a difference to local issues that matter. York St John University ran a project to redesign the campus food system along more sustainable lines, whilst Manchester University has run projects on such topics as green space in the city and sustainable transport. Here at Lancaster, the Management School is keenly aware of the need to support ESG standards, both in our curricula and our internal policies. The former is reflected in programme and module innovations such as the core values running through our MBA programmes, innovative executive education offerings such as the Good Growth programme and the Innovation Catalyst, and the recently launched ‘dissertations in place’ project that will connect Master’s students with local issues through their capstone research project. These initiatives are reflective of our membership of PRME (Principles for Responsible Management Education) and our commitment to a responsible research agenda that feeds through into our teaching. At the same time, Lancaster’s institutional policy commits us to becoming carbon net zero by 2035 and to achieving EDI related charter marks. All this activity is backed up by our significant new project – ‘B-School to ESG-School’ – designed to ensure that our existing ESG focus runs consistently through all our management education programmes. IF NOT ESG, THEN WHAT? From this, it is hopefully clear that we – and other business and management schools – believe ESG is very much alive and kicking. But it is still worth considering alternative labels and credentials. One such alternative is B-Corp certification. Established by B Lab in 2006, this builds on the idea that business requires ‘comprehensive, credible, comparable impact standards to support economic systems change’. To provide this, B Lab offers an Impact Assessment process that evaluates a company’s practices and outputs across governance, workers, community, the environment, and customers. Since its inception, B Lab have certified more than 7,000 companies across 161 industries globally as having met their standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. This includes more than 2,600 companies in Europe, and clearly suggests the importance of business in leading the way towards a new, stakeholder-driven socio-economic model. For universities, the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), an international not-for-profit association based in Brussels and Europe’s largest network association in the field of management development, is another standard bearer for ESG issues. Talking about their recently published How to Develop a Sustainable Business School in EFMD’s Global Focus magazine, the authors shared their ‘profound belief that sustainable and ethical behaviour should underpin education and research and what business schools do’, such that business schools ‘positively impact on society, policy, and practice’. We would certainly agree with that statement and believe our management education programme participants would agree with it too. So where does this leave ESG? In answering this question, it is worth noting that while Fink stated he intended to stop using the term ESG, his stance on the underpinning dimensions had in no way changed. They still represented, for him, the key issues that investors – and by implication, business – should be concerned with today and into the future. Arguably, the true importance of this focus rests in the fact that business is potentially the only institution with the power to initiate Environmental and Social change on a grand scale and hence requires Governance standards to help them to do this in a way that is fair and transparent. In Lancaster University Management School, we will be continuing to use ESG as an umbrella term for what we believe is important in both business and management education. For us, it is the substance that is important, not the name: it does not matter if it is called an umbrella, as long as it keeps off the rain! Dr Marian Iszatt White is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, with a research focus on aspirational forms of leadership and stewardship-as-leadership. m.iszattwhite@lancaster.ac.uk FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 21
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTI5NzM=