In a boon for research, ESMT this year announced industry-funded professorships in sustainable finance, accounting impact measurement, circular business, and energy markets and transition.

“Sustainability is something that is at the core of the survival of the competitiveness of the company,” says ESMT president Jôrg Rocholl. “[Sustainability] now is a fundamental part of the strategic development of a company relating to all markets, from capital to labour, where new employees only want to work for companies that are truly sustainable.”

But are all schools doing enough?

“The answer is clearly no,” says Peter Bakker, president and chief executive of the Switzerland-based World Business Council for Sustainable Development. “I know business schools are moving, and many have added sustainability elements to their curriculum,” says the former global company CEO. “But in the core of the current business curriculum, it is still shareholder value that beats the drum.”

If you look at business school curriculum, it is still very much driven by an agenda set in another time.

–Mette Morsing, head of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education

Reinforcing the profit focus, he observes, are rankings that reward a business school for MBA salaries two years after graduation. “Where you can get the best incomes is at Goldman Sachs and other firms on Wall Street,” says Bakker. “It is not going to be at some sustainability job somewhere.” He calls for a “system-wide conversation on ‘How do we actually measure how much impact a particular MBA has?’”

One alternative is a new global, student-driven assessment that rates, not ranks, a school’s commitment to tackling society’s big problems. In five categories, the Swiss-based Positive Impact Rating (PIR) system groups schools by their level of progress in demonstrating social impact.

Students, positioned as key stakeholders in a school’s mission, rate its curriculum, ped-agogy, student support, culture and societal engagement. They also assess whether schools are living up to their aspirations, identifying what they should do less, or more, of to deliver impact. “Students are right there [at school], and you can involve them,” says Katrin Muff, president of PIR and director of the Institute for Business Sustainability. “Students are amazing change-agents for schools.”

I know business schools are moving, and many have added sustainability elements to their curriculum, but in the core of the current business curriculum, it is still shareholder value that beats the drum.

-Peter Bakker, president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development

Muff, who hopes to expand PIR to 100 schools next year from 46 currently, concedes that progress takes patience. “There are significant barriers to change, much more in the business school and university setting than business.”

One of those barriers is the academic reward system that credits discipline-focused faculty for the number of peer-reviewed citations.

“When we evaluate faculty for hiring or promotion and tenure and salary increases, how often are the criteria being looked at even asking for faculty contributions in terms of social purpose?” asks Wharton School business professor David Reibstein, a board member of the Responsible Research in Business and Management network, which promotes academic work that contributes to social good. “We really need to change that [citation] impact measurement.”

Amid calls for purpose-driven business education is a growing recognition of the role of systems thinking to effect change.

“Business schools are the embodiment of our inability to think in systems; there are many silos,” says Jury Gualandris, a professor of operations management and sustainability at Ivey Business School, whose purpose statement now reads “inspiring leaders for a sustainable and prosperous world.”

As leader of Ivey’s Centre for Building Sustainable Value and its sister organization, the Network for Business Sustainability, Gualandris sees the potential to harness the centre’s interdisciplinary research focus and the network’s problem-solving agenda to tackle complex problems from multiple perspectives. “How do we transition from a silo approach to knowledge to a more integrated approach?” he asks.

Gualandris reflects on how “impact” is not a buzzword in the school’s current material, “but it should be. It communicates well the intention behind what we do.”

In fact, intention, communication and system-wide collaboration will all need to align if business schools are to remain relevant in training tomorrow’s sustainability-savvy leaders.

The post Are MBAs doing enough to equip tomorrow’s CEOs for purpose beyond profit? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“I believe that a movement of academics, students and city governments can make some pretty profound and needed change,” says David Miller, former chairman of C40, a global network of mayors tackling the climate crisis. “It’s a very exciting moment.” The former Toronto mayor now leads C40’s Centre for Urban Climate Policy and Economy.

The imperative to act is not lost on the world’s urban leaders. Cities worldwide consume 78% of the world’s energy and produce more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations, but are also potential change-makers in the global campaign for a sustainable future.

Positioned to assist cities in their emerging role are campus-based urban researchers and students.

About 45 universities worldwide have these specialized centres, estimates Karen Chapple, appointed last year as the inaugural director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. “There is something about the urban institute as a living laboratory which is quite unique, so in that way we have a shared ethos across all 45 [centres],” she says.

