The Future of Business Schools Rankings & Ratings – Davos 2020 Report
oikos International
Author
This report captures contributions made during the Deans Multi-stakeholder Dialogue at Davos: On the Future of Business Schools Rankings and Ratings, convened during the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2020. Co-sponsored by Corporate Knights, the Principles for Responsible anagement Education (PRME) and the Positive Impact Rating (PIR), this annual event brings together business school deans and other key stakeholders to consider how business schools should transform in support of a more sustainable and ethical world.
As the title of this year’s event suggests, the focus of the Deans Dialogue was on the need to fundamentally reconsider the metrics and methods used to rank and rate business schools, in order to create a more aligned system, in which business schools are encouraged and recognized for prioritizing actions that contribute to long-term, positive societal impact in their teaching, research and service activities.
Take-Aways from the oiConference: Developments in Finance and Sustainability
oikos International
Author
Author: Oliver Braunschweig PhD Researcher, The New School, New York | Advisor to oikos NYC, Students for Sustainability in Economics and Management
The oiConference – Developments in Finance and Sustainability on April 3rd & 4th 2020 was a big success, and the recordings of the sessions are now available on oikos International’s YouTube page! The webinar brought together participants from all over the world, engaging professionals, academics, activists, and students in various discussions about developments in the financial world related to sustainability. This article will try to make some connections between the oiConference and the current times we are living in, and it will give some insights into the running of the conference itself. If you are interested in more details about the individual panels, you can find concise descriptions of each session underneath its YouTube video.
Background to the oiConference
We are writing this blog post in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, as worldwide, many of us are under some form of physical distancing regime. We are both well, and we know how lucky we are compared to the hardships many other people are experiencing. It turns out that the same patterns in our world which animated our original interest in sustainable development, arise also in the current crisis.
In some areas of the world, to be sure, the disease has not (or not yet) hit, so not everyone has to practice physical distancing. But in the harder hit areas not everyone can practice physical distancing: medical professionals, workers in essential infrastructure, and those who have to continue working to avert financial ruin. The disease itself highlights our dependence on essentials like social contact, nourishment, and health. But the disease also highlights our interdependence, by showing that our material and physical well-being is also dependent on the well-being of our neighbors and of people in far away places.
Yet just because many of us are noticing our interdependence more than before, it does not mean that everyone is hit equally be the disease. In fact, both the health situation and the economic fallout highlight the immense inequalities built into our economic system. Patterns of economic, social, and environmental injustice are being reinforced, and those with the least ability to advance in society are –generally — also the more precariously affected by the disease. What we may notice now is that an economy is only as resilient as its most vulnerable members: Large household debt translates to a higher risk of liquidity crises, environmental injustice increase vulnerabilities, and concentration of political power mean that crises are not dealt with early enough.
Many governments have responded with isolationist responses to the pandemic and they have reduced their international cooperation (just at the beginning of the Decade of Action!). Yet the fundamental inequities and precarities which this pandemic brings to light, actually demand even more of a focus on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The interdependence which we now see, should help us become more aware that doubling down on our commitments to better everyone’s life and to decrease environmental destruction, are actually the best way forward now.
Developments in Sustainable Finance
One of the ways in which the SDGs can be reached is by changing the finance industry. And we wanted the webinar as a whole to bring to the fore the possibilities and challenges in the sustainable finance industry. So with this being the case, we debated whether we wanted to ask our panelists to focus also on Covid-19. But we decided that we would let the speakers determine for themselves what they wanted to focus on since it was probably too early for anyone to speak on how this pandemic will change the world and this industry specifically. In the end, as we had initially intended, the speakers focused on how the financial system should be changed and, indeed, is already being changed by them and other actors.
The webinar showed that increasing numbers of financial companies are offering avenues for sustainable investment. This trends allows investors and companies to better align their financial and commercial interests with the SDGs. This trend, in turn, demonstrates to the finance industry and the larger economy that change is possible. Indeed, some of our panelists are working on creating the institutional links and data assessments necessary for larger finance to move in this direction as well.
Click on the image to open the playlist
So while there are clear signs that the industry can change, activists are saying that we must. And several of our panelists made a clear case for why it is important that big industry actors make changes to their investment strategies and portfolios. Overall, the demand is that our generation, which is richer than any generation before us, must also make sure that this richness benefits all. This wealth should bring increasing civil liberties for everyone while reducing ecological destruction and stopping climate change. In other words, there is an uplifting story to be told here: we can internalize externalities, and we do not just have to accept them as part of the game. Change is possible, and it is already happening.
