“I am delighted – but actually not at all surprised – to see your results,” U.K.-based author and entrepreneur John Elkington says. “The U.K. has been a globally significant incubator of thinking on sustainable development, CSR [corporate social responsibility], ESG and climate solutions for decades, with things coming to a head around the time of COP26 [the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference, in Glasgow].”

Exeter in particular has been instrumental in international policy discussions. For the past several years, a team led by professor Pierre Friedlingstein has spearheaded the global carbon budget, one of the COP’s central metrics. Other Exeter initiatives, such as the Global Tipping Points Report led by professor Tim Lenton, also figured centrally in this year’s summit discussions. In fact, several of the United Kingdom’s most influential climate scientists are on faculty at Exeter, and they are part of a team of 1,500 research and education specialists.

These top global MBAs for sustainability are maximizing impact

Likewise, sustainability is deeply embedded in Exeter’s curricula, but that doesn’t make it an exception among the ranking schools. Beth Patmore, MBA course leader at Nottingham Business School (ranked 16th), points out that this is part of a broader “systemic shift” in the United Kingdom, where sustainability has also been embedded in national policy frameworks, corporate governance codes and educational standards. “[It] is increasingly seen not as a niche concern but as a foundational lens through which strategy, finance, operations and leadership are taught,” she says.

Take, for example, the business school ranking by the Financial Times in London, a popular resource for MBA applicants. It now gives roughly 20% collective weighting to ESG-related curriculum content, the school’s carbon footprint, and faculty and student diversity among the key criteria in its methodology.

Sustaining a virtuous circle

“To me, this is also a question of supply and demand,” says Frederik Dahlmann, an associate professor of strategy and sustainability in Warwick’s MBA programs. “We know that sustainability matters to our students, for their roles, organizations and future career development, because they tell us it is an important factor when deciding where to study for their MBAs.”

Almost all the programs we contacted for this piece said the same. There is what Dahlmann calls a virtuous circle that is created within this system, where faculty are making meaningful policy and research contributions, attracting students who will go on to do the same, which in turn incentivizes universities to continue to make such contributions.

But what explains this dynamic in the United Kingdom in particular? ESG has waned in popularity in the United States and Canada, with major companies and institutions reneging on sustainability commitments following the election of Donald Trump amid fears of an unfriendly business environment. There were similar fears with businesses pulling back from commitments, fearing penalties from anti-greenwashing legislation (which has since been scaled back).

According to Donald Lancaster, program director of Exeter’s MBA, the likelihood of a similar state of affairs coming to pass in the United Kingdom is low. This is not only because the U.K. government’s pioneering sustainability initiatives have broad cross-party support, but also because strong markets and talent pools have developed around them. Even prior to the election of Trump, Lancaster points out, shareholder value has long been the overriding consideration in the U.S. context. Despite many exemplary sustainability-oriented MBA programs in the United Kingdom, they operate within a different cultural milieu than in the United Kingdom and Europe.

Hugh Wilson, a professor of marketing in Warwick’s MBA programs, suggests that the reason for this cultural discrepancy may be rooted in history. “As the epicentre of two world wars in the 20th century, Europe swung towards greater social and economic equality after each,” he says. European countries have sharp memories of the problems that can accrue in a society where these social and economic factors fall out of balance. Though that postwar ethos has been diluted over time, he proposes that it continues to influence the United Kingdom’s business and educational climate.

“We depend on a socially and environmentally sustainable world; environmental and social crises tend to hit us early and hard,” Wilson says. “[The U.K.] business community is acutely aware of the risks and opportunities that these create.”

Tristan Bronca is an award-winning magazine writer and editor based in Toronto.

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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.

The “impact” metric was introduced to the Corporate Knights MBA ranking several years ago as a bonus, but this year is the first that it has become part of the official ranking. Corporate Knights evaluated 179 programs and ranked the top 40 for their focus on sustainability. Ninety percent of the score these rankings are based on is awarded for the content of the curriculum, and now 10% has been awarded for impact – what schools’ alumni are doing post-graduation.