Three institutes – the LSE Cities centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, and U of T’s School of Cities – illustrate the trend for academics to work with cities to solve complex issues like climate, migration and social inequity.

“Cities today are on the front line of profound man-made disasters,” says LSE Cities director Ricky Burdett. “Mayors have to respond in a very quick way … their exposure to dramatic change has never been as tangible as it is now.”

LSE Cities, one of the oldest institutes, began its activities in 1999 and became a research centre in 2010, combining interdisciplinary research, teaching and outreach. For example, its Master of Science in City Design and Social Science enrols students from various academic disciplines who work on specific projects in London from the perspective of sustainability, architecture and design.

Cities today are on the front line of profound man-made disasters. Mayors have to respond in a very quick way … their exposure to dramatic change has never been as tangible as it is now.

–LSE Cities director Ricky Burdett

In 2016, LSE Cities added an Executive Master of Science in Cities, with in-person and virtual learning over 18 months, for mid-career urban professionals (including C40 mayors) who are committed to leading large-scale efforts to address climate action through an evidence-based approach. Economic inequality and the climate crisis are top concerns, says program co-director Savvas Verdis. “Cities are very good at crystalizing these challenges that are global in nature into very local problems,” he says. “Mayors are, unfortunately, being asked to do a lot of the fire-fighting.”

Among its diverse activities, LSE Cities offers an academic course for city leaders to craft child-friendly policies. In addition, Burdett and other faculty members directly advise cities, including a recent consultation with Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa on its rapid urbanization challenges.

Collaboration defines many of the global programs. In 2021, Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, announced a US$150-million commitment to expand the Bloomberg Harvard [University] City Leadership Initiative, a training program for mayors established in 2016. The donation also supports a university-wide cities centre for leadership and governance and endowed faculty appointments The Bloomberg Harvard program provides an all-expenses-paid executive education experience for 40 mayors annually from around the world.

“All global problems have a local impact, and we cannot afford to wait for national or international bodies to come up with the solutions,” says Jorrit de Jong, director of the Bloomberg Center for Cities and faculty co-chair of the Bloomberg Harvard program. “The problems are so urgent that you are held accountable by local residents; there are levers that local leaders can use that they are not always aware of.”

Mike Savage, mayor of Halifax Regional Municipality, was one of three Canadian mayors in the 2018 class. “A lot of that stuff that we learned informed the way we have governed since we have gotten back to our cities,” he says. One lesson he learned was how to develop a public narrative as a tool to engage stakeholders on city priorities, such as Halifax’s pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

I hope current leaders will feel better equipped to tackle problems that seem insurmountable.

–Jorrit de Jong, director of the Bloomberg Center for Cities

In the year-long experience, with several days of in-class learning followed by virtual seminars, mayors must identify a local problem to solve. For Savage, it was how to bring big infrastructure projects to fruition with public support. He and two senior city officials had access to Harvard faculty, who advised on policy implementation, and the assistance of a Bloomberg Harvard–sponsored graduate student on a three-month summer fellowship with the city.

With such support, says de Jong, “I hope current leaders will feel better equipped to tackle problems that seem insurmountable.”

The Bloomberg Harvard program also looks to recruit future civic leaders, with a new two-year, paid fellowship for recent graduates to work with mayors on their priorities. “We hope to create a talent pipeline of students who had not thought about going into city government,” says de Jong.

Like its counterparts, U of T’s School of Cities emphasizes knowledge dissemination and urban problem-solving. But it differs from others in having no dedicated faculty. Instead, the School of Cities funds researchers from multiple disciplines. For its first grant, it mobilized 45 academics from 20 departments to explore climate justice issues. “We were designed to crosscut many different departments,” says Chapple. Linking academia and the community is key. She says researchers are expected to “make sure your research project is useful to people on the ground working on climate and justice issues,” with community stakeholders involved in the design of research.

No less important is nurturing new talent. Clarence Qian, with graduate degrees in architecture (Waterloo) and business (Toronto), spent his year as a 2021 Urban Leadership Fellow examining the potential of mass timber construction to contribute to sustainable, affordable residential housing. This year, while completing his business studies, he signed up for the School of Cities’ graduate multidisciplinary urban project, which brings together students from various academic disciplines to work on an urban problem.

