The Network for Business Sustainability delivered an impact-charged, full-day workshop on Systems Change for Sustainability alongside MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative. The result was the formation of new ideas, relationships, and collaborations.
Kept busy by their critical contributions to research, teaching, and outreach, business school deans, faculty, and staff rarely get the opportunity to stop and dream. On June 15, 2023, amid the United Nations-run Responsible Management Education Week in New York City, Ivey’s Network for Business Sustainability (NBS) and their partner MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, made space for dreaming – dreaming about a future where people and the planet prosper.
“The (Systems Change for Sustainability) workshop, a highlight of the forum, not only provided valuable insights and practical strategies but also fostered engaging conversations among passionate professionals striving for a better future”, one participant in the 2023 Systems Change for Sustainability workshop remarked.
This workshop was part of a larger event held by the Principles for Responsible Management Education, an initiative of the United Nations Global Compact. The week’s events gathered individuals working with and in partnership with business schools around the globe, including members of NBS’s Sustainability Centres Community.
The motivating statistic for the week was this – “Each year, 70 million students globally graduate with a degree in business, law, or economics.” Leaders were driven to expand their toolkit for equipping these students to be responsible changemakers rather than contributors to inequality, corruption, and greed.
Ivey professor Jury Gualandris facilitating the workshop
The Systems Change workshop was facilitated by Jury Gualandris, Faculty Director of the Centre for Building Sustainable Value and NBS, and Jason Jay, Senior Lecturer and Director of the Sustainability Initiative at MIT Sloan.
The room buzzed with energy throughout the day as over 100 participants worked their way from thinking about complex global problems and large-scale projects down to concrete goals they could accomplish in the next three months, using a problem formulation model. The program pushed participants to consider their role as agents of change within business schools.
Abby Litchfield, Community Manager of NBS and lead conference organizer, notes that “when you put passionate people with diverse knowledge and experiences together in a room, and give them the space to share, the result is magic. It is business cards flying left, right, and centre as new collaborations form. It is revelations, and reaffirmations, and the powerful intersection between individual and collective efforts for change”.
For many, this workshop was their first time exposed to systems thinking tools. Participants shared how valuable the tools were and how they hoped to bring the lessons learned back to their organizations. There was a resounding push to continue engaging in such ways, and to include even more changemakers next time. NBS looks forward to continuing to engage business education professionals who are focused on, or interested in learning more about, sustainability.
The Network also shaped events throughout the rest of the PRME Global Forum, on topics of ‘How to Change Business Schools and the World’ and ‘Courageous Conversations: Addressing “wicked problems”’.
Interested in getting involved in NBS’ follow-up programming? Reach out to info@nbs.net for more information.
More about the Network for Business Sustainability (NBS)
The Centre for Building Sustainable Value hosts the Network for Business Sustainability, a trailblazing organization that bridges that gap between research and practice. For more than a decade, it has facilitated knowledge sharing across an international community of business leaders, scholars and students.
NBS has worked with hundreds of experts to build a unique repository of over 900 resources. These resources are used by over 40,000 individuals worldwide on a monthly basis, providing high-quality content that enables practical action on cutting-edge sustainability topics.
More about Responsible Management Education Week
The Principles for Responsible Management Education gathered business school leaders, faculty, students, businesses and sustainable development organizations for a Responsible Management Education Week, on 12 - 16 June 2023, in New York (USA), to advance responsible management education and its impact worldwide. The 11th Edition of PRME Global Forum was part of this week. The 2023 Global Forum will focus on impact across various session themes: pedagogy, climate, digital, and leadership. The 2023 Edition was the first in-person forum since 2017, and its plenaries will also be broadcasted to participants worldwide.