The school with the highest score on this measure this year was Bard College in New York, with an impact rating of 56%. Out of 62 graduates, Corporate Knights identified 35 who are either in sustainability roles or working at companies recognized for their sustainability efforts. By comparison, the average alumni rating was 16% among other schools that made the ranking. Only the University of Vermont’s MBA program had a comparable impact rating of 52%. 

For the last three years, Bard has consistently ranked in the top five MBA programs for sustainability. Bard stands out as one of the few business schools specifically designating its MBA as an MBA in Sustainability, another being the University of Vermont. “They are not shy about putting the program’s sustainability focus front and centre,” says Corporate Knights research analyst Muhammad Talha. 

We need our students out changing the world at scale in a hurry.

– Eban Goodstein, founder of the MBA in sustainability, Bard College

Bard’s graduates have compelling stories: a schoolteacher who went on to become a vice president of ESG (environmental, social and governance) for the Americas at Deutsche Bank within just one year of graduating; the emergency medical technician who became a managing consultant at the global firm Guidehouse. Perhaps the most famous example is Chelsea Mozen, who developed the idea for Etsy to offset its carbon emissions from shipping during her capstone project at Bard. Just four years after graduating, she was the chief sustainability officer for Etsy, making it one of the first major global companies to commit to a climate pledge.

“Our students’ interests range from food to fashion to energy. There’s a lot of variability,” says Eban Goodstein, an economist and the founder of Bard’s program. He explains that the program is highly experiential. “I think of it as 20 four-day retreats spread out over two years,” he says. “It’s almost more like a fine arts degree where you are learning directly from artists.”

In Bard’s MBA, students begin working on real-world projects in their first year, often with major industry players. The goal, according to Goodstein, is not just to respond to, but entirely shift how we address – and prevent – mounting environmental and social challenges. “We need our students out changing the world at scale in a hurry,” he adds.

All of the MBA programs on the list open up a multitude of options to get that done. For many of these students, it means taking on a key corporate sustainability role at a global leading company, or launching their own enterprise with values of social responsibility and environmental sustainability embedded in the organization’s DNA. But in a different economy, the approach post-graduation might look very different.

2025 Better World MBA top 40

Take, for example, the top-ranked “large” school, defined as a program with more than 80 graduates annually. This year, the spot belongs to Centrum’s PUCP in Peru. Centrum was one of just two South American schools on the top 40 list (the other, Colombia’s Universidad Externado, jumped from 112 in last year’s ranking to 40 in this year’s).

Centrum operates in a different context than the majority of schools in the ranking, which are overwhelmingly from the Americas or Europe. The Peruvian economy is largely “informal,” associate dean Sandro Sánchez explains. While many Centrum graduates are vying for corporate jobs (about 20 graduates of the last two years landed at companies like Vestas and Schneider Electric), the majority of these students go on to work in – or start – smaller companies, including those outside the urban centres in sectors like mining and agriculture, which remain the engines of the Peruvian economy. 

This is not the same business environment where you tend to see corporate sustainability officers or climate pledges. But this is precisely what makes this training so important. It’s here that graduates’ vision for social and environmentally positive change – a vision they develop in their MBA program – will have the greatest impact.

Tristan Bronca is an award-winning magazine writer and editor based in Toronto.

2025 Better World MBA top 10 large schools

METHODOLOGY

The 2025 Corporate Knights Better World MBA Top 40 ranking examines the performances of 179 business schools, drawn from the most recent FT100 MBA Ranking, the Princeton Review Best Green MBA, the Top 40 from the 2024 Better World MBA ranking, and all current PRME Champions; 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) QualityImprovement 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, which is worth 10% of the overall score.

The post These top global MBAs for sustainability are maximizing impact appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Four of the five biggest banks, two of the three biggest grocers and one of the three biggest telecoms are helmed by CEOs with MBAs. Though this should come as no surprise, as the share of MBA-holding CEOs has nearly doubled in the last 45 years. Beyond the top job, the number of MBA grads in the C-suite, on corporate boards and in middle management roles continues to rise.

This is undoubtedly good news for Canada’s business schools. Along with bold mottoes, promising to change the world for the better, the employment outcomes of their graduates represent a useful marketing tool to entice future students into their programs.

