sustainability Archives - GlobalFocus

We would argue that to date, and due to COVID-19, sustainability as ‘the new way of doing business’ has been side-lined and largely ignored. The clock is ticking, and short-term business thinking still prevails. “We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment” noted Margaret Mead (1901-1978), an American anthropologist. Instead of innovating, we…

How new tools can help develop sustainable literacy. By Aurelien Decamps, Estela Castelli Florino Pilz, Jean-Christophe Carteron and Marcela Folloni In 2012, at the Rio+20 conference, higher education institutions (HEIs) officially recognised their crucial role in contributing to sustainable development. They committed to using their influence and participation in society to encourage better citizenship and…

Exploring the new relevance of innovative teaching formats for sustainability education in business schools by Carmela Aprea and Laura Marie Edinger-Schons Today we are facing urgent sustainability issues like climate change, species extinction, or food and water scarcity which threaten no less than our very existence as humanity. Despite some reductions in CO2 emissions, recent…

Santiago Garcia and Flavio Alzueta address the importance, responsibility and impact of agriculture and food production As this year’s Nobel Prize Awarding Committee stated, “Until the day we have a medical vaccine, food is the best vaccine against chaos”. The awarding of the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize to the World Food Program (WFP) of the…

La Academia SDG: Una iniciativa global que ofrece educación para avanzar en los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (SDG). Florencia Librizzi informa

The SDG Academy: A global initiative offering education to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Florencia Librizzi reports Business school education and sustainable development Sustainable development is without a doubt, the greatest challenge of our time. In 1987 the Brundtland Report Our Common Future introduced the concept of sustainable development as “…development that meets the…

Agenda 2030 is the new global roadmap for public policies. Alain Tord explains The 2030 Agenda was adopted by heads of member states in September 2015 at the special summit for sustainable development. It features 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Adopted by 193 states, the universal programme for sustainable development addresses environmental, social and economic…

Jonathan Scott describes a front-line research project designed to reduce costs, increase revenues and create jobs in agriculture The challenges posed by agriculture are becoming more pressing as the world struggles to meet its ever-growing need for food. By 2050, over nine billion people will need to be fed – two billion more than the…

Building Sustainability into the Value Chain

Running a “sustainable” business is not about recycling and tree-planting programmes, it’s about putting sustainability at the core of your shareholder value proposition. To achieve sustainability transformation in companies, leaders need a broader skillset. This means that management education thinking also needs to be transformed to address sustainable values. Is sustainability in business misunderstood?…

Pointing_the_way_to_a_greener_economy

The CEMS community explores the impact of the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) on business leadership and the creation of radical new business models. By Stephen Hoare. In 2015 a UN global summit launched “Agenda 2030”, with a key element being its seventeen sustainable development goals (SDGs) which, in the words of the UN…

Hardwiring_social_responsibility

– SILVER WINNER OF THE 2019 EXCELLENCE IN PRACTICE AWARDS – Thailand is facing the challenge of innovating in the global economy while suffering severe structural inequality, an ageing population and poor governance. However, Thai businesses know well that more needs to be done to boost human capital, broaden access to education and skills, and ensure…

Living_with_sustainability

Percy Marquina outlines how a leading business school in Peru embraced sustainability. Peru is the fifth-top ranked country in entrepreneurial activity in the world according to the Global Entrepreneurship Report 2019. This level of entrepreneurship is nourished by the strong cultural roots and characteristics of its inhabitants, who are in a constant search for…

A_new_B_in_B_schools

André Sobczak urges businesses schools to embrace sustainability. In January 2019, Audencia Business School in Nantes, France, hosted a new year’s event of the association of responsible business leaders in Western France. More than 200 CEOS from local SMEs focused on the forthcoming French legal status for “companies with a mission” that is largely…

Sustainable_education

Antonia Lütgens describes how an education geared to sustainability is proving itself as sustainable. Many business schools are now numbered among the 730 global signatories of the United Nations’ PRME initiative. PRME aims to raise the profile of sustainability – including equipping students around the globe with a deeper understanding and better-developed skills to…

Positive_learning_on_carbon_neutrality

A leading Canadian school helps students to live their sustainable curriculum. By Simon Pek, Rick Cotton and Mackenzie Ford. Growing a world-class, competitive business school and being a leader in sustainability may seem like two juxtaposed goals but the University of Victoria’s Peter B Gustavson School of Business, in Victoria, BC, has found a…

