Griffith University MBA Director Professor Naomi Birdthistle is passionate about making change where it matters: in the hearts of a new wave of business leaders, and she explains what ‘doing things differently’ looks like for the MBA program.

As the business world has played a part in creating environmental, social and ethical challenges which can seem insurmountable, how does Griffith’s MBA program contribute to a solution?

The Griffith MBA creates a model of what a future leader needs to be, to deal with wicked problems. Sustainability should become second nature for all business leaders, and they should have SDGs embedded into their decision-making process.

We equip students with a sustainability mindset. We bring out the passion and provide an authentic learning experience.

Ethical leadership is more important than ever in today’s business world. We emphasize the importance of integrity, transparency, and ethical decision-making. From a human and environmental perspective, the business world is increasingly uncertain and volatile. Professionals need to be adaptable and resilient, and we equip students with skills to navigate change and uncertainty. We model adaptability by continuously updating our curriculum to reflect the latest trends and challenges, and the program covers topics such as change management, crisis leadership, and strategic agility.

What sets Griffith’s program apart from other MBAs?

As well as imparting practical business know-how, we believe education should instil values which guide ethical decision-making and responsible leadership. Our curriculum is designed to foster critical thinking, empathy, and a deep understanding of the broader impact of business decisions on society and the environment. Griffith MBA alumni are a new class of professionals, the kind necessary to implement the change needed for a better world.

Human qualities such as emotional intelligence are integral to our curriculum. We understand that effective leadership and management require not only technical skills, but also the ability to navigate interpersonal relationships and understand the emotional dynamics within teams and organizations.

By embedding emotional intelligence throughout our curriculum, we ensure our graduates are capable of leading with empathy, resilience, and a deep understanding of human behaviour. These qualities are essential for creating inclusive, innovative, and high-performing organisations.

Two courses of note include Leading for Sustainable People Outcomes and Developing Values-based Leadership. Students learn how to manage their own emotions and understand the emotions of others, which is crucial for leading diverse teams and fostering a positive work environment.

How do you ensure MBA graduates stay relevant through their career?

We instil a mindset of lifelong learning in our students, because learning doesn’t stop at graduation. We encourage students and alumni to continuously seek new knowledge and skills. We model this through our ‘MBA for Life’ program by offering alumni access to ongoing professional development opportunities and resources.

How important is it to incorporate technology concepts such as artificial intelligence (AI) and automation into the program?

We recognise rapid advancement of technology has transformed how businesses operate and have integrated digital transformation into our curriculum. Our program covers topics such as digital marketing, data analytics, AI, and cybersecurity. Students learn how to leverage technology to drive innovation and efficiency in their organizations. Our extracurricular offerings include mini masterclasses, and a recent session examined how leaders can build AI powered organisations with human-centric values. There are ethical dimensions related to the use of technology, and we are always delivering opportunities for students to consider the challenges related to the responsible adoption of technology.

Griffith has performed exceptionally in sustainable business rankings, how has the program managed to take sustainable business education to the next level?

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aren’t a secondary thought; they are the solid bedrock with which the MBA program is firmly rooted. Sustainability is a central theme in the learning journey of every Griffith MBA student and this commitment is reflected through assessments, case studies and guest speakers across multiple disciplines. We are so confident in our integration of SDGs into our core courses, that we proudly name our courses to reflect ambitious sustainable outcomes, such as: Economics for a Sustainable Future; Sustainability and Systems Thinking; and Leading for Sustainable People Outcomes.

Case studies aligned with the SDGs provide real world business experience, and the hands-on approach helps students to understand the practical implications of sustainable business practices. This gives them the opportunity to develop innovative solutions to wicked problems and challenges.

Why is diversity and inclusion important to Griffith and how do you ensure this value is embedded into the program?

A diverse and inclusive environment enriches the learning experience of students and prepares them to lead in a globalized world. Our graduates are empathetic and culturally aware leaders who are equipped to foster inclusive environments and drive positive change in their organizations and communities.

As an Australian-based university, we actively recruit students from various cultural, professional, and academic backgrounds which fosters a rich exchange of ideas and perspectives. Our curriculum is designed to address issues of diversity and inclusion across all courses and includes topics such as cross-cultural management, inclusive leadership, and global business ethics.

Our students engage in international exchanges, study tours, and collaborations with global institutions and these experiences help students understand and appreciate cultural differences and develop a global mindset. We also ensure our faculty and guest speakers represent a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. This diversity in teaching staff provides students with varied perspectives and role models, enriching their educational journey.