And this prevalence of MBAs in Canada’s business elite should be equally welcomed by current and future MBA students, as data suggest that the more MBAs on a corporate board, the more likely that business-degree holders will be appointed to key roles.

But while Canadian business schools and their students may be celebrating, Canadians should be more skeptical of the increasing dominance of MBA graduates. That’s because business leaders with MBAs are more likely to engage in more short-term strategic planning, focusing on quarterly earnings, improving dividends and driving up stock price while ignoring long-term drivers of productivity like innovation and research and development.

MBA-trained CEOs tend to be more self-serving than their counterparts, pursuing rapid, costly growth at the expense of their employees or customers. And CEOs with business degrees reduce wages, on average, by 6% in the five-year periods following their appointments.

Indeed, the rise of the MBA graduate correlates suspiciously well with the increase in wage stagnation, worker precarity and corporate consolidation.

So while business schools pitch us lofty mottoes, like “Inspiring leaders for a sustainable and prosperous world,” why does it seem like their alumni have led us somewhere completely different? Because while in theory business schools prepare the leaders of tomorrow, in practice business education has become focused on technical and vocational instruction devoid of any moral or civic responsibility.

What’s wrong with business schools

Instead of accepting that managing complex organizations requires more than knowing the “5 Ps” of marketing, MBA curricula rely on frameworks and simplified management tools to reduce what is a complicated art to a simple science, rewarding memorization over creativity and critical thinking.

Rigorous analysis of business cases is meant to simulate real-world situations and force students to deal with ambiguity, both ethically and situationally. Instead, students accustom themselves to uncomplicated analyses, summarized in a few pages, written with coherent narratives.

Without reform, business schools should be understood as vocational training centres, whose sole goal is creating job-ready graduates, and whose key selling feature is the starting salary of their graduates. No more, no less.

– Danny Parys, strategy consultant

Management students are encouraged to employ a top-down view of organizations, trained to view the complex inputs of a business or economy as mere elements on a spreadsheet, devoid of ethical constraints. In business schools, humans are, often, just resources. Cases from around the globe are discussed, though little time is spent understanding the history or culture of a region, reinforcing the erroneous idea that what works in Tijuana must also work in Toronto.

This tendency to oversimplify often creates overconfident graduates who feel they can move seamlessly into new organizations and apply cookie-cutter theories and frameworks without understanding the context or culture they are operating in.

Which is ironic, because in Canadian business schools the question of culture and diversity is front and centre. The Ivey MBA, for example, boasts that its student body is made up of 40% women, 40% international students, from 25 different countries, and speaks a combined 21 languages.

Learning from one’s classmates and respecting their experience is, of course, a noble idea. Though for all the talk of geographic, ethnic and gender diversity, most MBA students share a common worldview. Unsurprising, as students are selected, and self-select, in part, based on their prior work experience, future career goals and ability to pay hefty tuition fees.

While on paper a class may be very diverse, most students tend to share similar work experiences, similar educational backgrounds and have similar goals. It seems that for Canadian business schools, diversity is reduced to metrics on a spreadsheet.

How to reform business education

It’s clear that Canadians value strong business education. Take a quick trip to any university campus and you’ll see that the business schools are often housed in the nicest, newest buildings. Their graduates command comfortable salaries. The Telfer School of Management, for example, claims that its MBA students can expect a 27% salary increase just three months after graduation.

But if business schools want to continue marketing themselves as a force for a better Canada, and retain their reputation for producing leaders, serious changes must be made. This means rethinking what diversity means and making efforts to attract candidates from diverse working backgrounds, without corporate baggage. Teachers, nurses and non-degree-holding workers could provide real diversity in MBA class discussions, sharing perspectives from beyond the boardroom.

Business schools need to rethink how they advertise their programs. It should come as no surprise that a marketing strategy focused on return on investment in the form of higher salaries will attract candidates, and create a student body, who value personal financial success above all else.

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The content of the curriculum must also evolve. Case studies can be valuable tools, but there should be more analysis of impacts outside of the organization in question. Students who one day may be forced to contemplate downsizing a company need to be discussing how layoffs affect communities and individuals. Future finance bros need to understand how leveraged buyouts put pressure on employees.

