BELL Program Rings in New Courses for MBA Students

By Peter Denton

As scandals rocked the American corporate community in recent years, business schools have scrambled to strengthen and integrate courses on ethics and corporate responsibility into their curricula. This has fortified the movement towards adding environmental and social stewardship training in the traditional business curricula of the top schools, thanks in part to the ten-year effort of WRI's Business, Environment, Learning and Leadership (BELL) project.

In 1994, representatives from 25 business schools attended the first BELL conference and pledged their commitment to developing and supporting "green" business courses. BELL has also expanded to China and Latin America, where professors and business schools are teaching environmental stewardship in some of the world's largest emerging markets.

Over the last decade, the BELL network has grown exponentially and helped graduate a new generation of managers who are prepared to address the needs of tomorrow's markets with training in sustainable business.

"Through our network of 1,500 professors, we are helping to change the face of business education," said Elizabeth Cook, director of WRI's Sustainable Enterprise Program. "In the last ten years, we have seen MBA programs begin to shift their focus and integrate critical global issues into their curricula. The endowment of new sustainability chairs in leading business schools, the creation of new entirely sustainability-focused MBA programs, and a higher percentage of schools requiring a core course in social and environmental issues are examples of the strides we have made."

The leaders of BELL understood from the start, however, that change would not come easy to a deeply entrenched business culture. "In order to further our objectives, we leverage our connections with professors, deans, prospective and current MBA students, business school ranking services, and corporations," Cook explained. "By addressing this wide spectrum of stakeholders, we can innovate to accelerate change when our progress hits plateaus."

One of the first steps was simply to create an atmosphere at business schools in which the study of sustainable enterprise was accepted as the norm.

To help professors hungry for first-rate environmental course materials to integrate the issues into their curriculum, BELL began publishing teaching cases, the primary teaching tools for business school instruction. From studies on Nike's efforts in emerging markets to Monsanto's transition from a chemical concern to a life sciences entity, thousands of BELL's teaching cases reflecting a diverse range of environmental and social issues have been distributed to professors.

Working closely with business school faculty, while essential to the success of BELL, is only one part of the project's strategy. By collaborating with a few of the major corporations that would eventually hire business school graduates, BELL is beginning to help foster a demand in the corporate world for the environmental business skills that graduates are now developing.

One of the crucial elements of the BELL approach is the report series, Beyond Grey Pinstripes, which benchmarks and spotlights schools and faculty who are at the forefront of incorporating social and environmental stewardship issues into the fabric of their MBA programs.

"BELL and Pinstripes have established a vernacular for teaching green and sustainable business," said Meghan Chapple, manager for business education at WRI. "Now that we've developed the teaching cases and built momentum, Pinstripes inspires business schools to compete beyond the traditional rankings and rewards schools for their efforts."

The fourth edition in the series, released in October 2003, included the first and only searchable database of environmental and social impact management coverage in MBA programs at 100 leading global business schools. In 2003, there were 95 core courses with environmental content, a 56% increase from the 61 reported in 2001. Industry associations have now circulated the report to their corporate members, encouraging them to rely on findings in Pinstripes for their hiring practices.

Rick Bunch, former WRI director of business education and current executive director of the Bainbridge Graduate Institute in the outskirts of Seattle, WA, recalls the immediate effect of the Pinstripes report.

"Following the 1998 publication of the first edition of Pinstripes, Robert Swieringa, the dean of the Johnson School of Business at Cornell University, called us to express his disappointment in his school's evaluation," said Bunch. "Swieringa came down to meet with us and we explained our mission and our criteria. In subsequent editions of Pinstripes, the Johnson School emerged as one of the leaders in our field."

Entering its second decade, BELL has clearly made significant progress in pushing the business education community to better understand the confluence of social impact management, environmental issues, and the corporate world. As companies think boldly about growing their businesses while also addressing human and environmental needs, BELL will further their effort to incorporate their issues into core curricula, integrate innovative research into their teaching cases, and improve the recognition of these issues in corporate hiring. (WRI Features, 799 words)