Access is a crucial part of ensuring student diversity, and we offer a range of delivery methods which aim to suit a great number of students. We strive to create a supportive and welcoming environment and provide support services such as mentorship programs, counselling and student organisations which promote diversity and inclusion.

The post Griffith MBA graduates lead with a sustainability mindset appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“It’s critical for students to engage with case studies that reflect local conditions, offer context-specific solutions and link them to global discourse,” explains professor Manoj Chiba, GIBS’ MBA director at GIBS.

This shift, he says, reflects a growing recognition of the continent’s unique business landscape, “giving students a deeper understanding of the complexities and opportunities they’ll encounter in their own markets.”

Across the continent,  business schools are embracing local narratives, turning the classroom into a space where African ingenuity and global relevance meet and changing how students see themselves – not just as participants but as creators of a more sustainable and equitable global economy.

“African business students are no longer simply inheriting frameworks from Western institutions; they are now developing the tools to shape them,” says Chiba.

Addressing climate change impacts in Africa

Europe’s colonial rule in Africa may have largely ended by the 1960s, but its legacy has profoundly influenced the continent’s modern education system. Historically, African education, from primary to post-secondary levels, has mirrored Western models while often sidelining Indigenous knowledge and local contexts. But now, African business schools are developing programs that move beyond colonial influences toward a more inclusive and relevant future. This involves not just revising curricula but also integrating African perspectives and addressing local challenges directly – including the impacts of climate change on the continent.

Despite contributing only 3.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, Africa suffers some of the most severe consequences of global warming. From erratic prolonged droughts in the Sahel region and East Africa to devastating floods in countries like Mozambique and Nigeria, these climatic shifts are catalysts for broader socio-economic issues, including migration, health crises and conflicts over dwindling resources.

By 2050, up to 86 million Africans could become internal climate migrants due to deteriorating living conditions, according to the World Bank. And Africa’s youth – 60% of the continent’s population is below the age of 25 – say they want business to respond. According to a 2023 World Economic Forum report, 65% of African youth are interested in sustainable business practices. In this challenging landscape, African institutions have an opportunity to develop sustainable solutions tailored to the continent’s specific needs.

And more are stepping into the spotlight for doing just that.

Today, the shift towards sustainability is not only timely but essential. It goes beyond business ethics to encompass broader challenges relevant to both African and global markets.

– Jackson Omondi, graduate of Strathmore University Business School 

Fostering entrepreneurship and sustainable development

This year, Corporate Knights’ 2024 Better World MBA ranking of the top 40 business schools for sustainability shines a light on this progress, with two MBA programs from African institutions making the cut: GIBS and the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (UCT), ranked 25th and 7th, respectively.

Since becoming a signatory of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education in 2009, GIBS has woven the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) deeply into its curriculum, Chiba explains. This commitment “is central to GIBS’s mission to drive businesses to contribute positively to healthier economies and communities,” he says. Post-graduate diploma students, for instance, are required to incorporate at least one of the 17 SDGs into their first-year business projects, ensuring that real-world impact is woven into academic rigour.

The school also offers specialty programs tailor-made for changemakers, including its social entrepreneurship program as well as its Corteva Women Agripreneurs program. In the CWA program, women entrepreneurs in farming engage in a blended curriculum that combines theory, workshops, field immersions and mentorship, all aimed at fostering sustainable business skills. Chiba notes that in a world of rapid change, “business education must be as dynamic and forward-thinking as the environments it seeks to serve.”

UCT’s Graduate School of Business has similarly put local realities at the heart of its curriculum by incorporating in themes like water management and transportation. The university’s Centre for Transport Studies is developing solutions such as electric bus networks to tackle the challenges of growing pollution, a warming climate and rapid urbanization in African cities. MBA students can work directly on projects such as these, using local case studies to understand and address real-world issues.

GIBS and UCT are far from the only African business schools reimagining business education that is rooted in local context while connected to global discourse. While not part of Corporate Knights Top 40, Lagos Business School in southwestern Nigeria is homing in on entrepreneurship and sustainable development in the region’s dynamic tech ecosystem, fields critical to the continent’s growth trajectory. In North Africa, the American University in Cairo is making strides in research on economic development and governance, further cementing the university’s role as a key player in addressing regional challenges.