We are inviting you to watch the recordings of the sessions you find most pertinent. And if you are interested in shorter takeaways, our moderators have written a few paragraphs about each session. You can find these shorter paragraphs in the descriptions of the YouTube videos.
We hope that you will enjoy them! (Click on the picture above to access the playlist on YouTube. For your ease, individual videos can also be found at the bottom of this article.)
#oikosWorld #SustainableFinance #MyMoneyMyPlanet
Running the Seminar
Each of the seven online panel sessions had between 60 and 130 participants. We ended both webinar days with a virtual networking session, which brought together another 40 participants and presenters for further discussion. For a free online event like ours, one can expect around 15-20% of total sign-ups to show up. So the roughly 500 sign-ups should have translated to about 75 to 100 participants, which we met and even exceeded. During the two days of the webinar, the audience submitted over 100 questions during Q&A. For the second time now, we used the free version of sli.do so that participants could actively bring in their questions and vote up their favorite questions. This platform allowed us to effectively source questions in the background of the presentations, while the moderators of each session were free to focus on their interaction with the panelists. So when it came to asking questions, we had already sourced the most pertinent questions from the community for the panelists. This active participation far exceeded our expectations and we are glad that so many people joined us!
Next Steps
Our aim is to continue putting together events like this one to foster connections and enable learning about sustainability in finance and economics. If you would like to join us in this endeavor, please reach out to us!
We are also interested in supporting campaigns with a similar focus. One of these campaigns that we hope you will support is #MyMoneyMyPlanet. (Take a selfie with your bankcard while hiding the credit card number with your finger. Then post the selfie and tag your bank, asking them to invest your money sustainably.)
Thanks!
To our sponsors, the Harvard Extension Student Environmental Club (HESEC), oikos International, and SRI Events, a heartfelt thank you for your support in spreading the message about our event and supporting us also in the lead-up to the event itself! And we are also very appreciative of the time and dedication our speakers and moderators gave to participate in this project. Thank you! (And we are also appreciative of you all for having spread the message about your panels in tweets and LinkedIn posts before the oiConference itself!)
Participants joined from all over the world, reflecting the networks of our sponsors and panelists. While the majority of participants joined from the United States and Europe, we also had many join in from countries like Australia, Brazil, India, Malaysia, or Peru, to name just a few. About half of the participants identified themselves as students while the others worked in both the private, public, or non-profit sectors. We’re delighted to see that our second such oiConference has again brought together such a diverse set of participants with their perspectives and questions.
You can find more information on each moderator and speaker in this document.
With a global pandemic forcing many of us inside, we were glad that our virtual conference was able to be a place of learning and connecting safely while also minimizing the environmental impact caused by travel. We have already started planning our next oiConference to continue our exploration of the topic of Sustainability in Finance. If you would like to participate and help organize feel free to reach out to us.
Thank you to all the panelists, moderators, and participants!
The oiConference Planning Team
Stephen Snider
Stephen was born and raised in Jamaica and moved to the US for college to study Economics and Statistics. He then moved to Boston to work in corporate banking and loves his second home. In summer of 2018, he quit his job to start an MA at Harvard in Development Practices. He believes that sustainable finance can drive real change and make the world a better place. Connect with him on Instagram as he shares what he is learning.
Oliver Braunschweig
Oliver is a PhD Student in Economics at The New School in New York, focusing on the intersection of ecological economics, economic history, and money & banking. While studying there, he also co-founded oikos NYC. Originally from Switzerland, he graduated from the University of Basel with a BA in Social Sciences and Economics where he was also active in organizing and facilitating Muslim-Jewish dialogue. He currently lives in Boston with his spouse, Rabbi Elli Cohn.
Rewatch the oiConference!
Did you attend the oiConference and want go back and rewatch a certain point or you simply missed it and would like to take a look into the sessions to catch up? Either way you’re welcome to watch the sessions on the oikos International Youtube channel.
Welcome to the April edition of our newsletter! This month was like no other before and it really showed the strength and determination of our community. After months of planning and last minute adaptation to the global circumstances, the teams behind international oikos projects delivered an array of events covering various topics.
From Curriculum Academy to Spring Meeting, from Chapter Days to Alumni Weekend – we made sure oikos Chapters, Members, Alumni as well as Academia and other individuals outside of the oikos Community could continue to make an impact towards a sustainable world of tomorrow regardless of the ongoing situation. Now, more than ever, the youth is in the position to shape the world towards sustainability through local and global actions.
