BUILDING RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS SCHOOLS: A CASE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DAR ES SALAAM BUSINESS SCHOOL By Dr. Muhsin S. Masoud and Dr. Omari K. Mbura University

BUILDING RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS SCHOOLS:

A CASE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DAR ES SALAAM BUSINESS SCHOOL

By Dr. Muhsin S. Masoud and Dr. Omari K. Mbura

University of Dar es Salaam Business School

Introduction

Objectives1. Focuses on the processes that can be used

by Business Schools to manage themselves in a responsible manner.

2. What to do for our graduates to act responsibly.

1.0 Introduction

Informing Concepts• International Leaders Forum (IBLF) Model of

Corporate Social Responsibility, • the United Nations Principles of Responsible

Management Education • Martell (2008) concepts on what constitute a

responsible Business School. • Integrated ideas from the Copenhagen Business

School with regard to the implementation of responsible management

Introduction

University of Dar es Salaam Business School (UDBS)

• Part of 50 years celebration• a framework where the School is expected to

aim to become after the 50 years• among the First Generation Universities in

East Africa and is the oldest in Tanzania.• the place where the two authors teach

Introduction• “behaving responsibly” is the commitment of the business

school, starting with the leadership to all other members of staff, to behaving in a manner that bears an overall positive impact on both academic and administrative employees, students, and other stakeholders such as suppliers, the government, community, unions, and creditors.

• Ethical conduct and behaving responsibly go together.• Ethics refers to values but it is generally challenging to

articulate those values cross culturally. • Universally-accepted hyper values do exists. These include

honesty, fairness, respect, responsibility, and compassion (sharing success with the less fortunate members of society through employee volunteer services and community service).

1.1 Key ethical and responsibility issues in business school

Why do we have products with ethical conduct anomalies? Triggers a need for looking at:

(i) How do we manage ourselves within and(ii) The kind of behaviour that we inculcate in our students. • Looking at our selves, are we motivated enough to behave

responsibly? Are we punctual and ethical in whatever we do?• Do we incorporate ethical and responsible behaviour in

whatever we do? • Are environmental concerns and sustainability given

importance in all our actions: mission, vision and core values, governance structure, curriculum, incentives, and punishment etc?


•To what extent does curriculum cover the ethical and responsible matters? - To a certain extent socially irresponsible concepts and ethically unsound theories tend to dominate our curriculum, - one of the expertises of an accountant is to learn how to steal, pilfer, embezzle, funds and not be caught.-Many people erroneously believe that laws are there in order, surprisingly, to be broken and not obeyed.•Sen (1997) argues that the effect that behaviours of the actors in firms are affected by the nature of education they had received.


• Bennis and O’Toole (2005) business students spent “95% of their time learning how to calculate with a view to maximising wealth. Just 5% of their time…is spent developing moral capacities.”

• Bennis and O’Toole, (2005) : A good manager, is the one “who requires much more than technical training. It requires education in moral reasoning.

1.2 Internal processes in managing business schools in a responsible manner

1.2.1 Overview• CSR organisation ought to be the one whose employees value

it as a great place to work in and whose customers and suppliers consider it as the great partner to have and the community appreciates it as a great neighbour to have.

• A business school that embraces CSR should be valued for giving out responsible candidates.

• We argue for the connectivity of CRS practices and long-term opportunities for the business schools.

• The CSR we are advocating is supposed to distance itself from the 3 curses of CSR: Incremental, peripheral and uneconomic.

1.2 Internal processes in managing business schools in a responsible manner

• Our discussion in this section centres on how we can manage our internal processes to produce an overall positive impact on society.

• We adopt the framework developed by the International Leaders Forum (IBLF) to elaborate the methods that can be used to build a Business School that has made responsible behaviour an integral part of its education and training programmes.

Figure 1: THE IBLF SPHERES OF INFLUENCE MODEL

The IBLF spheres of influence model

• At the centre of the Model, we have Leadership and Management. This is where the seeds of sustainability, responsibility or ethical conducts start to grow.

• Acceptable conducts will then diffuse to the employees: both UDBS academic and administrative staff.

• The market place sphere depicts the interaction mode with our clients.

• Supply chain: do we take into consideration ethical issues and our values in developing relationship with suppliers such as high schools and suppliers of other non-human inputs?