Ethics, philosophy, art, literature, history – subjects often considered frivolous or unnecessary for business careers have for centuries been considered non-negotiable when it comes to forming leaders and developing creativity. If we are going to continue to venerate business executives as leaders and visionaries, humanities education should be included in their development.

It’s of course entirely acceptable if business schools choose not to reform. Though if this is the case, we must be cleared-eyed about what it means. Without reform, business schools should be understood as vocational training centres, whose sole goal is creating job-ready graduates, and whose key selling feature is the starting salary of their graduates. No more, no less.

If reform is not on the menu, and it doesn’t seem to be, then it’s time to stop venerating business schools, and stop pretending the MBA student is a leader in training.

Choosing the status quo means more power must be given to other stakeholders and promoting alternative forms of corporate governance: more worker representation on corporate boards, more cooperative enterprises, and more bargaining power for unions and labour leaders, with the MBA graduate relegated to the role of managerial technician, whose voice is no louder than the rest.

Danny Parys is a strategy consultant based in Montreal. He holds an MBA from HEC Montréal.

The post Radical reforms are needed to make MBAs a force for good 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.”

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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.

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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.

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Innovation has propelled humankind forward for centuries. But how we see innovators and innovation has evolved. The focus or ‘lens’ we put around innovation will determine where we put our funding, our ideas, our energy – and whether or not these resources will be trained on some of the great issues of our time.

In the early days of innovation as we know it, the focus was on the innovator, the ‘hero’, and the power of innovation. Over time this focus has evolved. Those seeking to support, grow and ‘do’ innovation have focused on the type, scale, process, contexts and direction of innovation.

Now we’re seeing a return of focus on the IMPACT of the innovation. ‘Mission’ or ‘Challenge’-led innovation, which is growing in popularity, focuses on systems transformation and addressing the grand challenges of our time instead of simply creating innovation heroes and increasing the wealth of the few.

This framing of your innovation is particularly important context when you’re thinking about the conditions and ecosystem that will best support innovation towards ending ‘wicked’ problems like climate change, biodiversity loss or inequality.

11 Conditions to support Innovation for Impact

Now that you’re thinking about innovating towards some of the grand challenges of our time, examine how many of these key contextual conditions you have in place.

Generally, the view is the more of these conditions that are evident and the more robust they are, the more effective your enabling ecosystem will be.

These are often less-tangible factors, but no less important in making innovation ‘work’.

1. Purpose: A goal or challenge that guides vision and innovation can help to reduce barriers, galvanise focus and attract resource.
2. Capacity to Experiment: Capacity, support and mandate to experiment, test, protype and iterate.
3. Appetite for Change: Openness and appetite for change and learning, plus tenacity to make it happen.
4. Learning is Valued: Inquiry, learning and risk taking is valued and appreciated and a culture of safe-to-fail supports this.
5. Autonomy and Constraints: A balance of autonomy to develop ideas, and enabling constraints that support innovation are present.
6. Access to Tools and Skills: Access to a diversity of tools plus the skills, training and capability needed to use them to maximum effect.
7. Diverse Perspectives: Diversity of stakeholders and inputs and exposure to diverse perspectives are encouraged and celebrated.
8. Collaborative and Flexible Spaces: Opportunities for collaboration through flexible spaces, places or platforms.
9. Robust Feedback: Access to regular, robust and relevant feedback and the capability and capacity to give and receive such feedback.
10. Right Resources: Right amount and right timing of resources (capital, investment, human resources) over the course of the innovation process.
11. Access to Prior Learning: Access to learnings about what has worked previously, what hasn’t, and a willingness to learn the lessons.

There can be a temptation to think you need the full set of these conditions, but that’s not the case. Think about which combination you could cultivate that might suit your context. It’s also important to acknowledge that mindsets and cultural conditions like these develop over time, experimentation is key, and they require intentional work.

11 Elements of an Impact Innovation Ecosystem

When you’re confident there are enough enabling conditions in place, it’s time to turn your attention to tangible initiatives and infrastructure elements that can support and enable innovation for impact.

