Why should business education concern itself with poverty? Conceivably it might feature in teaching about corporate social responsibility. But beyond that, wealth creation is surely the name of the game. Milenko Gudic begs to differ, arguing that business schools have a broader responsibility.
“Businesses are the main agents of change and it is schools that create business leaders,” he says. “So if we talk about any social responsibility of business, then we should also ask ourselves about the social responsibility of business schools, those who create the new generation of business leaders.”
Gudic, who heads the International Management Teachers Academy that is run by Ceeman, a management-development association, is one of the originators of a project that aims to raise the profile of poverty in business education. In 2008, together with Al Rosenbloom of Dominican University in the United States, he carried out a survey looking at attitudes to poverty among management educators. Two-thirds of the 154 respondents from 33 countries said that poverty was a serious problem and 72% thought that poverty was a legitimate curriculum topic. “That was an important and encouraging finding,” he says.
This work attracted the attention of the UN-sponsored initiative on Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), which subsequently established a working group on poverty. This now has 80 members from 34 countries around the world. “That means that people have joined the initiative and are willing to contribute,” says Gudic, who is the group’s co-ordinator.
With PRME’s support, a second survey was carried out in 2010 to take a closer look at the situation. “During the first survey, we realised that innovations were taking place in various aspects of business education, so in the second survey we tried to grasp these innovations, to see what is really going on.”
It looked at programmes from the undergraduate level up to doctorates, including both regular and executive MBAs. Poverty turned up in many places in the curriculum, often but not always connected to corporate social responsibility. In MBA programmes, for example, poverty was also an issue when looking at business development and marketing at ‘the bottom of the pyramid’, and in studies of entrepreneurship. It would also crop up in teaching on market analysis, microfinance and doing business with developing nations.
As well as asking what aspects of poverty appeared in the curriculum, the survey also wanted to know how it was taught, or would be taught in the future. This indicated a strong preference for projects that took students out of the classroom to see things at first hand. “Many people believe that student engagement through consultancy projects or similar activities can be the best way to apply all this knowledge, skills and attitudes in a real life context,” says Gudic.
A third survey is currently under way, which aims to collect detailed examples of how poverty is being included in management education. “That could be a book or an article, a new course, a visiting lecturer or a partnership with the local community or between schools,” says Gudic.
As well as a report, to be presented in May 2012 at the 3rd Global Forum for Responsible Management Education in Rio, the survey will also help to build an online catalogue of best practice and inspirational examples. “If you want to teach something on poverty, then you can go to the catalogue and, for example, find an interesting case, see what it is about, what the learning points are, and what the experience of the contributor was when he or she used the case,” Gudic says.
One of the resources likely to feature in the catalogue is a collection of case studies gathered by the UN Development Programme’s Growing Inclusive Markets initiative. “This is fantastic material for business schools, and part of the mandate of the [PRME] working group is to write teaching notes on how these cases could be used in the classroom.”
Alongside changes in what is taught and how it is taught, the survey will also look at more substantial institutional developments. “You cannot change the content without changing the process, and you cannot change the process without having some changes in faculty, students and so on,” says Gudic.
Examples range from whole programmes devoted to sustainable development, such as the One Planet MBA at the University of Exeter, to the contributions made by staff. HEC Paris, for instance, has created a teaching and research chair devoted to social business, enterprise and poverty, with sponsorship from food multinational Danone, the French government and other private donors.
Similar business links can be seen in the chair of sustainable development at IEDC-Bled School of Management, which is sponsored by Coca-Cola, and the appointment of Björn Stigson, president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, to a visiting professorship at the University of Gothenburg business school. Gudic sees this as an important facet of business-school engagement with poverty, and an area where his latest survey can make a contribution.
“The management-education industry will benefit, because it will see examples, cases, solutions and so on, but businesses will also benefit,” he says. “We hope this will contribute to having more dialogue between businesses and business schools, on poverty-related issues for sure, but also in general.”
Ian Mundell is a freelance journalist based in Brussels.