The IBLF spheres of influence model

• Community concerns: Is there a mechanism to bring about long-term and beneficial relationship between the school and the community at large?

• Enabling environment considers the relationship between the school and the government, and the mass media. It also entails seeking public opinion on issues related to CSR.

1.2.2.1 Leadership and management

• 3 Aspects to be considered: (1) Leadership, Values and Culture (2) Communications and (3) Strategy and processes.

(i) Leadership Values and Culture• Commitment of a responsible business school depends on the

leadership of the organisation –The leaders :whether they are perceived to ‘walk the talk’.

• Leadership is about aspirations, which means developing a vision of the future and getting the people to buy into it.

• a leader should demonstrate an ability to inspire, engage and facilitate the endeavours of others, to be seen as walking, talking and breathing symbols of corporate responsibility with strong ethical values.


(ii) Internal and External Communications• Business Schools are to communicate their CSR initiatives to

all interested parties and make public their strategies in achieving CSR objectives.

• Business Schools are to actively contribute to CSR-related journals, conferences and workshops.

• The school promote school responsible activities to the stakeholders through the use of newsletters, flyers, notice boards, meetings, email, press releases, annual reports, the internet, intranet, events, presentations, case studies, awards, and picture and success story displays.


(iii) Strategy and Processes• The key issue is whether CSR is strategically managed or just

regarded as the practice that end with its being included in the vision, mission and core values, or an existence of a policy.

• In UDBS do we have appropriate and effective governance and budgets that specifically deal with the CSR responsibility.

• As for community engagement, do we have an annual programme plan with activity priorities?

• At the university-wide level how is the CSR issue handled?• Currently, at least, the Entrepreneurship Centre (UDEC), Quality

Assurance Bureau and Institute of Development Studies do exist.

1.2.2.2 Workplace

• The work environment significantly influences their quality of workers life, their family life and can even affect their health.

• Every business school must have an interest in becoming an employer of choice and, thus, being able to attract the most committed and talented staff.

• Being an employer of choice requires respect for the talents of all individuals regardless of their gender, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, age .

• On the whole, Business Schools ought to be fair in the recruitment, promotion and development of staff in addition to ensuring that the workers operated in a safe, healthy and fair working environment.

1.2.2.3 Market place

• The marketplace is a critical meeting point between Business Schools and the society.

• A responsible practice for the Business School is to consider what impact, value or harm its core products (students, ideas and advice) and services are likely to generate for the society in the marketplace.

• A school should keep its approach to marketing, advertising, and procurement fair and honest, as well as effective.

• Key aspects of Market Place management in the responsible business school context include: (i) Integrity and Standards (ii) Service quality, reliability and safety (iii) Customer relations

1.2.2.4 Supply chain

• A Business School should ensure, that the Codes of Conduct and Standards it sets for its own operations are reflected in its partners.

• A mechanism needs to be instituted to ensure that those joining the school or dealing with it in any transaction are aware of the need to avoid compromising ethical, environmental and responsibility issues.

• Members of Business Schools should ‘walk the talk’ and abide by what they have written down.

• Some aspects of the Supply Chain management in the responsible business school context include (i) Shared values, (ii)Business Standards, (iii)Codes of Conduct and (iv)Capacity building.

1.2.2.5 Community development

• A business school can take the initiative by supporting and contributing to the community through active community engagement and outreach support services.

• This can be in the form of charitable donations, staff volunteering and providing other in-kind resources (e.g. use of professional skills or the use of equipment and premises.)

• Short-term programmes like the ones conducted by the UDEC and MDCB are geared towards achieving this objective.

• The 2011 entrepreneurship training in the UDSM-UDBS 50th years anniversary is a typical case

1.2.2.5 Community development

•The support the UDSM and UDBS extended to the Mbagala bombing victims and orphans are both a good public relations gesture and more importantly a form of community service.Some suggestions on increasing efficiency in community engagement by the Business School:•Encouraging employees to volunteer in community service and the provision of financial contributions to the community or help in kind. •Identifying enthusiastic volunteers among our staff and finding out their opinions on how the school can support them in their voluntary activities.

1.2.2.6 Enabling Environment

• A business school’s firm decision to incorporate responsible practices in its operations and produce responsible leaders may be at odd with the prevailing practices in society.