Qian and his team members examined how to add laneway homes, duplexes and triplexes to the traditional mix of residential housing options.
“In my MBA, we talk about numbers every day,” he says. “For urban issues, it is never just one aspect; for my [multidisciplinary] project, I met others from different perspectives.”

Qian, now director of development at Distrikt real estate developers, sees his future in cities. “My passion is trying to make the city of Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area a better place for people to live.”

That’s promising for urban advocates like C40’s Miller.

“It is my hope that universities that are making such an effort to link directly with city governments can spark that [youth] interest into a real fire of passion for solutions to our society’s challenges,” he says.

The post Sustainable city leadership 101 appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The volume of medical-related waste represents a “new environmental crisis,” warns Peter Hopkinson, director of the National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research Hub (CE Hub) at the University of Exeter Business School. COVID-19 demand for single-use PPE, he adds, “has set back the substitution and replacement of medical plastic by quite a long way.”

Before the pandemic, the elimination of plastics in the ocean was a top global priority, he says. “Then came the pandemic, and suddenly it is ‘Where do I get my plastic … I don’t care where you get it from. It is a matter of life and death.’”

Like a number of global researchers, Hopkinson is conducting research to put the focus back on strategies to substitute and replace COVID-related plastic products.

Too often, he argues, plastics pollution is seen as a problem for oceans, not the climate as a whole. “People have still not really made the link between plastics and carbon; it’s basically oil,” he says. “When plastic [material] is incinerated as clinical waste, it releases carbon.”

The CE Hub explores business models that minimize reliance on non-renewable resources and maximize reuse of waste materials – the essence of circular economy principles. Since 2020, the CE Hub has worked with Revolution-ZERO, a sustainability focused provider of zero-carbon, zero-waste face masks and gowns, to pilot alternatives to single-use PPE in British hospitals. Initial results show that redesigned PPE can be safely reused 20 to 100 times before being repurposed as medical blankets or insulation curtains, complemented by staff training and special on-site laundry for holistic solutions.

[COVID-19 demand for single-use PPE] has set back the substitution and replacement of medical plastic by quite a long way.”

– Peter Hopkinson, director of the National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research Hub

Earlier this year, for its efforts to devise sustainable alternatives to disposable PPE, drapes and other surgical textiles, Revolution-ZERO was one of 10 recipients to share £1 million in funding from England’s Small Business Research Initiative.

The Exeter-led CE Hub is part of the National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research (NICER) program – a four-year, £30-million investment to move the UK toward a circular economy. In addition to the hub, the program involves 34 universities, 64 senior academics, 42 early-career researchers, more than 60 PhD students and 120 industry partners, all working to coordinate and scale that circular mission. Other related centres are focused on developing circular economy textiles, construction materials, metals and beyond.

Exeter has also introduced a Circular Economy Masterclass – a six-week, online, interactive program for organizations and individuals looking to create and deliver commercial benefits from the circular economy.

A circular economy approach is “perfectly possible, practical and profitable,” Hopkinson concludes. “It saves you a lot of money, there is no reduction in patient safety, and it is the right thing to do.”

Jennifer Lewington is an intrepid reporter and writes regularly on many topics, including business school news.

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Over the next decade, up to $1 billion in annual funding will be needed to protect and restore habitats, meet global conservation goals and reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases using nature-based solutions, according to assistant professor Diane-Laure Arjaliès and fellow researchers at the University of Western Ontario’s Ivey Business School.

“The biodiversity and climate crisis will not slow down if we are just going to rely on the government, so let’s find a solution,” says Arjaliès, who since 2019 has worked with Carolinian Canada, a national conservation organization; local environmental groups; and First Nation communities in southern Ontario in the design and evaluation of the Deshkan Ziibi Conservation Impact Bond (the Anishinaabe name for the Thames River).

The bond, being piloted over a five-year period, aims to attract new sources of capital beyond traditional government grants and private philanthropy for a highly populated, ecologically threatened section of the Carolinian zone.