Jackson Omondi, an East African supply chain expert who graduated from Strathmore University Business School’s leadership program, in Kenya, more than a decade ago, notes how much it has evolved. “Ten years ago, sustainability wasn’t part of the conversation, and the program was built around a narrow curriculum. The focus was squarely on business ethics and leadership, and most participants were sponsored by Kenyan corporations like Kenya Airways,” he says. “Today, the shift towards sustainability is not only timely but essential. It goes beyond business ethics to encompass broader challenges relevant to both African and global markets.”

MBAs serving African climate priorities

African universities are also gaining ground as climate leaders on the global stage, thanks in part to initiatives like Business Schools for Climate Leadership (BS4CL) Africa, which emerged from last year’s COP27 in Egypt. Launched by PRME Chapter Africa (whose goal is to develop the Principles for Responsible Management Education) and BS4CL Europe, this collaboration promises to redefine business education across the continent by putting climate action at its core.

“BS4CL Africa gives voice, advocacy and action to Africa’s unique requirements as we craft our fit-for-purpose responses to what is fast being recognised as a climate catastrophe bearing down on Africa and the world,” GIBS professor Roze Phillips told University World News in 2022. She noted that it’s in line with the saying “Nothing about us without us.”

RELATED

The world’s most sustainable MBA programs are producing a generation of changemakers

What starting a spice company in Tanzania taught me about sustainability and equity

Is swapping debt to protect nature the key to solving Africa’s climate woes?

The six founding schools will collaborate on joint courses and research that serve African climate priorities, as well as student competitions and corporate partnerships, all focused on accelerating impact and fostering future business leaders who actively contribute to a more climate-resilient future.

The pan-African collaboration exemplifies the drive toward reclaiming agency and ensuring that African voices dominate discussions on sustainability and development. African business schools are now focusing on outcomes that benefit a diverse range of stakeholders, beyond corporate shareholders. To truly decolonize the curriculum, schools are going beyond diversifying reading lists. They are taking tangible steps to incorporate diverse knowledge sources and educational methodologies from various cultural and philosophical backgrounds.

It’s a sizeable task, as Phillips said in 2022: “We will need to question the very basis of business school education and what business schools stand for.”

Howard Thomas, professor extraordinaire with GIBS, argues that business schools around the world have deviated from their mission of creating public value, becoming too aligned with business interests and maximizing shareholder returns. That also creates an opportunity for African business schools that are redefining responsible leadership.

In rapidly evolving climate emergency, it’s a something more African youth are demanding – and more schools are beginning to deliver.

Shilpa Tiwari is an ESG strategy and communications consultant, and the founder of No Women No Spice. She lives in Tanzania and Toronto.

The post African MBA programs are reclaiming sustainability in business education appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The shift, while heartening, presents a challenge: how best to measure these programs’ commitment to sustainability and the impact they’re having on the world of business more broadly? For this year’s Better World MBA ranking, the Corporate Knights team considered two metrics: what is being taught and where graduates end up.

“Courses are the main input for an MBA program, and the impact that graduates have in the world is their main output,” says Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps. “If a business program is excelling on the sustainability dimension of these two measurements, it’s a strong signal they are leading the way fostering holistic business leaders of the future.”

Stonemeijer, who graduated from the University of Exeter’s Business School in 2018, may be one of them. He entered the program with five years’ experience in the fast fashion industry and a growing frustration with its priorities. He’d always had a thing against waste – in his early 20s, he and a carpenter friend launched a start-up, crafting wooden bow ties and tie clips out of offcuts from his friend’s workshop – and wanted to see genuine efforts to reduce it.

Courses are the main input for an MBA program, and the impact that graduates have in the world is their main output.

–Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps

“Sustainability is not just one way to approach business,” Stonemeijer says from his London office. “It is the only way.” He found a match in the Exeter program (which ranks 10th overall on the Top 40 and is in the top five for impact grads, see table below); all courses were taught through the lens of how to make business “not just less bad, but more good.”

After graduating, he worked as a consultant on sustainable strategy in the retail and manufacturing sectors before joining the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity founded in 2010 by the eponymous sailboat racer who was prompted by her 2005 solo circumnavigation of the globe to dedicate her life to promoting waste reduction and the circular economy. Stonemeijer manages special projects for the foundation, in areas beyond the classic waste triumvirate of clothes, plastics and food. He says the MBA allowed him to reframe his focus, from one industry to innovation generally, while also introducing him to the foundation, which is part of Exeter’s network of partners.

