#Students – BOS

The Task At Hand: Facing a Trump America

The following post by American CBS MBA student Wynne Lewis is an accompanying piece she wrote recently for the Financial Times’ MBA Blog.

Titled “Case for responsible business post Trump and Brexit shocks“, Wynne spoke to the shocks of the recent inauguration of Mr. Trump in the U.S. and the vote for Brexit in the UK. She argues that these events are creating many setbacks to the strides we have taken recently in favour of human rights and combating climate change. But they are also catalysts for positive change for the individuals who are fired up and ready to go stand up for what matters most – for example by contributing to a more sustainable economy by founding your own venture.

Read the full post on the FT MBA Blog.

In her latest piece on the CBS MBA blog, she now offers a little bit of inspiration to get you started with making a change.

By Wynne Lewis.

As Eleanor Roosevelt once said,

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

We fear regression, but there is much we can do.

I spoke with my classmates (representative of countries from all around the world), my professors, and visiting speakers and here is a little bit of inspiration to get you started.

For Employers / Employees:

Recognise the power of business. Do not be ignorant to your own influence. There is no such thing as an a-political corporation in the polarised climate under which we are operating today. Every decision must be intentional.
Create meaningful working class jobs. If your consumers are voting pro-nationalism, are they willing to pay a higher price for locally sourced products? Can you source your products or raw materials locally? Can you conduct market research to prove your case to investors? There may even be a risk management case to make for keeping the supply chain close for better transparency.
Treat your employees with respect and invest in their development. Look at the most recently hired/promoted people at your company. Are they a diverse group? Are you promoting from within? If not, chances are good that some of your talent is falling through the cracks or not being developed. It may not be intentional, but you can become aware of it and take strides to be sure you are capitalizing on your best resource – your employees.
If you have employees who may feel marginalised or unsafe in the current social climate sparked by the election, reach out and check-in with them. Do they feel safe in their commute to work? (This has been very relevant for many of my friends living in New York, so it is worth asking.) Is there anything you can do to help? Has the office climate changed at all for them? It is important that they are able to focus on doing a good job without feeling marginalised or harassed at work. Keep tabs on this. If handled with care, you will foster the establishment of a strong working environment and retain your talented minority (women included) workers.
Look for business opportunities. What was the change you were hoping for? Is there a gap in products/services today and the products/services we need to achieve that change? Your next great venture may just be hidden in the void.

You will know best how these things must ultimately align with a clear business case appropriate for your company, but it is important to point out those business practices that shape our countries, our politics, and ultimately our societies.

For Investors:

Divest from energy companies who are not investing in the future. Oil is booming right now with the recent elections, but the future will hold a diverse portfolio of energy sources. Companies who are only focused on fossil fuels are resisting innovation.
Be an active voter in the companies you invest in. If you hold stocks in companies that are doing things that you do not support – underpaying workers, polluting, vocalising racist sentiment – use your voice as a shareholder to change things. Be active and let them know that as an owner you do not support the way they are operating the business. Chances are high, you are not alone. Get other investors involved.
Invest in companies that are good for people, planet, and profit. There are many resources for those interested in impact investing. Read up and put your money where your values are.

On the personal side: invest in values you care about. Whatever they are, donate your time or money to the things that matter most. Create the world you want to live in and that you want your children to live in. Consider it a long-term investment.

The most important thing ultimately is to do something. So get out there, and be active.

Have some great ideas? Please add a comment below.

Based in New York, Wynne is currently enrolled as an MBA student at Copenhagen Business School. She was attracted to the Copenhagen MBA for its strong focus on Responsible Management and the promise of a global classroom. Post-MBA, she is toying with the idea of starting her own venture. She is a blogger for the Financial Times MBA blog, where she hopes to tell the story of what really powers her passion for Responsible Management on the far-reaching global business platform that is the Financial Times.

Pic by Pexels

Bold Businesses wanted for transformative Deep Retrofit – The CBS Student and Innovation House

By Kristjan Jespersen and Anne Marie Engtoft Larsen.

