This week’s interview is with Andrew Crane, the George R. Gardiner Professor of Business Ethics in the Schulich School of Business at York University (ON). The Aspen Institute recently released their Beyond Grey Pinstripes ranking of business graduate schools that incorporate sound environmental and social stewardship into their curricula and the Schulich School of Business received first place. This prestigious ranking is attributed to a number of factors, one being the research from the many devoted professors at Schulich. Dr. Crane's research focuses on the evolving role of corporations and the role of businesses in the globalizing world--specifically their environmental and social responsibilities. In his interview, Dr. Crane discusses the ways he is involved in promoting the values of sustainability and social responsibility into the next generation of business leaders.

How did you first become interested in studying the social, ethical, and environmental dimensions of business?

It was back when I was an undergraduate student actually. It was the late 1980s, and we were coming to the end of the ‘greed is good’ decade and I really wanted to understand better the social and ethical issues facing business. No one really seemed to be talking about it all that much back then. So I took a final year course on business ethics – which was being run for the very first time that year – and from then on in I was hooked. A few years later, after having worked and travelled a lot, and seen first hand some of the negative social impacts of business, I decided to do a PhD – and business ethics was the only subject I had any intention of researching.

How does the MBA program at Schulich define sustainability?

We take a fairly broad perspective that addresses sustainability as a ‘triple bottom line’ concept for business, involving responsibilities to multiple stakeholders. But there are so many definitions of sustainability around that we don’t find it useful to narrowly prescribe what it is, or should be. Part of what we seek to do is encourage our students to understand the range of perspectives rather than stick doggedly to one.

What kind of student demand are you seeing for a sustainable MBA degree program?

Well we get two types of students demanding sustainability, both of which seem to be on the rise. On the one hand there are those MBA students that want to transition into a dedicated sustainability career – as a sustainability consultant, a responsible investment analyst, a CSR manager, etc. These students often come to Schulich specifically because they’ve heard it’s a leading school globally in sustainability business education. We offer a concentration in business and sustainability, which is really popular, and a Diploma in Business and Environment that is particularly attractive to students studying for a Masters degree over at the Faculty of Environmental Studies who are looking for some practical business skills.

The other type of student just sees issues of sustainability as part of a good business education. They are not so much specialists in sustainability as experts in finance, marketing, accounting, or any other major business discipline. They understand that doing those jobs well requires a sound knowledge of the principles and practices of responsible business. A decade ago, we as faculty always had to be making the case to these students about why sustainability issues were important. Now they come and tell us.

What topics are students most interested in at the moment?

Well, we’ve just launched a new MBA course on Sustainability and Carbon Finance that has gone really well with the student body. It gives them a chance to develop some pretty high level technical skills in carbon pricing and modeling, as well as generating critical insights into how carbon financing is evolving. At the undergraduate level we’ve just surveyed our students to find out what new courses they’d like and the resounding message is that they want more emphasis on sustainability marketing. So we’re going to design a course on that and hopefully get it approved in time for next year.

What big trends are you seeing in the field currently?

Obviously climate change has become a huge issue in the last few years, and one of the big areas there is around how companies can innovate not just new products, but whole new systems of delivery that radically reduce their environmental footprint. Some of the most exciting issues are around how business can work with other organizations to tackle major social problems, such as poverty, or water security, and still maintain a license to operate. But there is no end of big new trends – human rights is very much on the agenda, corporate political responsibilities are getting more complex, developing engagement with stakeholders through social media is getting some people excited, and new business models such as microfinance and social enterprise are generating a lot of buzz.

In what ways are the social dimensions of sustainability incorporated into the MBA curriculum?

There’s a variety of ways. All our MBA students take a required course on ‘Managing for Value Creation’ which takes a multiple stakeholder perspective on the process of value creation – both economic value and social value. So all our MBAs have a good basic understanding of how those social dimensions relate to core business activities. But students can also go further and courses on labour relations, or aboriginal development, or on ethics and social responsibility, which all take them deeper into the social side of sustainability. We also have a course on sustainable value creation which specifically addresses the problems of developing business models to address poverty.

How does the MBA program evaluate its success?

That’s a good question, and one that we are wrestling with right now. There are a lot of rankings out there that do a lot of that evaluation for us. Some focus on how well we enable our students to get good jobs, some on the quality of the student experience, but only one directly addresses in any substantial way how well we prepare our students for social and environmental stewardship. And that is the Aspen Institute Beyond Grey Pinstripes survey. It’s an exhaustive survey that assesses how well we’ve integrated sustainability issues into the MBA curriculum and into faculty research. I’m really pleased to say that this year the Schulich School of Business placed first overall in the world. It’s quite something to be adjudged as the very best amongst our peers. That said, we’re not complacent about it. We won’t be happy until we can confidently say that every one of our students is leaving with a sound knowledge of how they can practice responsible business – and more than that, that they feel inspired and empowered to do so. We’ve still got a long way to go.

What area of research do you most enjoy doing? Why?

I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on the changing role of business in society, and the challenges inherent in corporations taking on an ever greater role in solving big social, environmental and even political problems. The distinctive boundaries between the business, government, and nonprofit worlds are fast eroding, which is bringing with it lots of really fascinating problems around accountability, social impact analysis, and even the very nature of the business enterprise. It’s big picture stuff, but there are also lots of very tangible issues to address at a more local level, such as, "How do you set up a system to ensure that you’re not eroding the water resources of local communities when you need to operate a mine or a manufacturing plant in a region with major water scarcity"?
This is a public problem, but it requires private actors to play a key role. So research on this area is pretty controversial and it gets to the heart of debates about what role business should play in our lives – both for better and for worse.

How do you see the business world responding to research on social responsibility, such as yours? Do you see corporations becoming more sustainable and responsible?

That’s a tough one to predict. Part of the problem is just getting business and academia to engage seriously with one another. Fortunately we have two new research networks in Canada, specifically funded to build bridges between researchers and businesses and other potential user groups. The Canadian Business Ethics Research Network (CBERN) headquartered here at York University, and the Network for Business Sustainability which works out of the University of Western Ontario, both seek to mobilize research on various aspects of responsible business and engage directly with stakeholders. It’s quite a challenge.

As for companies becoming more responsible and sustainable, it is difficult to say. They will certainly become better at managing the issues, and taking social responsibility onto much more professional footing. But arguably it was easier for companies to be responsible 40 years ago when the competitive pressures were not so high, and the world was not so thoroughly globalized. Now, the expectations are higher, but the challenges are a lot more complex, and the dangers of getting it wrong are all the more real. But if we’re just speaking about now, compared to the future, I think we’ll see a lot of improvement in some areas, especially around energy efficiency, carbon emissions, and those sorts of issues. But change will probably be less in other areas, where the incentives are not so strong, or where the drive for change is simply not as powerful.

What is the most exciting part of your job?

Being in the classroom always gets you the most direct response and the most immediate impact of your work. Students are often incredibly engaged around issues of responsible business and sustainability – even those that don’t completely get it - so it can be really exciting working with them. Especially when you know that many of those people in your class really will go off and try to have a more positive impact on society through their work. But that’s also true of writing textbooks and publishing research – the knowledge that this isn’t just an end in itself, but you’re actually helping to shape a critical debate in society. A colleague at the Wharton School recently put it this way – we’re part of an epic rewriting of the rules of business. You can’t get much more exciting than that!
 

To read more about Dr. Crane's work check out his blog.