Alyssa Stankiewicz also encountered her future employer while doing her MBA, at the University of Vermont’s Grossman School of Business. Raised Quaker in a small town in the Mad River Valley of Vermont, Stankiewicz did a degree in linguistics at a liberal arts college in Virginia before going to work for American Flatbread, a Vermont-based bakery and restaurant that champions local and organic food. For a decade, she baked, gardened and worked her way up to restaurant manager. She was impressed by how well the company treated its employees – offering kitchen staff weekly massage therapy, for instance – and by the central role it played in the community at large.

Interested in this business model, she enrolled in the Grossman program with a mind to possibly starting her own company. As a weaver, she was toying with the idea of an art therapy centre. Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine she would land where she has: working for the financial services company Morningstar, where she reviews portfolios, develops qualitative rating frameworks and works to improve transparency on sustainability funds.

Sustainability is not just one way to approach business. It is the only way.

–Tim Stonemeijer, University of Exeter Class of 2018 and special projects manager at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation

“I think about this work as serving my parents, who are not financial people,” she says on the phone from the Morningstar headquarters in Chicago. “Finance can feel exclusive and confusing. It needs someone to clean it up, to decipher the language.”

Stankiewicz attributes the unexpected twist in her career to the finance professors at Grossman, who persuaded her that she had a knack for analysis. With their encouragement, she entered an annual nationwide challenge issued by the renowned Wharton School, the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, to develop a hypothetical investment portfolio that adhered to several United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Her group won. The program also introduced her to Morningstar, where she did the practicum that serves as the capstone of the Grossman MBA. She was surprised to discover that its mission – to ensure that everyday investors have the tools to understand where their money is going – aligned with her own values.

Together with Bard College in New York State, the Grossman School tops the Corporate Knights charts for alumni impact. Sanjay Sharma, dean of the Grossman program, says this is very much its goal: to have an impact not only on graduates, but also on their future employers.

As an example, he recalls a phone call he received in 2020 from Steve Phelps, then CEO of NASCAR (the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) and a Grossman alumnus. Phelps was looking for advice on how to respond to the discovery of a noose in the garage stall of Black driver Bubba Wallace at an Alabama speedway. The much-publicized incident unleashed a charged discussion about racism in the stock-car racing world.

I was starting to think about the bigger picture. I was looking for purpose.

–Jonaki Majumdar, Maastricht University School of Business and Economics Executive MBA Class of 2023, and global sustainability manager at Siegwerk

After much consideration, Phelps decided to make a plea for diversity and to ban the Confederate flag from all NASCAR racecourses: a controversial move that, Sharma says, ultimately resulted in a significant increase in race attendance. While acknowledging that NASCAR is an unlikely poster child for sustainability, Sharma cites the proverbial sustainability mountain.

“You have to take the first step, then you start to see opportunities,” he says from his office in Burlington, Vermont. In recent years, two other Grossman graduates have joined NASCAR, including the company’s current chief sustainability officer, who has committed to net-zero operating emissions by 2035.

Graduates cite the network of like-minded peers as one of the greatest benefits they derive from these MBA programs. “We have a common outlook,” says Jonaki Majumdar, describing her fellow students at the Maastricht University School of Business and Economics, the top European program in this year’s ranking. “We’re certainly not saints, but we’re also not selfish. We’re interested in the more altruistic side of life.”

Majumdar entered the Maastricht program as a self-described hard-core finance professional. With an undergraduate business degree and chartered accountant accreditation from her native Kolkata, she had worked as a risk-management and security consultant for several multinationals. She had been exposed to lots of money and power but felt that something was missing. “I was starting to think about the bigger picture,” she says from her home in the Dutch city of Utrecht. “I was looking for purpose.”

Maastricht’s MBA, which is offered in English and is available only to working professionals, is very international, with more than 50 nationalities represented in its present cohort. Ron Jacobs, the program’s executive director, characterizes sustainability as the “matrix” covering the entire curriculum, which is constantly expanding to incorporate new issues and understandings.

“Leadership is no longer about command and control,” Jacobs says, as an example. “It’s about employee health and creating a sustainable working environment.”

Majumdar is now sustainability manager for Siegwerk, a global ink and packaging firm based in Siegburg, Germany. She works on all aspects of the company’s sustainability strategy, including the circularity of its products, its carbon footprint and compliance with regulations across the many jurisdictions in which it operates. She finds the work vastly more rewarding than anything she did prior to the degree.

She describes the Maastricht MBA as the best life choice she’s ever made. “If I have one regret,” she says, “it’s that I didn’t do it earlier in my career.”