We live in times of change. Society is quickly evolving in every aspect, facing us with global ecological, economic, human and social challenges. To overcome these perils students must play a key role in formulating and developing the necessary solutions needed to curb these complex future challenges. Its is crucial that, during their studies, students are given the tools needed in a thriving, thought-provoking and ambitious framework in which they can question the status quo and develop world-class innovations with long lasting impact.

Why student engagement matters

The Copenhagen Business School (CBS) has a longstanding tradition of such student engagement. Students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels are actively engaged in various ways (internships, community service learning, entrepreneurship, student organisations, research, etc.) with many communities outside the campus. While many activities are formally initiated through university associations, the vast majority of activities are initiated independently. Students build upon the lessons learned in the classroom with such real-world experiences.

The quickly developing student initiative of creating the CBS Student and Innovation House (SIH) builds upon this already established momentum. Emerging from the vestiges of Frederiksberg’s old police station it wishes to solve the grand challenges of our time in a hitherto unseen collaboration between students, researchers, businesses and the public sector. It will challenge conventional thinking and give students the tools to translate their ideas into solutions while giving them the drive and courage needed to take responsibility for the positive transformation of the world we live in.
Central to the house is its engagement with sustainability as practices and outcomes. It aims to extend beyond narrow definitions and in the spirit of the house entail human and societal well being, as well as promoting sustainable practices in business, economics and society. It is intended to supplement existing activities with a set of specific programs to enable students to work with partners, to forge new initiatives and to inspire, support and promote sustainability activities both on and off campus.

The building

Names on the people in the picture are, from left to right, Anne Marie Larsen, Andreas Gjede, Jens Bonde, Christian Refshauge and Anne Katrine Vedstesen.

The foundation for the CBS Student and Innovation House is the 97 year old police station designed by the famous Danish architect Hack Kampmann’s, located in the heart of Copenhagen at Frederiksberg at Howitzvej 30. The building is a cultural and historical gem and forms part of an urban space with with a high architectural value. The building has more than 3,100 m2 plus an inward yard and large basement. The beautiful square with the water fountain and the two colonnades in front of the house creates a peaceful space and ceremonial welcome. From the outside the building represents the students’ great grandparents’ traditional Danish resource: craftsmanship, while on the inside the building will be a testimony of today’s proud Danish resource: creative and smart minds, who dares to think innovatively and challenge conventional thinking.

Building this vessel will be no small feat. The students have to-date raised 52.5 million DKK and they have framed the project as a living laboratory for sustainability.

SIH – an interconnecting test bed for sustainability and innovation

SIH will treat this deep-retrofit project as an opportunity to implement, test, research, and teach sustainability, and in that way contribute directly to the significant transitions required to reach a sustainable future. The unique focus of the SIH’s approach would be its emphasis on the behavioural and business dimensions of the sustainability components and innovative approach to collaboration between private and public stakeholders and students.

To this end, the students propose a retrofit project that supports its sustainability objectives by:

Produces a world-renowned building project, that
Operates at the frontier of sustainability,
Is net positive in both human-well-being and environmental outcomes,
Produces a world-renowned building project, that operates at the frontier of sustainability,
Is net positive in both human-well-being and environmental outcomes,
Contributes directly to the health, productivity and subjective wellbeing of everyone in the buildings, and that
Directly supports and is reflected in the social innovation and community engagement activities that go on in the building and the campus community, including
An ongoing monitoring and social science research program, that offers the opportunity to implement, test, and teach sustainability,
A specific focus on the analysis of behaviour change,
The encouragement of innovation for societal benefit,
A strong focus on breaking down silos between students, faculty and society,
Partnerships with firms and organizations interested in sustainable building and neighbourhoods, that offer the capacity to build a regional scale living lab that focuses on the role of the business sector in the sustainability transition.
Exploring possible ways for integrating students drive and commitment in more informal learning ways, such as extracurricular projects, informal collaboration with researchers along with the possibility of internships and for-credit engagement with both on-campus and off-campus partners.

