Social Impact Management Practices

The World Resources Institute and The Aspen Institute publish a report each year entitled “Beyond Grey Pinstripes” which seeks to identify best practices in connection with the teaching of environmental and social impact management in business schools.  The report uses survey data collected from schools from 20 countries, including 68 from the United States and 32 from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Europe.

The report suggests that “business schools have broadened their coverage of social and environmental stewardship. These issues have become part of the business vernacular and are addressed at many schools through classroom and extracurricular activity.”  In choosing its top schools in this arena, the report looks to the following factors:

• More significant infusion of social and environmental content into core courses and, on average, three times as many relevant elective courses;
• Extensive faculty research on topics bearing directly on management of social and environmental impacts, accounting for 21 percent of the research identified through the survey;
• More extracurricular and student initiated activities—including conferences, seminars, and speakers—that broaden understanding of social and environmental stewardship.