Given current trends, chances are that sooner than later, MBA programs that don’t teach through a sustainability lens will be the slimmer of the pickings.

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.

2024 Better World MBA Top 40

*As scores are normalized against the top five, the top schools are tied. We used pre-normalized scores for ranking purposes.

**Schools are tied due to having the same final weighted score.

DOWNLOAD FULL RESULTS

2024 Better World MBA – Top 10 Large Schools

*Average of 2022 and 2023 MBA graduates

Note: A large school is defined as an MBA program with over 80 graduates a year.

Methodology

The 2024 Corporate Knights Better World MBA Top 40 ranking examines the performances of 174 business schools, drawn from the most recent Financial Times list of the top-100 global MBA programs; the Princeton Review’s Best Green MBA list; the schools that made the 2023 Corporate Knights Better World top-40 roster; and business schools accredited by the Association of MBAs, the AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) or the EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development) Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) and also signatories to the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education that opt in for evaluation. Based on publicly disclosed information on their websites, schools are evaluated on the sustainability content of their core courses and can review and request revisions to the analysis. Additionally, schools may voluntarily provide the number of recent graduates employed with impact organizations for up to a 10% alumni impact bonus to their overall score. 

Correction: An earlier version of this story understated the number of nationalities represented in the MBA cohort at Maastricht University.

The post The world’s most sustainable MBA programs are producing a generation of changemakers appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Goodstein and Schleimer are both directors of a kind of MBA program that didn’t exist when they were students. The programs they direct – at Bard College, in New York State, and the Griffith Business School, in Queensland, Australia – landed in fourth and first places respectively on this year’s Better World MBA ranking. Members of Goodstein and Schleimer’s generation have witnessed a shift in their discipline that, as the Corporate Knights ranking suggests, more and more business schools are competing to embrace.

This year’s Better World MBA ranking considered 209 business schools across the world – 50 more than last year – and focused on one metric: what proportion of the core (mandatory) curriculum addresses concepts of sustainable development. While the ranking, first conducted in 2010, has historically considered the diversity of faculty and the proportion of its research devoted to sustainability issues, this year’s methodology goes back to basics, asking a simple question: what is being taught? It credits all core content relating to environmental, social and governance performance, with topics ranging from biodiversity to carbon pricing, Indigenous consultation, child labour, corruption reduction and employment equity.

Secondary consideration (for a bonus of up to 10%) was given to the percentage of recent graduates who have landed in impact organizations – defined as non-profits, Corporate Knights Global 100 or Clean 200 companies, and any company deriving the majority of its revenues from sustainable activities.

The results demonstrated consistency among the high achievers. Half of the top 10 schools on this year’s list appeared in last year’s top 10, and the top school, for the fourth year in a row, is Griffith Business School. At the same time, seven entirely new schools joined the top 40 list.

One of these was Bard College, a private liberal arts college located on the Hudson River north of New York City. Goodstein established the MBA in 2012, having joined the Bard faculty three years earlier. He’s proud to say that Bard’s MBA in Sustainability is the only one on offer at Bard; in his view, the “conventional” MBA – that either ignores sustainability or treats it as a nice-to-have elective – belongs in the history books. Ranked fourth in the Corporate Knights list, the Bard program placed first in the Princeton Review’s ranking of Green MBAs in the United States.

Goodstein considers Bard’s approach quite unusual in a country where Milton Friedman’s economic logic – of profits and shareholders first and at all costs – has held sway for so long. “Business for good is a new concept here,” he says. Many still resist the idea that the exploitation of natural and human capital on which capitalism has historically depended is actually a design flaw that needs to be corrected.

Goodstein is proud to say that Bard’s MBA in Sustainability is the only one on offer at Bard; in his view, the “conventional” MBA – that either ignores sustainability or treats it as a nice-to-have elective – belongs in the history books.

The Bard program also wants to upend demographic trends. Some 65% of its students are female, and 35% identify as non-white; scholarships are offered to first-generation Americans. Among its most impressive alumni are Chelsea Mozen, chief sustainability officer at Etsy, who implemented a carbon-neutral delivery program at the e-commerce company, and Emma Jenkins-Long, who entered the program as a public-school teacher in Vermont and is now vice-president of ESG strategy for Deutsche Bank in New York.