David Grayson explains the dramatic growth of the quantity and quality of business collaboration linked to sustainable development. Sustainability is “the primary moral and economic imperative of the 21st century,” according to Mervyn King, a former governor of the Bank of England. It is also considered to be “one of the most important sources…

While poverty is falling, the gap between the rich and poor is getting wider and more and more people are being excluded from the means to better themselves. Yuwa Hedrick-Wong and Howard Thomas look at ways to include them. The widening gap To advance inclusive and sustainable growth, we need to address the puzzle…

Launched in 2012 by Ben Emmens and Abi Green, the Conscious Project has one clear aim: to help individuals and organisations think about what they are doing, and do it better or, in other words, to be more conscious. The Conscious Project works with organisations that seek to be more conscious, those who want…

Businesses face an increasing range of human rights issues that can directly impact their core business strategies. But, argue Dorothée Baumann-Pauly and Michael Posner, business education needs to catch up with this emerging field At last year’s EFMD annual conference in Berlin, Germany, Paolo Boccardelli, dean of LUISS Business School and the conference co-chair, outlined 10 global trends that will have an…

Michael Bisaccio explains how a new blacklist is making it harder for ‘predatory journals’ to hoax academics and others In June 2017, Cabells (see box page 55) launched the Journal Blacklist—a subscription based searchable database of “predatory journals”, with detailed reports listing specific violations for each journal—as a counterpart to the Whitelist, a database containing critical information on verified and reputable academic journals.…

Imagine a world in which business schools, management scholars and social scientists worldwide have transformed their research toward producing useful and credible knowledge that addresses problems important to business and society A Vision of Responsible Research for Better Business and a Better World (1) Imagine a future in 2030 where … Business and management schools worldwide are widely admired…

Jeremy Leggett takes a personal look at what needs to be done to avoid a potentially dangerous and depressing clash of philosophies Suddenly, believers in the possibility of a better civilisation, one rooted in increasing human co-operation and harmony, find ourselves in a world where demagogues appear able realistically to plot the polar opposite. In this…

PhD programmes are under increasing pressure to train researchers who help to solve critical societal challenges. Sally Randles, Annemieke Roobeek, Sally Jeanrenaud and Simon Pickard propose that sustainability-driven innovation, a new model for collaborative PhD training and research, offers a valuable framework for inspiring new approaches Despite recent political turbulence in Europe, the US and elsewhere, the past 18…

Instead of prosperity the last decade has delivered inequality, insecurity, and the rise of nationalism and populism. Simon Caulkin argues that this is a secular challenge that business, and especially managers, must face head on. Inclusive growth and prosperity, the theme for this year’s Global Peter Drucker Forum in November, sounds like the ultimate motherhood and apple pie.…

A New world order is slowly beginning to emerge around us. Matthew Gitsham, Joanne Lawrence and Martin Lockett look at some of the responses we will need to develop to deal with it In boardrooms from New York to London and around the world, the pursuit of shareholder value has been a mantra for decades.…

Geoffrey Lipman argues the case for Impact Travel I was planning to devote this article to the need that exists for a radical new approach to education and training in the dynamic and socio-economically important field of travel and tourism. The context was to be the agreement last year by the Finance, Sustainability and Climate Summits, finally creating a long-term road-map, with…

Lea Stadtler and Gilbert Probst describe how the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange came into being and the lessons it holds. Complex societal challenges transcend the capacities of a single organisation and even those of a single sector. Such challenges call for innovative, collaborative approaches, require modifications in our management education systems and pose new research needs.…

Last year’s Rio+20 UN summit may have been something of a disappointment but there were still some significant and positive outcomes say Anthony Buono, Jean-Christophe Carteron and Matthew Gitsham. A little over a year ago, roughly 50,000 people – government leaders, corporate executives and civil society groups including NGOs, youth movements and higher education institutes…

Business schools from emerging economies need to embrace UN PRME, argues Umesh Mukhi, and suggests some ways they could do it. One of the most important questions asked among management educators in the last five years has been “how can business schools change their practices?” The United Nations Principle for Responsible Education (UN PRME) initiative…

The 50+20 vision has ignited a flame that illuminates a path towards the future of management education. John North and Hamid Bouchikhi describe the latest steps on the journey. With the dry winter months encroaching on large parts of sub-Saharan Africa it is not uncommon to spot and often smell wildfires or veld fires as…