• Under this situation, the Business School should attempt, as far as possible, to help create an enabling environment for the school to flourish by helping to improve the operating climate (legal, institutional etc) in which it operates.

• When the UDEC started, it had to work extra-hard to change the mindsets of the students and lecturers in addition to pushing for a change in policy at the country level.


• Key aspects in creating an enabling environment in the process of developing a responsible business school include: (i) engagement with the government and the mass media (ii) seeking public opinion on the issue (iii) Capacity building.

• The business school has to focus on maintaining a good rapport and relationship with the government.

• These relationships contribute towards creating an enabling environment for a responsible business education to emerge, and thus contribute to the social well-being of society.

• Thus, it is important to have a person in place responsible for ensuring that these relations flourish.


• Engaging with media and public opinion is also important strategy in projecting an image in the society that the Business School was in the forefront in facilitating change and enabling members of the community at large to embrace good CSR practices.

• The Business School can also use the media to propagate its CSR practices.

• Capacity building and research are important in enabling the Business School to share responsible practices with others.

• For the Business School, this entails participating and speaking at CSR training seminars and conferences.


• We also need to mention here that this paper stems from the participation by some of the academic members of staff in CSR training seminars.

• The authors have also pioneered a course among the 8 corporate Aga Khan foundation companies. A similar course has also been offred to our MBA students

• But we need to go a step further and facilitate CSR case writing and CSR conferences.

• We can use our Business Management Journal to encourage the submission of academic papers on CSR and probably have a special issue after sponsoring research on CSR.


• We need to start thinking about organising CSR conferences in a bid to raise its profile in our Business School and society at large.

• The CSR can also be a focal point when we are seeking for partners in other countries.

1st part conclusion

• The CSR: driven by proactive behaviour• We need not think of CSR in terms of philanthropy but as our

core function and strategic investment permeating all levels of leadership and management, the workplace, the marketplace, the supply chain, and the community. CSR=CSO

• We also need to ensure that CSR is built and not bolted: because of opportunities it engenders.

• We need to manage CSR professionally with practices, policies, processes and systems.

2.0 THE PRINCIPLES AND THEIR IMPLEMENTATION IN PRODUCING RESPONSIBLE STUDENTS

• The Business School is involved in the preparation of current and future managers.

• Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) that may enable us to produce responsible business leaders.

• We examine the 6 principles and then propose some strategies and operational mechanism which we believe can stimulate discussion.

• We table our proposed future objectives likely enable us to achieve more in relation to the principle.

2.1 Six principles of Responsible Management Education

Principle 1- Purpose•We will develop the capabilities of students to be future generators of sustainable value for business and society at large and to work for an inclusive and sustainable global economy. Principle 2 - Values•We will incorporate into our academic activities and curricula the values of global social responsibility as portrayed in international initiatives such as the United Nations Global Compact.Principle 3 - Method•We will create educational frameworks, materials, processes and environments that enable effective learning experiences for responsible leadership.


Principle 4 - Research•We will engage in conceptual and empirical research that advances our understanding about the role, dynamics, and impact of corporations in the creation of sustainable social, environmental and economic value.Principle 5 - Partnership•We will interact with managers of business corporations to extend our knowledge of their challenges in meeting social and environmental responsibilities and to explore jointly effective approaches to meeting these challenges.


Principle 6 - Dialogue• We will facilitate and support dialogue and debate among

educators, students, business, government, consumers, media, civil society organizations and other interested groups and stakeholders on critical issues related to global social responsibility and sustainability.

General conclusion

•To achieve what was discussed, we need to distance ourselves from the 4 characteristics that constitute irresponsible behaviour. (i) Believing that we are protected from terrible consequences because of the misconception of “too big to fall”(ii) Building our operational models that thrive on our clients’ supposed ignorance(iii) Becoming so absorbed in the micro-reality of our local context that we fail to see the bigger picture.(iv)Believing in the most comfortable reality that is too good to be true and lose sight of our real objectives and national obligations.

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•THE END!!

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Bye

Documents

BUILDING RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS SCHOOLS: A CASE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DAR ES SALAAM BUSINESS SCHOOL By Dr. Muhsin S. Masoud and Dr. Omari K. Mbura University