The Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) Discussion 25th
February 2008
Overview
The Cranfield School of Management (SoM) recently became a signatory to the UN
Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative. In order to
identify possible ways SoM could meet the demands of PRME, a meeting was
convened by the Corporate Responsibility Network at Cranfield on February 25,
2008. The meeting was guided by a joint presentation made by Prof Susan
Vinnicombe and Dr Richard Kwiatkowski. The presentation gave an overview of
PRME, outlined some existing SoM’s practices that reflect the demands of PRME,
and presented some guide questions that were discussed in small groups.
The group discussions were mainly dominated by the need to explicitly articulate
what Responsible Management Education means, and what it should mean for SOM /
Cranfield University; given the diverse cultural orientations the University faces in
delivery of value to both students and client organisations. Some of the questions and
concerns raised include:
1. Can Cranfield really sign up to these principles given the different cultural
influences of client organisations?
2. How do we explore the incremental systemic issues which impact responsible
behaviours and are different in different cultures?
3. How can the Doughty Centre and broader University Estate work with the
varied contextualised issues on responsible management education (given that
responsible behaviour is culture and context dependent)?
4. How might a thread of CR principles through the MBA modules be organised
in a way that is meaningful to diverse cultures, especially given that the
language of CSR and CR can be off putting?
5. How can the pragmatic case for responsible leadership be made to be
meaningful to different cultures? E.g. 38 different nationalities undertaking the
MBA.
Notwithstanding these concerns, the group discussions identified some possible quick
wins that could facilitate the embedding of responsible management education in the
SOM. Some of these quick wins include:
1. Reduction in use of resources, which could be a stimulator of sustainability
related behaviour. Paper usage is very obvious. However, there is need to
explicitly articulate the values underpinning this behaviour, if desirable
2. A suggestion was made to have a barometer of responsible leadership in the
Doughty Centre. However, the realisation of this suggestion would necessitate
answering some fundamental questions – e.g. what would the indicators/
questions be? Who might decide the content of those indicators as
underpinning values to this are likely to be contextualised by culture?
3. It was noted that in the past 3 years, the end of year MBA conferences have
been around CR/ Sustainability issues. During each year a number of student
led initiatives have also emerged e.g. Sustainability Cafe – open space
thinking forums. It was suggested that SOM should think of how to capture
these initiatives and any outcomes or findings. In other words some of the
questions associated with this are: How might SOM capture the ongoing MBA
sustainability/ CR legacy? Can some of the initiatives of the past be picked up
in retrospect? E.g. clocks and flags.
4. It was also suggested that there was need to have participatory and transparent
decision making processes in the School and integrate PRME into modules in
a way that is not prescriptive but rather encourages thinking to enable diverse
and relevant applications.
5. Other quick wins include: Staff education on CSR; and the need for PRME to
be a strategic initiative – with a business case and appropriate ownership at the
University level
Summary
It is very easy to assume that PRME is a fashion; however, it comes with lots of issues
around it. It could, therefore, be seen as a public commitment (like wedding
ceremonies) for garnering social support required to achieve responsible
organisational practices. As such, it would require to be fully joined up with other
similar/complementary initiatives in SOM and across the wider University (e.g. Green
University Initiative). Having signed up to the PRME Initiative, there is need to
outline what SoM is already doing in research, teaching and practice; and areas that
we can improve on. Signing up to the PRME should be seen as a journey. SOM
should seek creative ways of embedding the principles in our practices – both at
individual and organisational levels. These principles require to be built in more
explicitly into academic programmes and organisational practices. It was suggested
that for it to be effective, ownership shouldn’t be left just for the School’s Executive,
but should rather be owned by everyone.
Notwithstanding this, there are still some deep questions the School needs to answer
as a starting point. One of these could be to reconcile the School’s continued interests
in and association with defence and tobacco firms, which it was suggested could be
seen by some to run contrary to the spirit of PRME.
Kenneth Amaeshi