Principles of Responsible Management Education             PRME home page

Sharing Information on Progress June, 2010

Introduction:

 
The School of Business and Economics (SBE) has embraced the six Principles of Responsible Management Education as a key feature of our school's work. We are committed to engaging in a continuous process of improvement in the application of these Principles and in reporting on our progress to all stakeholders. We seek to learn from and contribute to the exchange of effective practices with other academic institutions. We also seek to model these principles in our own organizational practices.

 
The six principles are wholly congruent with what SBE has committed itself to developing in what it has called "Another Way of Doing Business." In a nutshell, this approach is built on three foundational principles: service, sustainability and support. We understand the role of business in society as a service provider; in particular, business serves society by providing goods and services that enable human flourishing and by providing opportunities for individuals to express aspects of their identity in meaningful and creative work. Business must pursue these purposes subject to the limitations of sustainability. For us "sustainability" is to be broadly construed and includes the need to sustain financial, social, communal, and environmental "capital." Finally, business operates alongside a host of other institutions including governments, NGOs, educational institutions and other members of the civil society. Collectively these institutions are to work for the common good and business must support and enhance the work of other institutions as it pursues its unique contribution to this joint endeavor. This business philosophy infuses our teaching, our research and our writing and grew out of the school’s Christian faith tradition and in its earliest expression was cast as an explicit "theology of business.”
  

• Much work continues on the development of a richer and explicit understanding of the intersection of faith and business but the initiative has drawn the school into several larger conversations taking place in the academy and in the broader business community. SBE has introduced more elements of corporate social responsibility into its curriculum. It now participates in Aspen Institute’s Beyond Gray Pinstripes survey and was the first Northwest college or university to adopt the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME).
   
  
• Long before it was popular (or required), SBE was noted for its emphasis on ethics and values. At the undergraduate level, the capstone course for the majors (and minors) is business ethics. At the graduate level, all students are required to take two ethics and values courses. The curriculum covers alternate worldviews and examines how these lead to different approaches to business. Students are asked to wrestle with specific stewardship and sustainability issues relevant to customers, employees, the environment and the broader community. In addition, in both the undergraduate and graduate programs, faculty are expected to integrate issues of ethics, sustainability and values throughout their curriculum. Issues of ethics, integrity and sustainability are deeply ingrained in the school’s DNA. Orientation sessions and a regular speaker series are also designed to continually emphasize the theme of "business as service."
    
  
• Many of the PRME initiatives are organized through SBE’s two centers, The Center of Applied Learning and the Center of Integrity in Business, in partnership with the faculty.
   
  

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