A social finance firm made the initial investment in the bond, with government, private sector and NGO partners committed to repay the funds with interest if goals of native tree replanting and conservation improvements of 150 acres near London, Ontario, are reached over five years. Ultimately, Carolinian Canada and its partners aim to renew 1,000 acres in the zone.

Significantly, the bond’s designers adopted the principle of “two-eyed seeing” that recognizes the duality of Indigenous and Western perspectives, with First Nation communities acknowledged as co-partners bringing culturally valid approaches to land stewardship. 

“We brought a different perspective into the development of the conservation impact bond that is not typically included, [namely] the human connection, the cultural component and the fact that we see the land as kin,” says Emma Young, senior environment officer for the Chippewas of the Thames First Nation. Meaningful collaboration, she adds, is akin to “weaving a stronger rope.”

Ivey’s Arjaliès says she is “confident” of the potential to scale up conservation bonds globally, assuming investors are willing to be patient for the long-term reward: a healthy, sustainable environment.

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The question is of long-running research interest to Olga Hawn, associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.

“I have always been intrigued by the gap between what companies say and what they actually do,” says Hawn. Her previous research on corporate social responsibility found that investors, though initially skeptical, ultimately saw value in corporate commitments to sustainability.

Currently, she and fellow researchers are examining investor reaction to politically charged debates on racial and gender equality.

After the death of George Floyd in 2020 caused a global reckoning on race, roughly 100 Fortune 500 companies pledged action on diversity. Investors initially reacted negatively (a dip in share prices), fearing a corporate stance on a polarizing issue would be bad for business, according to research by Hawn and fellow Kenan-Flagler professor Stephanie Mahin.

I have always been intrigued by the gap between what companies say and what they actually do.

–Olga Hawn, associate professor at the University of North Carolina

But when they analyzed consumers’ sentiments about such pledges on Twitter, the researchers found that companies that demonstrated authenticity about their commitments fared better than those that appeared to make pro forma undertakings. The lesson for companies, says Hawn, is “Take a stand.”

A different pattern emerged in relation to LGBTQ2S+ rights. Hawn and Aharon Mohliver, a strategy and entrepreneurship professor at London Business School, tracked shareholder responses to American company rankings on the annual corporate equality index (a measure of social responsibility) between 2002 and 2018. Companies that clearly picked sides either way on gender equality won backing from like-minded investors, while those that stayed on the sidelines were ignored by investors.

“There is an advantage to [stating] your position either for or against,” says Hawn, which hints (pending further research) at the merits of corporate authenticity.

How do we propel companies beyond “islands of sustainability”?

Professor Christopher Wright recalls what he told his business students in 2006, when the British government released its influential Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change that called for environmental taxes: “The coal industry now is dead because the world’s economists have woken up, and we will price carbon emissions and it will be the end of fossil fuels.”

Wright’s assumption proved wrong, but it fuelled his interest in the “inherent contradiction” of companies that acknowledge the existential climate threat yet fail to respond.

“We keep doing what we are doing, which is to maximize shareholder value, continue economic growth and use coal, oil and gas to fuel all that,” says Wright, a professor of organizational studies at the University of Sydney Business School in Australia.

In his research, Wright examines a recurring pattern in which companies promise bold climate moves only for efforts to peter out because of bureaucratic inertia, pressure for quick profits and short-tenured leaders.

We keep doing what we are doing, which is to maximize shareholder value, continue economic growth and use coal, oil and gas to fuel all that.

-Christopher Wright, professor at the University of Sydney

Businesses alone cannot respond to climate action, Wright concludes. Despite some examples of what he calls “islands of sustainability” – businesses that pivot to a green focus – he notes “they can’t maintain the longevity because of the nature of the system.”

The co-author of Organising Responses to Climate Change: The Politics of Mitigation, Adaptation and Suffering, to be released this year, offers his admittedly unpopular remedy: global government intervention to price carbon and embrace renewable energy. “The problem is that the dominant political discourse is that government is the problem and let markets rule,” he concedes. “While we are in that fix, I don’t see any change happening.”

Still, he sees “pathways forward” through teaching and research to press for systemic change and equip a new generation of sustainability-conscious managers to reform corporate policies.

Wright, who uses op-eds, blogs, press interviews and social media to publicize his research, says academics in business schools and elsewhere need to “step out of the ivory tower and engage much more [than before] as public intellectuals” on the climate crisis. “It is bigger than a business case.”

