Behind Birmingham Business School's Push For Responsible Business
Birmingham is a leader in preparing students to become responsible business leaders. Photo: Birmingham
Caroline Chapain believes in the ability of a business school to create world changers.
'If you don't believe you can change the world, you're never going to change it,' she says.
It's a lofty outlook. But it's also an ethos baked into the culture and curriculum at Birmingham Business School, where Chapain is an associate professor in the Department of Management. Over the past decade, the U.K.-based business school continually commits to training future business leaders with an emphasis on working towards a responsible future.
The push towards training responsible business leaders ignited in 2017 when Birmingham Business School became signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Business Management (PRME). A year later, the school launched the Centre for Responsible Business, which is a collaboration between Lloyds Banking Group and Birmingham Business School. The purpose of the centre is to foster an environment for interdisciplinary research examining what it means to be a responsible business.
'Over the past ten years, we've really put our values to the heart of who we are and what we do as a business school,' Chapain says. 'And about four or five years ago, we redesigned our MBA program, putting responsible business at the heart of it.'
A STRONG CURRICULAR FOUNDATION OF RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS
The one-year MBA program starts with the core module, The Purposeful Leader. Of the nine core modules, it's the first students take, it's worth the most credits, and students dedicate the most time to it. Birmingham designed the course to explore students' leadership styles and career aspirations in relation to their core values. Students also take the core module Global Perspectives on Responsible Business that Chapain helps lead, which explores theories and practical ways to run a responsible business.
While the other modules are more typical business topics, like Managerial Finance, Marketing, and People Management and Organisations, Chapain says they all have elements of social inclusivity and wider responsible business practices. 'We are trying to cover and bring every discipline into their education while having them reflect on what type of MBA student, professional, and future practitioner do you want to be,' Chapain explains. 'What are your values? Who are you? What does all that mean in terms of equity, diversity, and inclusion? What does it mean in terms of the environment?'
GOING BEYOND DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
Besides a curricular focus on equity, diversity, and inclusion and environmental and social responsibility, Birmingham takes responsible business training to another level through research, centers, and activities. Chapain started at Birmingham Business School two decades ago and has been a part of the school's evolution in responsible business from the get-go. 'I shifted my career to education and understanding how we can create an environment in business school which is more inclusive to the student, but also empower them to become the change agent in the future of their organization.'
A significant chunk of creating future responsible business leaders includes an emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion. In 2020, during the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement, Chapain says Birmingham made an effort to take its inclusivity and diversity emphasis to another level. Part of that included the development and growth of the Work Inclusivity Research Centre. Like the Centre for Responsible Business, the Work Inclusivity Research Centre is an interdisciplinary entity. Chapain represents the Department of Management at the Business School, promoting the development of scholarship and implementation of inclusive management education.
The research topics at the Work Inclusivity Research Centre and organized into five 'work streams.' Those are diversity and inclusivity within organizations; employment relations and regulating work; trust and workplace dialogue; work, well-being, and labour market inequalities; and teaching and learning, which Chapain leads.
DECOLONIZING BUSINESS EDUCATION AND BUSINESS SCHOOLS
A large part of Chapain's work includes what Birmingham calls decolonizing business education, as she is a co-lead of the BBS Decolonisation Project. The three-year project aims to identify how colonialism still exists in Birmingham Business School's academic structure and then dismantle it for a more inclusive, just, and equal business school.
While the term colonization can mean many different things to many different people, Birmingham Business School takes a contextual approach. It recognizes how colonization and the values upheld by colonization continue to exist in many Western business schools. Besides dismantling and restructuring colonization in its curriculum and research, the BBS Decolonisation Project hosts activities looking at ways of decolonizing Western business schools.
'As we develop the project, I think it really fits with our business school culture,' Chapain explains. 'I'm not saying it's always easy, but I think it really resonates with a lot of people, especially in the business school, where half of our staff are not from the U.K.'
BUSINESS EDUCATION WITH A SIDE OF NATURE
Of course, a large part of becoming a responsible business includes environmental aspects. 'What has been interesting for me is that there is some overlap between de-colonization and responsible business linked back to this idea of how we relate to the planet and nature, as well,' Chapain says. 'So we've been trying to bring students into nature, doing some nature-based learning.'
Chapain says the business school will take students to the Birmingham Botanical Garden so they can reflect on their relationships with nature. 'We ask them to do some meditation and contemplation,' Chapain explains. 'And it's really, really positive because it seems to resonate with them, and they're able to bring the experience back into the classroom.'
It's just one of many aspects currently setting Birmingham Business School apart from others.
'We take equity, diversity, and inclusion very seriously,' Chapain says. 'There are very few schools like us where you have a Decolonization Project. And we're not just looking at the curriculum. We're looking at research and operations. We've been quite advanced in our thinking and practice. We are living through our values.'
And, in turn, sticking to those values is creating responsibly- and globally-minded MBA graduates.
'We live in a global world and you have to interact with people from so many different places,' Chapain says. 'When you do business — even if you are a small business — being able to responsibly interact with others is a key skill that you actually need. And that's what we're training our students for.'
The post Behind Birmingham Business School's Push For Responsible Business appeared first on Poets&Quants.
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