Friday, April 24th, 4 PM CEST oikos wants to change business education, but what exactly do we want it to look like? Help us think through this question by joining the “Design Your Own Curriculum” program where we will work to create a guide that will help students build their own ideal business degree. The program started at the oikos in Residence in February and now we’re excited to invite the rest of the oikos community to learn more and join the team. Join in the call on Friday through Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/2032032203
Alumni Weekend is an online event which took place on April 11 & 12 with an aim of reuniting and bringing together the oikos Alumni Community through exchange, learning and a bit of fun along the way.
The first of its kind online, Alumni Weekend was warmly welcomed by the 30 alumni joining in from around the globe over the course of a weekend who took this amazing opportunity to reconnect with old friends while also meeting new people.
The flexibility of the event allowed us to quickly introduce what was new in oikos and present different opportunities for Alumni. If you were not able to attend that session, you can find the presentation here.
At the Alumni Debate on the topic of Entrepreneurship – answer for today’s challenges, Francesca Stocco and Yoon-Joo, representing two generations of oikos Lille Alumni, gave different perspectives on the topic, based on their experience. You can find more information about Francesca’s ethical fashion business here. And if you want to learn more about social business solutions to spread, read more about the Snowball effect, Yoon-Joo’s organization. The final conclusion was that oikos shapes entrepreneurs and changemakers, with further discussion on why and how this is happening.
One of the main takeaways was also the need for a Fashion Thematic Squad with some of the Alumni taking part expressing interest in working together with oikos members to kick-start it.
Enough open space between the sessions was left to connect, have a coffee and lunch together which enabled everyone to get to know each other and connect on a more personal level. During this space, we got significant feedback on the current Alumni network as well as great ideas how to improve communication. We will do our best in implementing them.
If you have any ideas how to improve this kind of events or any requests/ideas from your side about the alumni network, feel free to write any time to: alumni@oikos-international.org Please make sure that you and everyone you know from the Alumni Community join the Facebook group and LinkedIn group for all the latest oikos updates & network opportunities.
Please join us for #GoodAfterCovid19: The Millennial Edition!
We’re partnering with the folks at #goodaftercovid19 — an initiative led by Paul & Kim Polman, Carlo Giardinetti, Sara Roversi and now over 50 other thought leaders from around the world –to build off of their work and cultivate a group of individuals specifically from the Millennial generation. We have a few goals for the conversation:
To amplify the message that Millennial Leadership matters in this moment. The conversation will be livestreamed for a global audience (hopefully with many other millennials and young leaders). We hope this conversation will be a catalyst not only to our own action, but to the action and involvement of many other young people around the world.
To form new connections. Now, more than ever, we have an opportunity to truly work at a global scale. We hope that by bringing together folks who are leading the charge in their industries and countries, we can form new connections, amplify the work you all are doing and weave new threads between that work.
To find clarity in next steps. 90 minutes is not a very long time… but our hope is that we can identify a few next steps and actions to move our collective energy towards. We believe that even one or two small steps from a group like this can create a great deal of movement towards imagining and creating a more sustainable, just, better version of our world post covid-19.
The conversation will take place on Tuesday, April 21st at 9amPST/6pmCEST and will take the format of a “virtual fishbowl.” We will have about 20 participants on a zoom call and take turns entering the “fishbowl,” which will be livestreamed out to the audience.
Please register for the EventBrite event and from there, you will be sent login information. We hope to see you there!
Step by Step – beziehungsweise bit by bit – wollen wir gemeinsam in ein nachhaltigeres Leben aufbrechen. Dafür brauchen wir Euch! Eure Erfahrung! Eure Inspiration! Eure Unterstützung!
Wir wollen uns gemeinsam darüber austauschen, wie ein nachhaltigeres Leben aussieht, dieses Leben bis zum nächsten Treffen leben und dann reflektieren: Was hat sich gut umsetzen lassen? Was eher nicht? Wobei könnten wir uns noch gegenseitig unterstützen?
Wir wollen dieses Semester gemeinsam durch die Themenbereiche Bad, Küche und Kleiderschrank gehen – Schritt für Schritt. Seid dabei!
Um an dem Zoom-Meeting teilzunehmen, scannt einfach den QR-Code, klickt auf den Link oder gebt die Meeting-ID in Zoom ein. Link: https://uni-bayreuth.zoom.us/j/8862277345 Meeting-ID: 886 227 7345 Passwort: bitbybit
Broaden your mind, experience new cultures or simply relax?
