Engaging Students to Adopt Sustainability

Following my posts on the role of business schools as an agent, medium, for sustainability, I felt it was necessary to address the fact that aside from the intentions of the school, the dean, or the professors, the students themselves must be engaged to adopt in a manner that provides the best chances for success. An issue I addressed at a PRME conference in Copenhagen: For us, the key to succ…

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Poyang Lake Pays the Price for China’s Progress

  While there are those who feel that China's economy has no limits, I would like to direct your attention to yet another example of where China's economy is outstripping the basic laws of environmental carrying capacity. Poyang lake, located in North Jiangxi province is perhaps one of the largest lakes that you have never heard of, and it is likely that it will be lost. At only 5% of its…

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Doing a Better Job Teaching Values

Though my time at CEIBS teaching a course on responsible leadership I have been fortunate to meet peers at other schools and within the corporate world who are teaching their students and employees values and issues of society, economics, and the environment. It is a process that at times feels like climbing a sheer faced rock, and given the fact that many schools are still hesitant to say…

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Transparency Can be Painful When You’re Not Prepared

There can be fewer examples of an "open secret" in China than the worsening air quality levels in China's major cities. For a period, this "open secret" was one that was acceptable by all because of the promise of better days, but following the Beijing Olympics and Shanghai EXPO the air has only grown worse in both cities.  Not better as promised. Which has recently been exacerbated by the…

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What value(s) should really drive corporate responsibility?

In the recent entry What really drives value in corporate responsibility? , CB Bhattacharya, Daniel Korschun, and Sankar Sen call into the question the value of CSR programs to the firm, and make three suggestions of how firms can get back on track. It was an article that for me started off quite well, and does a good job to frame a basic problem of CSR programs: Few companies are clear about…

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Ethics and Wanting to be a Social Auditor

An interesting conversation between my wife and my recently fired nanny provided an anecdotal insight into the depths of ethics, and the value of ethics, in China. Wife: "so why did your son left his last job?" Nanny "the company is a mess, my son managed quality inspection for car parts and his manager just want him to keep one eye open one eye closed, so they can meet production quota. My son…

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