Social education takes its hold on MBAs

In the past decade, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become such an important aspect of doing business that a growing, but still nascent, group of business schools and executive development firms are incorporating it into their curriculum.

Late last year, a global survey of 112 business schools by the Colorado-based Aspen Institute Center for Business Education found the proportion of MBA courses which require students to take a course focused on 'business and society' issues had increased significantly over the past six years, from 34per cent in 2001 to 63per cent last year.

Dubbed 'Beyond Grey Pinstripes', the biennial survey looks at how MBA programmes are incorporating social and environmental topics into their core and elective classes, in addition to academic research. Of the schools surveyed, 35 offer a special concentration in social and environmental issues.

But Chandran Nair, chief executive at the Hong Kong-based Global Institute for Tomorrow (GIFT), said that much progress could still be made in how business schools teach sustainability issues.

'There are a couple of US business schools who are taking things like EMBAs to Africa and studying local enterprises and giving advice, but no one is doing the cycle that we are trying to do in terms of taking them through the entire learning process,' he said.

Mr Nair's institute in Hong Kong runs what it calls the Global Young Leaders Programme, which is essentially an MBA-styled 21/2 week course designed to introduce participants to things about the world they otherwise would not have known about.

'It is essentially executive learning, but with a link to development issues in the developing world or any sort of needy situation,' he said, adding that executives needed to understand a myriad of issues relating to the community and the environment, and how they interact with the corporations they manage.