Responsible management education

“We need to move from a global business education community which focuses on making our students the best in the world, to making them the best for the world”. Mark Drewell Chief Executive Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative

Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) is a United Nations Global Compact-supported initiative launched in 2007 that promotes sustainability and social responsibility in management education worldwide. It encourages business and management schools to equip future leaders with the skills and knowledge to balance economic and sustainability goals, align with the work of the UN Global Compact and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and incorporate universal values into curricula and research. With over 800 signatories worldwide, PRME is the largest organized relationship between the UN and higher education institutions in management-related fields.

PRME vision is “to transform management education, research, and thought leadership globally by providing the Principles for Responsible Management Education framework, developing learning communities, and promoting awareness about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Its origins can be traced back to the UN Global Compact, a voluntary initiative launched in 2000 to promote corporate sustainability and responsible business practices.

The Global Compact recognized the critical role of business schools in shaping the future of the global economy and society and sought to engage them in promoting responsible management education. In response to this call, a group of leading business schools from around the world came together to form the PRME Steering Committee, which was officially launched in 2007. The Steering Committee was composed of representatives from business schools, academic institutions, and NGOs, and was tasked with developing the Principles for Responsible Management Education.

At present, there are six Principles of PRME. The first Principle is “purpose”, which is to develop the capabilities of students to be future generators of sustainable value for business and society and to work for an inclusive and sustainable global economy.

The second Principle is “values”, which incorporates academic activities, curricula, and organizational practices into the values of global social responsibility. The third Principle is “method”,which creates educational frameworks, materials, processes, and environments that enable effective learning experiences for responsible leadership.

The fourth Principle is “research”, which seeks engagement in conceptual and empirical research that advances understanding about the role, dynamics and impact of corporations in the creation of sustainable social, environmental, and economic value. The fifth Principle is “partnership”, which promotes interaction with managers of business corporations to extend knowledge of challenges in meeting social and environmental responsibilities and how to meet these challenges.

The sixth Principle is “dialogue”, which supports and facilitates dialogue and debate among academicians, students, business, government, consumers, media, and other concerned stakeholders on significant issues related to global social responsibility and sustainability.

The global academic and business ecosystems are changing and progressing towards a more pragmatic shape. These have ensued into a new thinking process that tends to focus on these changes. Hence, looking forward to the new responsibilities to current as well as future generations, a new batch of seven Principles have been designed and worldwide consultation is going on to deliberate on these new Principles.

The first Principle underlines developing the capabilities of students to be future generators of sustainable value for business. There is a need to inculcate a formidable change in the thought process of these future generators so that their pre-conceived misconceptions, biases, and opinions are transformed into enlightened and modernistic outlook.

The second Principle incorporates academic activities, curricula, and organizational practices into the values of global social responsibility. It is high time the hackneyed teaching practices mostly through lectures taken out from textbooks and through the internet must be revisited. Emphasis should be on real times issues that are pertinent to local businesses and the dynamics of domestic society. This entails full participation of students in determining the system of values such as ethical, moral and behavioral. Academia should promote this teaching practice.

The third Principle proposes creating an educational framework of learning in an enlightened academic environment. The present system of teaching usually produces student engaged in rote learning and cramming up for examinations. There should not only be out of box thinking but more importantly, standing on top of the box to do the thinking.

Disruptive innovative ideas through new processes need to be nurtured. The fourth Principle emphasizes learning through conceptual and empirical research to create sustainable social, environmental, and economic values. A few years ago, at a private gathering, a top person of an institute disclosed that a survey of employers showed that 80% of them were not satisfied with the graduates churned out by universities and institutes.

Today, the buzzword is knowledge economy and it is imperative that future graduates are well equipped with pertinent and purposeful information and fundamentals to ascertain their grip on their vocation. It is important that they demonstrate strategic vision instead of groping in the dark. This would enable them to have faith in communicating their ideas to achieve the desired values and ensure sustainability.

It would instill in them the courage to harness the opportunities that come their way. The fifth Principle envisions academia having a mutually beneficial interactive relationship with the private sector by fusing the critical mass of their knowledge with the experiences and capabilities of business community to meet various challenges and responsibilities.

This creates a favorable win-win situation for both. The sixth Principle is very critical and of vital importance. It is necessary to develop a structured framework to hold a dialogue as well as constructive debate on relevant issues. There should not be a dialogue of the deaf but a channel of communication that outlines a road map for social responsibility and sustainability.

It is very important to infuse a sense of interactive dialogue among students on significant issues that would allow the faculty to assess the potential, capacity, and aptitude of students and whether they are competent to present their ideas and proposals to achieve the rationale of the dialogue or debate themes. The role of faculty is of prime importance in guiding and mentoring of students to lead from the front.

There is an imperative need to introduce the concept of experiential learning not only for students but also for faculty. It is important that a system be evolved under which students in their senior year must be placed in any enterprise for one semester so that they get on-job-training as this would facilitate them to enter the industrial and commerce sectors from a vantage position. Right now, zero-experienced and raw qualified students are hired after graduation and most of them are uncomfortable or unsure in a new environment.

This stint would of course add to their final grades. Similarly, most of the faculty does not have industry or business experience and therefore they too need to spend one semester in an enterprise. A number of faculty members become lecturers immediately after graduation and hence are more accustomed with textbook lectures.

An academia-industry linkage is more crucial today than ever before. The onus also lies on academia to join a worldwide community of like-minded educational institutions to promote common aspirations, to document common initiatives, to share common lessons learned, and to help and assist each other to address common challenges. The new seven Principles will, and should, inspire and enable a better world.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023