The inertia that Goodstein says characterizes mainstream corporate culture in the U.S. stands in contrast to the context described by Tamim Elbasha, director of the MBA program at Audencia Business School in Nantes, in western France. Elbasha, originally an optician from Syria who did his MBA in England and later a PhD in strategic management, considers the Audencia program part of a sweeping transformation. The French Ministry of Education has issued a new competency framework for business schools that emphasizes corporate social responsibility and orientation to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Elbasha says most business schools are following suit.

Audencia’s program rose nine spots on the Corporate Knights ranking, landing in 28th place this year thanks to a nearly quadrupling of its core sustainability courses. These represent a radical rethink of what business really is. One of them is called Gaia, referring to the hypothesis put forward in the 1970s positing that Earth’s living and non-living elements interact to form a balanced whole; it’s the kind of material that, until recently, would have been hard to find outside a faculty of environmental studies.

Elbasha says that one of the biggest challenges facing today’s business students is to accept that – in contrast to the traditional curriculum – “we don’t have all the answers” to many sustainability issues. Students have to learn to accept uncertainty.

For many, reckoning with overwhelming challenges turns into what Schleimer describes as a personal and emotional journey. At Griffith, Schleimer has seen several cohorts of students realize, through the program, that their personal and professional values can be aligned – a revelation that has precipitated many career changes.

Schleimer’s own awakening came when she entered academia to teach innovation strategy and realized, even in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007/2008, that textbooks on the subject were still promoting the “red ocean thinking” of cutthroat competition, compromised value and low cost. Schleimer opted to teach without textbooks. Now, as director of the MBA in Sustainability – the only MBA on offer at Griffith – she insists that all of its core courses be “values-led.” She ropes in experts from across the university to ensure that students learn to think “outside business.” She has no problem referring applicants who are looking for an “executive, corporate-style” MBA to other programs.

Of course, that breed of student – primarily motivated to do an MBA to boost their salary – still exists. Mike Valente meets them at the Schulich School of Business at York University, where he directs the MBA program and oversees the sustainability courses that make up half the total core courses. But gradually, he sees Schulich’s graduates realizing that the salary raise they’re after may not be at odds with, but rather contingent upon, their understanding of sustainability issues – or that the jobs they find post-graduation are much more rewarding than what they were doing prior.

Schulich’s Valente feels that business schools have a responsibility to shape a new kind of leader and is frustrated by foot-dragging. He sees many approaching sustainability much as large corporations have: first by greenwashing, then by isolating the subject as an elective, then by gradually introducing it into core courses.

Poulomi Sengupta, who graduated from Schulich’s International MBA program in 2021, grew up in Kolkata and studied geology before joining British Gas. There, she realized that she would be better positioned to “do the least harm to the environment” if she understood the financial underpinnings of the industry. Her employer recommended the Schulich program, with its specialization in global mining management.

Now 38 and based in Toronto, Sengupta describes the degree as the perfect bridge to a career that interests her much more. Conducting ESG research for Morningstar Sustainalytics, she is learning how to quantify non-financial factors across multiple industries. She feels the position offers a “bird’s eye perspective” of the economy that had been a black box to her as a geologist.

At 13th place, Schulich’s program landed first among Canadian schools in the Corporate Knights ranking, as it did in the inaugural 2010 ranking. Valente feels that business schools have a responsibility to shape a new kind of leader and is frustrated by foot-dragging. He sees many approaching sustainability much as large corporations have: first by greenwashing, then by isolating the subject as an elective, then by gradually introducing it into core courses.

In the sustainability course he teaches, Valente asks students to simulate the most “egregious” corporate behaviour imaginable – practising the kind of greed evident in the opioid crisis, grocery chain collusion and Volkswagen’s “Emissionsgate.” It’s an exercise in reflection. He encourages students to apply a critical lens to all facets of the degree.

There is no question that business schools are reorienting themselves. But there’s still a ways to go. This year, for the first time, Corporate Knights applied a social-purpose lens to the programs under consideration (see ‘Are MBA programs teaching social purpose?’). Going beyond the traditional pillars of sustainable performance, social purpose cuts to the heart of a company, to its raison d’être. The somewhat radical proposition puts purpose, rather than profit, at the centre of all decision-making. Not surprisingly, the notion has not yet entered the curricula of most business schools. But given the ambition of the top runners, it is just a matter of time.