A version of this story appeared in the spring issue of Corporate Knights magazine.

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The moment, some believe, is ripe for business schools globally to embrace social purpose.

“Business schools should be positioned at the nexus of business, government and civil society,” observes Dan LeClair, chief executive officer of the Global Business School Network, a non-profit that promotes management education in the developing world. “Unless we do that and unless we work with business, government and civil society, we will not move the needle on critical societal issues.”

Change is coming, as students prod schools for socially relevant curricula and employers seek graduates as attuned to social inequities as profit-and-loss statements. Business school accrediting bodies have added their voice to the choir. In 2020, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International) set standards for schools to identify how they will create social impact through teaching, research and community engagement.

“It’s not ‘Tell us a list of the good things you are doing’; you have to have a robust strategic plan,” says Stephanie Bryant, executive vice-president and global chief accreditation officer for AACSB, itself committed to “transform business education globally for positive societal impact.”

Some schools are adopting strategic plans to guide their aspirations on social purpose. Last fall, led by freshman dean Dana Brown, the Sprott School of Business at Ottawa’s Carleton University released a five-point plan for curricula upgrades, expanded research, and new partnerships with under-represented groups by 2025 to deliver “business for a better world.”

Over time, all courses will incorporate critical perspectives on the purpose of business and train students to evaluate the social and environmental impact of corporate decisions, with minors in technology entrepreneurship and social innovation focused on positive change.

Along with proposed research chairs in business environmental sustainability, as well as equity and inclusion, Sprott recently partnered with Indigenous Works, a national social enterprise, to create an innovation strategy that promotes economic well-being for self-identified First Nation, Métis and Inuit people. In December, with federal government funding, the school announced a national research initiative with the Dream Legacy Foundation to develop a national Black entrepreneurship hub. Sprott’s strategic plan began with a question: “What do we want to be doing better?”

“Business schools should be positioned at the nexus of business, government and civil society. Unless we do that… we will not move the needle on critical societal issues.”

-Dan LeClair, chief executive officer of the Global Business School Network

Brown says the school knew it wanted to incorporate a different way of learning for students that would create experiential learning opportunities at home and abroad. “Our students need to be empowered to build purpose in their life and career.”

Other schools are adopting partnerships to reimagine the status quo. In recent years, Calgary-based Trico Charitable Foundation has collaborated with the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary on curriculum, research and outreach activities. “For some time, I have been a big believer in business schools and post-secondary institutions in general as meccas for social impact,” says Trico executive director Dan Overall. In November, in an event held every two years, the school and the foundation held a two-day conference for social entrepreneurs at all stages of development.

Last year, France’s Grenoble School of Management became its country’s first major business school to earn “Société à mission” status, joining more than 100 companies pledging to operate in support of society and the environment.

In doing so, the school commits to generate content and research that seek answers to environmental, social and economic challenges and to contribute “to a world that is more resilient, more just, and peaceful and more responsible.”

Themes of sustainability, corporate social responsibility, inclusion and diversity weave through the curriculum. An undergraduate course on “sustainability as a strategic lever for companies” explores corporate practices (good and bad) that play out in global circumstances of poverty, social inequality, resource scarcity and climate change. For an MBA course on sustainability-driven business, students examine the role of entrepreneurship in promoting social impact initiatives.

School officials currently are assessing all courses to ensure consistent application of the five Société à mission objectives (promotion of ethical behaviour, diversity, inclusion, economic peace and recognition of the climate emergency), linked to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “While there is already a broad selection of modules, we are harmonizing and ensuring that each program has the appropriate content,” says Julie Perrin-Halot, associate dean and director of quality, strategy and international issues.

With a school focus on planet and people first, she says, “profit is no longer an end; students understand it is simply a means.”

A few schools are expressly adding social impact to their program lineups. Boston University’s Questrom School of Business delivers a two-year social impact MBA. For the program, which shares core content with the school’s regular MBA, students take at least four social impact courses, including environmental, social and corporate governance; purpose-led marketing; and leading mission-driven organizations.

In Newfoundland, Memorial University’s Faculty of Business Administration designed its MBA in social enterprise and entrepreneurship for graduates to lead enterprises that respect people, planet and profits.

