The Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) was founded in 2007 as an initiative of the UN Global compact. It primarily engages with business and management schools across the world to ensure that “they (business schools) provide future leaders with the skills needed to balance economic and sustainability goals”.
PRME works through six principles with the objective to develop capabilities of students as a creator of sustainable value for business and society. In other words, PRME’s effort will advance achievement of sustainable development goals. It has over 800 signatories, on voluntary basis, worldwide.
PRME is essentially for the business and management schools, though other higher educational institutes are not excluded. Out of 124 signatories in the US only 20 are not business schools.
Out of 88 signatories from UK only 13 are from general education. The respective figures from Canada are 30 and one; Australia are 31 and two. In case of China the total number of signatories are 23 and 3 are only from general education and in case of India the respective figures are 54 and 12.
In 2012, PRME formed PRME Champions group to realise sustainable Development Goals (SDG). There are 37 institutes, globally in this group and only six are from general education.
Primary focus
Considering the primary focus of PRME, which is the business schools, the logic model of PRME’s action plan is:
Business leaders, if sensitised to SDGs, will work towards imbibing the SDGs in their business decisions. Most of the business leaders come from business schools, hence if students of the business schools are exposed to sustainability, they will work for striking a balance between business goals and the SDGs.
However, PRME should be more inclusive on two grounds.
First, a study conducted by Adi Ignatius, HBR’s editor-in-chief found that of the 100 best performing CEOs only 29 had MBAs. Therefore, targeting only business schools is not sufficient to ‘catch-them-young’ as business leaders are coming from other area of specialisations as well.
Second, strategic business decisions need approval from the board and there is sufficient evidence across the world that organisations are violating even basic environmental and working condition related regulations questioning the role of board in overseeing business decisions.
NGOs and civil society activists are taking up such issues to the court of law around the world.
NGOs’ role
NGOs played a crucial role for bringing out the shortcomings of MDGs (millennium development goals), which made the UN bring out SDGs in September 2015 at the UN General Assembly. Business and Human Rights Resource Centre has presented a case for the need of board oversight for effective implementation of human rights due diligence within the organisations.
SDGs cannot be implemented without due respect to human rights as 90 per cent of the goals and targets of the SDGs correspond to human rights obligations.
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) Major Group Official Position Paper for the 2017 High-Level Political Forum expressed concerns over the shrinking space for civil societies in the implementation of SDGs, though 2030 agenda recognises the critical role of NGOs in “raising awareness and mobilise; building capacity; designing and implementing projects; monitoring and reviewing policies; collecting data; providing technical expertise; and both support and holding governments accountable to their commitments”.
In addition to the above roles, Human Rights Council has given special emphasis to the civil society’s role as watchdog so as to ensure checks and balances in the system.
Therefore, budding professionals who man and lead the NGOs and other civil society organisations need to be sensitised towards SDGs. And these leaders do not come only from business schools. They mainly come from liberal arts discipline including media and journalism.
So PRME should take necessary efforts to bring other higher educational institutes in addition to the management institutes into its ambit to give justice to the purpose of PRME and UN has to play a proactive role to make it happen.
The writer is former professor and independent researcher