Methodology

The 2023 Corporate Knights Better World MBA top-40 ranking examines the performances of 209 business schools, drawn from the most recent Financial Times list of the top-100 global MBA programs; the Princeton Review Best Green MBA list; the schools that made the 2022 Corporate Knights Better World top-40 roster; and business schools accredited by the Association of MBAs, AACSB (the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) or the EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development) Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) and also signatories to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education that opt in for evaluation. Based on publicly disclosed information on their websites, schools are evaluated on the sustainability content of their core courses and can review and request revisions to the analysis. Additionally, schools may voluntarily provide the number of recent alumni employed with impact organizations for up to a 10% bonus to their overall score. For the complete methodology, visit our resources page.

The post Green to the core? Top business schools are drilling sustainability into their core curricula appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In 2022, Corporate Knights published The Social Purpose Transition Pathway, a report that graded companies on how well they were implementing their social purpose. This year, we have carried the social purpose theme to the educational realm.

A social purpose business model goes beyond focusing on profit and considers the value that is being generated for society. In a classroom, it translates into curriculum that teaches future business leaders how to use assets, resources, competencies, products, services and influence to create solutions to society’s social, environmental, socio-economic or socio-ecological challenges. A crucial order of the day.

In partnership with Coast Capital and the Canadian Purpose Economy Project, we asked and analyzed the responses to two optional questions in this year’s Better World MBA: do you teach the social purpose business model in your core curriculum, and does your business school itself have a social purpose statement?

What we found

1. The social purpose business model is not yet widely represented in the mission statements or curricula of business schools. Most business schools do have mission statements, but clearly defined social purpose statements are rare.

Of the 209 schools in this year’s universe, 19.6% had mission statements that were weakly aligned with social purpose, and 45 schools had unequivocal social purpose mission statements.

Among the leaders receiving an A grade in our assessment is the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University, which incorporates social purpose into its mission, “Business for a Better World,” aimed at creating shared prosperity and propelling equity and justice. “This isn’t just a forward-looking statement; it’s a dedication to cultivating business leaders who can effect meaningful change.”

For the question about curriculum content, of the 44 MBA curricula we reviewed, almost half had some social-purpose-related material, but only two schools contained sufficient evidence of social purpose content in their course descriptions to merit an A grade in our assessment. Those leaders included Griffith in Australia (also our top-ranked program in the Better World MBA this year) and Frankfurt School of Finance and Management.

2. The social purpose business model is widely misunderstood by business schools and is often conflated with an emphasis on sustainability performance, triple-bottom-line accounting, adherence to ethical standards and other non-financial metrics of company performance that do not by themselves make a purpose-driven company.

Social purpose course integration scoring and results

Social purpose statement scoring and results

Read the full Better World MBA methodology, including social purpose criteria.

Ralph Torrie is director of research at Corporate Knights. Sanna Uppal is a research analyst at Corporate Knights.

The post Are MBA programs teaching social purpose? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

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.

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.

The answer, a strong yes, took shape with a willingness to further embed the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into course content and expand collaborations with non-business researchers also interested in environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. That strategy to go deep on curriculum and wide on research is a theme that resonates through the 2021 Corporate Knights Better World MBA Ranking.

“The pandemic, for me, changed everything,” says Stephanie Schleimer, MBA director of Australia’s Griffith Business School, which took top spot in this year’s top-40 Better World ranking for the second year in a row. She adds: “It was this global awareness, for the very first time, that we are fragile as a society and [however] anyone would like to argue about COVID, in the end it is related to our fault as a society and our relationship with our planet and our natural environment and species.”

In the past year, Griffith faculty analyzed the Master of Business Administration’s core courses, already rich in sustainability topics, probing what was missing relative to the UN SDGs. Accounting, for example, became “accounting for accountability,” with students taught to read a balance sheet, as usual, but also how to value natural resources, including water consumption.

The school expanded collaboration with academics from other faculties to address global crises whose solutions are beyond the reach of one discipline.

In 2020, the school also almost doubled the number of publications on sustainability and ESG compared to a year earlier.

At York University’s Schulich School of Business, the top Canadian entry and fourth overall in the top-40 list, mounting concern about the climate crisis led to a decision to elevate sustainability as one of eight core areas in the MBA, starting fall 2022. Sustainability electives and specializations have been offered since the 1990s.

“We are looking at a watershed moment as far as recognition of the emergency of environmental degradation,” says interim dean Detlev Zwick. “We are a business school, and we are not advocating an end to capitalism; we need to be at the forefront of developing knowledge and approaches to save capitalism and the environment.”

With designated space now allocated for them, sustainability-conscious professors in real estate, ethics and other subjects work alongside each other at the school. “There is going to be very interdisciplinary work done and hopefully a lot of outreach to other faculty where similar questions are asked with a different lens,” says Zwick.