As schools revamp curricula, calls mount to rethink traditional research and academic promotion practices. “We have to change our evaluation and reward system; it is just that simple,” says David Reibstein, chairman-elect of Responsible Research in Business and Management, a scholars’ network that promotes research for impact, not just journal citations.

“We need leaders in business schools who say, ‘[Social impact] is important and something that we will encourage and reward,” says Reibstein, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and former chairman of the American Marketing Association.

“Profit is no longer an end; students understand it is simply a means.”

-Julie Perrin-Halot, associate dean of Grenoble School of Management

Amid some progress, he cites a peer-reviewed academic journal’s decision to accept scholarly papers on how marketing can contribute to a better world. “They got more submissions than for a normal journal,” he notes. “How fantastic is that?”

Some academics successfully pivoted years ago. In 2001/2002, Texas A&M marketing professor Leonard Berry spent his mid-career sabbatical at the Mayo Clinic to pursue his research interest, service delivery, studying how the renowned health organization treats patients and their families.

“The best way to learn deeply about a problem I want to contribute to solving is to go to where the problem occurs,” says Berry, who credits his school culture for enabling his non-traditional approach. “I was willing to leave my office.”

Earlier this year, Berry and top academics from the U.S. and Europe co-wrote a paper for AACSB International urging researchers to incorporate impact in subject disciplines. “As business school faculty, we can produce research that convinces managers to cease practices that cause harm, such as mistreating employees, polluting airways and rivers, or depleting resources,” the professors wrote.

Elsewhere, schools look beyond the ivory tower for impact. Since 2016, the University of Sydney Business School has offered an MBA course for students to work in Bangalore, India, to help scale up social entrepreneurs. In another unit, students visit Indigenous communities in New South Wales to assist start-ups and learn about First Nations culture. The school partners with an Australia-based United Nations women’s advocacy group to offer scholarships – 20 since 2014 – to women in specialty MBA programs. Recently, the school published an employer guide for hiring refugees. “Issues of inclusion and social impact are dramatically changing the landscape, with climate change an important driver as well,” says the school’s MBA director, Guy Ford.

In the United States, Sloan School of Management, the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, created a global platform for social impact through its Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (REAP). Since 2014, teams of decision-makers from government and academia, venture capitalism and social entrepreneurships from around the world (each with its own regional challenge) participate in Sloan-led workshops over two years. With access to Sloan professors, experts and each other, the teams identify solutions for their regions.

In 2016, a team from Nova Scotia participated in REAP and later established Onside, a non-profit, to foster local social enterprises. New projects designed to narrow the rural–urban economic divide between Halifax and the rest of the province are set to be announced in February 2022. Onside executive director Alex McCann says the REAP format encourages local collaboration while also learning from global counterparts. She credits Sloan with looking for new ways to support businesses “as a force for good and [to] have impact in a positive way.”

The message for business schools worldwide is clear: pick up the pace.

Jennifer Lewington is an intrepid reporter and writes regularly on many topics, including business school news.

The post As corporate leaders pledge to embrace purpose beyond profit, are business schools keeping up? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In 2013, the University of Victoria’s Peter B. Gustavson School of Business founded the Indigenous Advancement of Cultural Entrepreneurship (I-ACE) program. The program bills itself as Canada’s only Indigenous co-designed entrepreneurship program delivered in First Nations communities and centred on their priorities. Since then, the school has worked with 67 Indigenous communities in British Columbia, producing 604 graduates and 200 start-ups.

“We only do these programs when we are invited in to do so by communities or nations,” says Brent Mainprize, a Gustavson professor of entrepreneurship and Indigenous economic development, of I-ACE. “We work hand in hand with the community and nation to find [external] resources so we [are] not taxing a nation’s budget.”

Former Haida Nation council president Miles Richardson says the success of I-ACE, which initially received $1 million in funding from the Bank of Montreal, demonstrates that business schools “need to be flexible in their approach and delivery.” As chair of the National Consortium for Indigenous Economic Development, a University of Victoria research initiative with Indigenous governments, Richardson says First Nations communities are seeking a productive economic relationship with Canada.

“To do that, our people need to be trained and educated, and to gain capacity we have to do it in a way that is consistent with our values and who we are as a people,” says Richardson.

