This week, AMBS delivered its first-ever PRME (Principles for Responsible Management Education) Progress Report, since committing to PRME’s Six Principles in 2019.
PRME Sharing Information on Progress Report
Further demonstrating Alliance MBS’ commitment to delivering public good through research, teaching and wider activities, in 2019, the School became an advanced signatory of the Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME). This week, AMBS submitted its first-ever PRME Sharing Information on Progress (SIP) Report.
PRME is a United Nations-supported initiative founded in 2007. Its vision is to realise the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through responsible management education. PRME measures impact through Six Principles (Purpose, Values, Method, Research, Partnership and Dialogue).
Professor Fiona Devine, Head of School said: “One of our core SR goals is to deliver socially responsible management education and we are proud that AMBS has become an advanced signatory of PRME. This report highlights some of our key programmes and initiatives and gives a snapshot of the progress concerning how the Six Principles are applied in AMBS.”
Professor He affirms how here at AMBS, “We are fully committed to these principles and will apply them as much as we can in our teaching and research.”
The Six Principles at AMBS
We have highlighted a few key examples below from our PRME report submission, showcasing how we have demonstrated our commitment to the Six Principles.
Purpose:
- We are the first UK University and Business School to have SR as a core goal and The University was ranked 1st in the world in the 2021 Times Higher Education Impact rankings
- We aim to create socially responsible graduates through initiatives including the Stellify scheme; in 2020 AMBS received 31 Stellify awards
- AMBS has played a prominent role in terms of the University’s engagement with the SDGs through research and teaching
Values:
- Our SR-focused academic activities including WP (widening participation) and access programmes.
- Every course unit in our academic curricula has to demonstrate how it addresses and embeds SR topics.
- The role of our organisational practices and structures including our SR committee, our environmental sustainability action plan, as well as the work of our international centres
Method:
- Our MSM division awards Masters dissertations with an SR focus
- Our teaching embeds SR, including a MOOC on ‘Managing Responsibly: Practicing Sustainability, Responsibility, Ethics’, developed by Oliver Laasch (AMBS), Frank Boons (AMBS), and Sally Randles (MMU) that has reached over 17,000 learners
Research:
- “AMBS prioritises research that addresses grand societal challenges. The School has six research institutes and centres that focus on these challenges”
Partnership:
- Strong business engagement and knowledge exchange activities including work on KTP’s (Knowledge Transfer Partnerships)
- Our partnership with the Masood Entrepreneurship Centre (MEC)
- Our growing Women Leading in Business (WLiB) events network
Dialogue:
- Our successful high profile events series including Vital Topics and Original Thinking Webinars
- AMBS supported the British Academy of Management's BAM2020 Conference in the Cloud and put SR topics at the heart of the agenda.
On submitting the report, Professor Hongwei He commented: “Similar to completing the AMBS SR strategic review, the process of preparing this report has also been extremely useful, helping me reflect on what we are doing already, feeding back to the strategic review process, and providing us with a useful framework to organise the wide range of excellent SR-related activities that we are doing.”
Professor Devine was also keen to draw attention to the School’s dedication to SR over the last year in the context of the global pandemic: “We are fully committed to the PRME principles despite any challenges we face, including the Covid-19 Pandemic. We have quickly adapted ourselves to face these new challenges and turned them into opportunities.”
