There’s no longer such a thing as “business as usual”. And tomorrow’s corporate leaders ought to heed that advice – not just as a warning and challenge, but as an opportunity.“We did not just arrive at the brink of a global catastrophe accidentally,” says Professor Debbie Haski-Leventhal, the master of business administration director at Macquarie University Business School.
“We really can’t afford even one more decade of business as usual, because that’s not only putting ourselves as humanity, with our ecosystem and biodiversity, in extreme danger; it also endangers the continuity of business.” “What an increasing number of businesses now realise is that to be responsible takes a lot more than corporate philanthropy,” she says. “In the last decade, we have seen companies take real social action because it’s the right thing to do, because they feel they have a moral obligation to do it, and, therefore they take a more holistic approach to their responsibility.”
“Business doesn’t have to crash the environment, it doesn’t have to destroy the community, it doesn’t even have to destroy its competitors to thrive.”Haski-Leventhal surveyed 10,000 business students across the world to understand the sentiment around CSR and responsible management education. She found that most of them want their courses tailored to help them address social impact.
She adds: “Most people just think about future generations, but the definition of sustainability is to also address the needs of the present. It’s not our present in western societies, it’s everywhere, so how do we act with global responsibility, compassion and care?” The MBA capstone project reflects this learning. Last year, students used the National Disability Insurance Scheme as the business case study, working to find ways to improve operations and service delivery within the disability support sector.