In Australia, the University of Melbourne, in partnership with Indigenous leaders, designed a culturally safe on-campus executive education program for Indigenous entrepreneurs in 2012. The university’s Faculty of Business and Economics added a graduate certificate in Indigenous leadership in 2019 that can ladder into degree programs.

“We are creating as many pathways into business school as we can for Indigenous people,” says Mitch Hibbens, a Wiradjuri tribe member and program director of the entrepreneur program.

Sometimes, topics define the relationship.

Recent specialty programs at the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University, which include certificates in tribal leadership, gaming leadership, and tribal finance and accounting, came at the request of the 38-tribe Oklahoma Tribal Finance Consortium.

“A growing number of tribes need assistance with finances and accounting,” says Julie Weathers, director of Spears’s Center for Executive and Professional Development. “The people in those positions rotate in and out, and so there is a lot of learning that needs to take place quickly.”

Vancouver Island University (VIU), with Heiltsuk Tribal College and North Island College, delivers a seven-month Indigenous Ecotourism Training Program for eligible students supported by their local bands. The program’s instructors travel to Indigenous communities to teach. VIU also offers other credentials that can feed into a business diploma or degree.

At Manitoba’s Assiniboine College, located on the traditional territories of Treaty 1 and Treaty 2 First Nations, the business faculty delivers an in-community advanced diploma in Indigenous financial management. “The more we can include the community in [the] development of the course, the more meaningful it will be for the students who eventually take the courses,” says business dean Bobbie Robertson.

That responsiveness is essential, says Mike Henry, dean of business at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, which works with the Indigenous-led Tulo Centre of Indigenous Economics to design courses in demand by local communities.

“Indigenous communities are taking control and saying, ‘This is what we need,’” he says. “Non-Indigenous communities are starting to listen closer and respond to what Indigenous leaders need, not what we think they need, to manage their own affairs.”

Jennifer Lewington is an intrepid reporter and writes regularly on many topics, including business school news.

The post Class is in session for Indigenous entrepreneurs appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“Business schools and universities in Canada have been slow on this front,” concedes University of Alberta business dean Kyle Murray. “It’s something we probably should have been taking action on decades ago, but there is a lot more momentum now.”

As Canada reckons with its dark history of residential schools and colonial attitudes to Indigenous people, some of that new momentum comes from individual professors. Earlier this year, inspired by a 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) event and a university workshop on decolonizing course materials, U of A business professor David Deephouse delivered a new elective: Introduction to Indigenous Business.

“It’s meant to help people understand more about Indigenous businesses and the context in which they operate,” including the use of Indigenous case studies, says Deephouse.

In modernizing courses, collaboration is key. University of Victoria Gustavson School of Business professor Doug Stuart is refreshing a third-year tax course for 2022 with assistance from Prince George–based Mindy Wight, a member of the Squamish Nation and national leader of Indigenous Tax Services for MNP, an accounting, tax and business consulting firm. The course integrates material on First Nation governments that operate their own revenue systems, as well as how Canadian and provincial government tax rules apply when an Indigenous business owner operates on or off reserve.

“Indigenous and non-Indigenous tax experts, as a matter of serving the public interest, should be learning material to support all business owners in Canada,” Stuart says.

Earlier this year, Sonya Graci, a non-Indigenous professor of hospitality and tourism management at Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Management, developed a new elective on Indigenous tourism with Indigenous industry leaders. On offer this fall, it is the business school’s first explicitly Indigenous course. Like sustainability and climate change, such content “is a very pertinent issue for all our students,” Graci says.

Indigenizing business curricula

Schools typically pursue one of two curriculum strategies: embed material or create electives. Earlier this year, Australia’s Griffith Business School (where self-identified First Peoples account for 2.1% of the student body) overhauled its Bachelor of Business to incorporate material throughout the four-year degree rather than offer only electives. Griffith is the first business school in Australia to commit to Indigenizing its entire program in an embedded, integrated and interdisciplinary way, thereby introducing students to “the importance of understanding First Peoples Knowledge in a business.”

Previously, Indigenous topics “had always been to the side, in specialized silos,” says Ruth McPhail, academic director. The goal now is to raise awareness among white students of Australia’s rich Aboriginal history and the growing economic power of a new generation of Indigenous entrepreneurs. “This is critical information for students, and we will embrace it in every part of the curriculum,” she says.