⟶ Travelling is great, that’s for sure! Everyone does it and almost everyone loves it. But did you ever took the time to actually think about the impact you as tourist may have?🤔
Tourism is one of the worlds major industries generating about 10% of world’s GDP. However, it is also one of the main CO2 emitters globally and proofs to be responsible for a whole bunch of environmental and social problems starting from waste and pollution issues to loss of biodiversity, gentrification as well as over-tourism. So does this mean that travelling is evil? 🤭 Not necessarily❗️ But certainly the tourism industry needs to be reshaped – towards an approach that considers environmental, social and economical aspects to the same extent. in short: we need sustainable tourism! ♻️
Fortunately there are people out there already working on that – and we from oikos Graz in cooperation with oikos Vienna are very pleased to present you two of them right away.
Two real pioneers in the field of sustainable tourism! ✅
👉🏽Gudrun Gruber & Martina Handler, CEO and Head of Sustainability of the Sustainable Tour Operator “Weltweitwandern (https://www.weltweitwandern.at/)” from Graz will provide you with some hands-on practice example on how a sustainable tourism company could look like, what it means to live sustainability all along the supply chain and what you need to consider when booking sustainable journeys for yourself.
Following the two presentations YOU will have the chance to join a brief online workshop, exchange ideas, ask questions and discuss ways forward. oikos Graz and the oikos Vienna are looking forward to meet you online! 🙌🏼
Chapter Days is the two-day event for the members of the oikos community where they have a chance to exchange and learn from each other about oikos International, chapter projects and events, colaborations and other and teach each other in different fields like Marketing, Recruiting, Teambuilding, Strategy and so forth.
Chapter Days 2020 was trully a colorful and energizingevent. We are very happy that even without meeting onsite in Baku, we were able to exchange and connect. In total, we had 73 oikees from all around the world joining sessions during the two days and 21 chapters were represented.
We sense that we successfully used this digital platform to plant some seeds for the whole community for the months to come.
But what happened?
We started with a slow morning full of fast information on oikos International’s activities & opportunities. After sharing our (lunch) break we then dove into our curriculum change initiative, gaining a better understanding of how we can directly influence our environments.
We kicked off the second day with 3 rounds of open spaces – designed from us for us. From grounding meditations to IT workshops or Team building, these 11 sessions gave us a glimpse into the huge resource and knowledge base our community has to offer.
The closing afternoon was well spent in bilateral exchange and circle discussions on our key take-aways, the development focus and acupuncture points of the chapters and the questions that might guide our way as a community.
Do you want to dive deeper into what has been said? Searching for some of the presentations or other resources? Do you still have some important thoughts to share?
Then – this working doc is for you! You can find harvests for all sessions bundled at one place and even the video recordings will be linked soon.
From what we heard we believe that this encounter was encouraging and empowering for us as individuals, chapters and the community as a whole.
Let’s build on these two days and to use them as a driver for more collaboration, cooperation and exchange. We encourage you to continue networking – in whatever way suits you best!
We would like to thank everyone taking part in the Chapter Days!
The oikos Curriculum Academy is participant-driven workshop for students, early career researchers, faculty representatives and other stakeholders, developed and facilitated by oikos student members. Its main purpose is to reflect and learn about innovative economics and management programs and teaching approaches that are designed to address current global environmental and social challenges.
The second edition of oikos Curriculum Academy took place from April 3 to 5. Originally planned both online and onsite in Lausanne following the success of such format of the first Academy last year in Prague, the organizing team was forced to shift it into a fully online format.
This, however, didn’t pose much of a problem to oikos Lausanne and the Curriculum Change Team of oikos International who worked hard to put together a three-day workshop gathering and connecting experienced voices from academia and students eager to push for a change in how students are taught economics and management.
Over the three days, participants tried to grasp the breadth of economics and management subjects and relate them to current social and environmental challenges. The Academy once again proved to be a prolific platform for bringing together professors, young researchers and students to discuss and better understand each other’s needs. Such understanding, along with exchanging their ideas and experiences, is key for building partnerships and collaborations towards driving the curriculum change based on.
Perhaps sometimes it feels such change is not too likely to happen and we can easily be discouraged by the lack of understanding of the sustainability issues. In such cases we need to look at successful real-world examples. One of those is the Cusanus University, which showed sustainability-centered studies are possible. This should be a motivating factor pushing us to work hard and work together in order to drive the change at our universities and subsequently on the planetary level.
We would like to thank all of those who took part in this inspiring weekend. Stay tuned for the next oikos Curriculum Academy!