This week I had the pleasure of representing GBSN at the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) Global Forum in New York. The forum celebrated 10 years of growing business school commitment to responsible management education and, more recently, to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
I left the forum with a renewed sense of excitement and urgency for our mission. The 17 goals define the critical, interdisciplinary opportunities that will shape how businesses, governments, schools and international development organizations invest and measure impact within local communities and on a global scale. The intersection between these goals and GBSN’s mission is unmistakable. These goals are an important component of our collective understanding of how business schools affect economic and social development.
Many of our own GBSN member schools are PRME signatories themselves, and we had the opportunity to meet with many of them at the forum at a special GBSN networking event. Their leadership and involvement in both PRME and GBSN highlight the value that these complementary networks have in strengthening the pool of talent available to generate prosperity around the world.
Nirja Mattoo from GBSN member school S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research sharing her school’s innovative social impact experiential learning program.
The forum produced an Outcome Declaration that includes the following, which echoes GBSN’s premise of the value and importance of business schools in development:
Our vision and outlook for 2030Ñin line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development GoalsÑis a world where extreme poverty is eradicated, all human beings are able to fulfill their potential in dignity and equality, the human rights of all are realized, gender equality is achieved, the planet is protected from degradation, urgent action has been taken on climate change towards achieving the Paris Agreement to hold the increase in global average temperature to well below 2¡C and to pursue efforts to limit the rise to 1.5¡C, and to achieve net-zero emissions in the second half of this century, and all live in peaceful, just and inclusive societies which are free from fear and violence. Business and management education will be designed to help make this new reality happen and sustain it into the future.
Read the full Outcomes Declaration here
This week we also announced a new chapter in our work increasing access to quality, locally relevant management education under the leadership of our incoming CEO Stephen J. Sacca. The coincidence of these events presented me an opportunity for reflection on our global purpose and has invigorated me for the next 15 years of convening, facilitating and catalyzing innovation around management education for the developing world.
I thank the team at PRME and all of our members for their contributions, past and future, to this effort.
GBSN Member School Representatives at the PRME Global Forum:
- Wolfgang Amann – HEC Paris – Qatar, Qatar
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Priya Sharma Marjit Singh, Monash University of Malaysia, Malaysia
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Ali Awni – American University in Cairo, Egypt
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Thomas Andreas Bieger – University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
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Ricardo Campos, FDC, Brazil
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Sergio Castrillon, Universidad EAFIT, Colombia
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Shana Chong – Monash Business School, Australia
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Kasturi Das – IMT Ghaziabad, India
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Thomas Dyllick-Brenzeinger – University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
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Belinda Gibbons – University of Wollongong, Australia
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Edeltraud Hanappi-Egger – WU – Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
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Nirja Mattoo – S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, India
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Stephanie Perkiss – University of Wollongong, Australia
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Kutlwano Khumoyame Kgomotso M Ramaboa – University of Capetown Graduate School of Business, South Africa
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Michaela Rankin – Monash Business School, Australia
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Clayton Shedd – Columbia Business School, USA
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Arnold Smit – University of Stellenbosch Business School, South Africa
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Adrian Pablo Zicari – ESSEC Business School, France
Page Buchanan is the Chief Operating Officer at the Global Business School Network