Accounting professor Kerry Bodle, the school’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander academic director, previously taught Indigenous content, such as history, government policies and cultural protocols, as electives. She was instrumental in blending these topics and additional content into the revised bachelor’s degree while assisting professors to teach the updated courses with confidence.

Descended from Karendali, Kalali and Waka Waka First Peoples, Bodle reflects on the academic sea-change. “When I came for a graduate degree [23 years ago], there was nothing about Indigenous people unless you talked about all the deficits,” she says.

In Canada, UVic’s Gustavson also integrates content across the curriculum instead of mandating a course. Successful implementation, says dean Saul Klein, rests on training faculty members “to feel comfortable to raise and talk about issues that are of Indigenous concern in all of their classes.”

More often, though, schools choose to add electives.

New mandatory courses

One exception is the University of Lethbridge’s Dhillon School of Business, which this fall introduced a mandatory Indigenous course in its four-year undergraduate degree. Students can choose from numerous topics – Blackfoot language, conversational reconciliation and Aboriginal health – to fulfil their obligation.

“We wanted to move on this, so we created the course requirement” especially to educate non-Indigenous students, says Dhillon dean Kerry Godfrey.

For decades, the school has offered variations of a successful Indigenous governance and business management program.

The mandatory course is just a first step. Godfrey has recruited Leroy Little Bear, a long-time Indigenous leader, emeritus professor and senior advisor to Lethbridge’s president on Aboriginal initiatives, to help the school speed up efforts to embed Indigenous content.

The course requirement is “long, long overdue,” says Dhillon assistant professor Don McIntyre, an Ojibway of the Wolf Clan from Timiskaming First Nation. Since the TRC’s 94 Calls to Action, which include closing achievement gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous post-secondary students, he says, “institutions are trying to figure out how to do that.”

At the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business, which has run an Indigenous Business Education Partners program for First Nations, Métis and Inuit students for 25 years, a curriculum review now in progress could lead to a possible new mandatory course for all incoming Asper business students by 2023.

“We are in Manitoba – should I say more?” says outgoing Asper dean Gady Jacoby, given that Indigenous people, a fast-growing cohort, currently account for 18% of the provincial population. “We are decades behind where we should be. We need to do as much as possible as soon as possible.”

The school’s strategy extends beyond content, including the appointment this year of Indigenous-focused inclusion consultant Mary Jane Maillet Brownscombe, a Métis and school alumnae, to the inaugural position of executive-in-residence.

We are decades behind where we should be. We need to do as much as possible as soon as possible.
—Gady Jacoby, outgoing dean at the University of Manitoba’s Asper Schoolof Business

Jacoby’s urgency for action is shared by others. Colleges are also expanding for-credit Indigenous programs, with certificates and diplomas at 16 institutions, according to Colleges and Institutes Canada.

Still, challenges remain, including a shortage of Indigenous faculty.

Bettina Schneider, associate dean of community research and graduate programs at First Nations University of Canada, says it’s critical that these business programs hire more Indigenous academics. “It is so important that Indigenous programs include Indigenous scholars who can bring certain perspectives and lived experiences to the classroom,” says Schneider, who is non-Indigenous.

At Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business, Rick Colbourne, associate dean of equity and inclusive communities and an Algonquin Anishinaabe member of the Mattawa/North Bay Algonquin First Nation, is leading efforts to develop new courses and reform tenure and promotion to attract Indigenous scholars. Colbourne sets out his benchmarks for success: more Indigenous faculty members and PhDs, more Indigenous undergraduate and graduate students, more Indigenous leaders at the senior levels of university administration, and increased engagement with local Indigenous communities.

Colbourne credits the work of the TRC in kick-starting the new, if belated, work of business schools to equip their graduates with knowledge of Indigenous issues.

“The TRC Calls to Action was a turning point in a lot of ways,” he says. “Business schools needed to start listening to this, and they needed to start taking notice.”

Jennifer Lewington is an intrepid reporter and writes regularly on many topics, including business school news.

The post Business schools launch ‘overdue’ efforts to Indigenize curricula appeared first on Corporate Knights.