While you’ll see a couple of overlaps with the above conditions – when thinking about the conditions we need, the access issues are highlighted – here we’re focusing on the infrastructure itself.

1. Research and Impact Evaluation: Competitive and prosperous industries and economies invest in research, benchmarking and impact measurement. This helps to improve what we do and how we do it, enables learning, and sharing of what impact the innovation process itself has, and what impact the innovative product, service or process has, as it is implemented.
2. Co-working, Design and Working Spaces: Spaces where people and/or organisations can work together enable exchange of ideas, and also shared services, sharing of equipment, and easier access to available services and supports.
3. Technical Advice, Support and Training: On-the-job advice, support and training designed by and for impact innovators – focusing on both process and the business of innovation: how to deepen impact, grow viability and ensure sustainability. This can involve bespoke capability building, mentoring, coaching and/or training.
4. Market Development Opportunities: Sometimes particular interventions need to happen for markets to develop or grow (e.g. impact procurement has enabled social and environmental outcomes to be included in decision-making about procurement contracts). This in turn can support and direct innovation towards deeper impacts.
5. Finance, Investment and Funding: Impact innovation requires a range of different forms of investment funding and finance. The ‘right type’ depends on the size, risk, profit, potential and stage of development. More diverse and varied financial options could support broader and deeper impact innovation ecosystems.
6. Labs and Spaces to Experiment: Labs engage diverse groups of people to intentionally test, innovate and learn how we might address specific social, economic or environmental challenges. They are experimental in their approach to tackling issues, and they seek to test solutions that are practical, and applied to real-life.
7. Formal Education Opportunities: Formal education offered in institutions like universities or colleges can provide education for impact innovators and for other stakeholders helping build the conditions for a thriving and healthy impact ecosystem. Ongoing education can underpin rigour and development of impact across an ecosystem.
8. Networks and Networking Opportunities: Networks can open opportunities and help impact innovators to connect with peers, experts, mentors and partners. Networking can happen through events, communities of practice, online social networking platforms or impact-focused intermediaries.
9. Policy and Government Support: Policies that encourage and promote impact innovation can help catalyse, grow and spread solutions. Policy can support market development, encourage further innovation, remove barriers, offer funding at critical points, or enable new legal forms or investment pathways. Government can also help to implement and spread impact innovations.
10. Appropriate Legal Structures and Supports: New enterprises, organisations or initiatives that result from impact innovation often have to adopt a specific legal form. This provides rules for their operations and protects their mission. It can also enable tax deductibility or credits. Often advice is needed to make decisions about the most appropriate form to achieve particular objectives.
11. Incubators and Accelerators: Programs and processes (and sometimes spaces) that can help support and accelerate the development, spread and growth of impact innovation. Incubators connect innovators to specialized supports, and accelerators link innovators to networks, investors and opportunities for deeper impact and growth.

Once again, it’s not a requirement to have all of this in your impact innovation ecosystem. We suggest a useful way of thinking about the elements is as different entry points for enabling work, each of which can be built on over time and through the efforts of different actors within an ecosystem. The elements can be engaged with together or separately, in different combinations, and with ‘back-and-forth’ between — as suits different contexts and the resources available at the time. In other words, do not be deterred from starting where you are!

About the author

Ingrid Burkett is an MBA Professor at Griffith University and the Co-Director of The Yunus Centre, Griffith University’s Impact Innovation Centre, which is dedicated to accelerating transitions to regenerative and distributive economies.

To connect with Ingrid or see more about her work, visit Ingrid’s LinkedIn page. 

More business leadership resources

Innovation for Impact is one of the subjects taught in the Griffith MBA. Ranked as the world’s #1 most sustainable MBA, the Griffith University MBA has been successfully developing leaders like no others for over a decade. Leaders who use their skills, experience and integrity to shape a better world, both personally and professionally.   

Find out more about responsible leadership and the Griffith MBA at griffith.edu.au/mba 

And for more articles on navigating change and creating positive, regenerative impact, visit the Griffith University Y Impact blog.

The post How to innovate towards positive impact appeared first on Corporate Knights.

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.

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