Cross-fertilization opportunities extend to MBA students who can take electives at York’s Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change. With its raised profile, sustainability becomes “the right platform” to expand interdisciplinary research, says Zwick, noting recent faculty success in landing Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grants on corporate performance in ESG topics.

A similar pattern of collaboration applies at Griffith, where business students take electives offered through the university’s International Water Centre and business professors participate in multi-pronged, interdisciplinary research on climate change, civic engagement and social impact.

Interdisciplinarity comes naturally to the University of Vermont’s Grossman School of Business, eighth this year and a consistent top-10 Better World performer for its Sustainable Innovation MBA (SIMBA). Three Grossman faculty members are fellows at the university’s Gund Institute for Environment, whose director lectures in the business school, says SIMBA program director Caroline Hauser. Grossman recently hired a new faculty member with expertise in corporate sustainability strategies that add value by solving environmental problems.

This fall, the SIMBA program enrolled 47 students, the largest cohort in its eight-year history. Over the past year, the school added a course in data analytics tailored for sustainable businesses and, given the Black Lives Matter awakening, integrated identity themes into a course on leadership and teamwork.

“Since business schools started, being a leader has been defined in one specific way: the straight white male archetype,” says Hauser. “It’s really important to expand your idea of what a leader looks like.”

Meanwhile, recent program accreditation changes promote the enrichment of ESG content and cross-disciplinary cooperation. In 2020, AACSB International, a global accrediting body for business schools, identified societal impact in four of nine accreditation standards, with schools encouraged to “demonstrate how their programs, faculty, and learners will innovate to positively impact society,” president and CEO Caryn Beck-Dudley stated in an email.

For Switzerland’s University of St. Gallen, in ninth place in the top-40 list, doubling down on sustainability and SDG commitments is a top priority. School leaders spent the past two years assessing MBA content for coverage of corporate social responsibility and sustainability themes, concluding that they were fully incorporated in some courses but not in others. The refreshed MBA, set for fall 2022, now links to the UN’s SDGs.

Recently arrived MBA director Amanda Shantz, from Grimsby, Ontario, aims to build on the renewal. “What I would like to do is be a little bit more proactive when it comes to threading sustainability through the curriculum,” says Shantz, also noting the importance of gender, diversity and inclusion. “We have a really great opportunity to make change happen in business school.”

Institutionally committed to SDG principles, St. Gallen is home to more than 30 independent research institutes and centres that draw on various disciplines. Between 2015 and 2019, says Shantz, 87% of faculty journal articles were SDG-related.

Earlier this year, young academics at St. Gallen added momentum by establishing an “impact scholars’ community” to pursue multidisciplinary research related to the UN SDGs. “They want to create synergies across institutes and strengthen the collaborative research culture,” says Shantz.

Some schools actively encourage academics to escape discipline silos. The Netherlands’ Maastricht University School of Business and Economics identifies sustainability as one of three research priorities through 2025, with modest incentives (funding to host a conference or reduced teaching loads) for professors who look beyond their discipline.

The recent incorporation of two institutes on sustainability and governance into the school supports its ambition to deliver impact on global issues, says MBA director Boris Blumberg.

“Of course, [sustainability] problems are complex, the solutions are not clear, [as] there are many opinions,” he says. “And that is exactly what universities and business schools are there for: to put their energy into getting ideas on how to solve those complex problems.”

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

The post The world’s most sustainable MBAs think global and teach local appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Download the complete Top 40 Better World MBA Excel scorecard

About the methodology

The 2021 Corporate Knights Better World MBA top-40 ranking examined the performances of 147 business schools, drawn from the most recent Financial Times list of the top-100 global MBA programs; the schools that made the 2019 Corporate Knights Better World top-40 roster; and business schools accredited by AMBA, AACSB or EQUIS and also signatories to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education that opt in for evaluation. Based on publicly disclosed information on their websites, schools are evaluated on seven metrics and then given the opportunity to review and request revisions to the analysis. The performance indicators (with weighting in brackets) are: core course integration of sustainability (30%), research publications per faculty member on sustainability topics in calendar year 2020 (20%), percent of total faculty publications in 2020 on sustainability topics (20%), number of citations per faculty for those publications (10%), sustainability-focused research institutes and centres (10%), faculty gender diversity (5%) and faculty racial diversity (5%).

See full methodology for more information.

The post Better World MBA: Top 40 ranking appeared first on Corporate Knights.