Invitation for collaboration

This project, however, cannot happen without the vision and mission of forward thinking companies, civil society organizations and municipalities desiring to push the limits of sustainability. The SIH calls on the builders, the technology providers, the municipalities, the consultants, the green building civil-society, the innovators and the start-ups to come together and devise the most innovative retrofit solutions for a project that will have lasting and scalable building opportunities. The students place a challenge at the feet of these stakeholders and invite them onboard this transformative task.

For more info, contact Anne Marie Larsen: annemarie@studenthouse.dk

Kristjan Jespersen is Doctoral Fellow at the Dept. of Intercultural Communication and Management at CBS and Anne Marie Engtoft Larsen is Co-Founder of the CBS Student and Innovation House.

Pic by Petra Kleis.

Merken

Getting the next generation critically engaged – Reflections on Responsibility Day at CBS 2016

By Martiina Mira Matharu M. Srkoc & Mette Morsing.

On their very first official day as bachelor students at Copenhagen Business School, approximately 2.000 young people met at Falkoner Hall near CBS. The main agenda was to engage in a debate about what does responsibility mean for business and for a business school as well as for its students.

The case method as a mean to make responsibility more tangible

To make things a little more ”real”, a case study had been developed for this year’s batch of 2016-students. This year’s case concerned how the Danish glassblower and social for-profit entrepreneur, Pernille Bülow, over the last decade has established a business in partnership with an NGO from the Global South. The business partnership produces jewellery for the Western market and builds on a hundred year old tradition among women in Eastern Ghana of producing beads of recycled glass. Pernille Bülow has managed to re-fashion the beads into stylish jewellery designs to be sold in Europe and as such creating local jobs for a group of single mothers in the local villages in Ghana. However, Pernille Bülow Ltd. is still a relatively small business; although it has great potential, the social entrepreneurship struggles with a number of challenges. CBS students were therefore given the opportunity to engage in a case competition with the ambition of providing advice to Pernille Bülow on challenges of scalability, internal expansion, social media and marketing.

Across 19 study programs students produced proposals for Pernille Bülow. Over100 proposals were submitted and 3 winners were identified and invited to present in front of a jury that included Pernille Bülow herself the following week and a winner was found and awarded.

A university’s responsibility: shaping leaders with a simultaneous concern for business and society

One of the most important things we do as university staff is to educate the next generation of decision makers. Many years ago, CBS students came to this institution primarily to learn how to “crack the numbers” and get the right answer. CBS has long been recognised as producing solid and capable “tradesmen”. Today this ideal has been extended to include a systematic effort to develop study programs to reflect the complexity of challenges for business navigating in contemporary society. Not only is it important for students to master the tools for profit maximization, but it is increasingly important to learn how businesses have to navigate, engage and contribute to the development of political, social and environmental challenges locally and globally. Needless to say, the understanding and support from CBS top management is crucial for carrying this message across.

Responsibility Day also provides an opportunity for students to directly address top management, an opportunity that is greatly appreciated. CBS’ management team is on stage responding to questions from students like ”How does CBS make sure that corporate partners are aligned or live up to CBS’ ethical standards for example engaging with the British American Tobacco company as a CBS partner?” and “CBS seems to be taking responsibility really seriously, but I believe it hasn’t been like this forever. So when and why did responsibility become such an important part of CBS?” CBS management responded by pointing to CBS’s longstanding tradition of research and teaching in responsible management that serves as point of distinctiveness.

While the CBS Responsibility Day does not necessarily change the mindset of energetic and hopeful young students, the hope is that it will at least make them think about the role of business in a challenged society.

Martiina Mira Matharu M. Srkoc is Head of Section, PRME and responsible for the administration and implementation of PRME.
Mette Morsing is Professor at the CBS Center for Corporate Social Responsibility and researches Business and CSR / Sustainability, Governance and CSR, Communication studies, Organization theory and Identity-image relations.

Pic by Jørgen Albertus