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In this chapter, the author underscores the crucial role of the international community in promoting and facilitating responsible management education in business and management schools, as well as higher educational institutions. The chapter highlights the initiative on the Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME), which has been supported by the United Nations and adopted by hundreds of schools and universities worldwide. The author explains that PRME aims to equip students with the necessary knowledge, skills, mindset and capabilities to bring about rapid and scalable improvements to society. Given that today's students are tomorrow's business leaders, policymakers and organizational heads, investing in responsible management education is crucial. This chapter emphasizes that responsible educational efforts can produce better citizens and future leaders, enabling them to create the world that we aspire to live in. This chapter underscores the importance of global collaboration and commitment to promoting responsible management education. When working together to prioritize ethical and sustainable practices in business and management education, we can foster a new generation of leaders who are equipped to drive positive change in the world.

The chapter examines the role of the UN Global Compact inspired Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative, how it operates, and the role that signatory schools and regional chapters play in its continued development and evolution.

The chapter conceptualizes the PRME engagement model (a learning network, reporting to stakeholders, commitment to continuous improvement), and uses three case vignettes to illustrate the type of programs and activities that signatory schools and regional chapters have developed and how these endeavors contribute to PRME’s evolution and development.

As a way of thinking about the ability of PRME to achieve its intended goals, it is important to look at higher education (thought leadership) within the context of the world of practice in both business (practice leadership) and civil society (practice leadership). PRME signatories and regional chapters need to more fully engage in this “sustainable praxis triad,” extending the growing network of signatories and chapters within the academic community to include businesses and civil society organizations.

The chapter focuses on three vignettes to illustrate different activities and involvement in PRME signatory schools and regional chapters. More extensive comparative analysis across business schools and regional chapters throughout the world is needed to ensure broader dissemination of current practices and innovations.

Beyond teaching and a focus on the current generation of students, PRME has the potential for more immediate impact through student-based consulting activities, the transfer of research results to the business community and larger society, and ensuring that university campuses and operations are exemplars of sustainable practice. PRME signatories and regional chapters can work to ensure that relevance and rigor in research are not polar extremes but rather as praxis – the integration of academic thought leadership with needed stewardship and practice leadership in the larger society.

Transparency and communication are important first steps for change. As business schools and universities openly share their research, curricula and pedagogical innovations, and best practices for their campus operations, they contribute to a vivid and stimulating intellectual climate, through which society and all stakeholders will benefit. PRME can facilitate the ability of higher education to serve as a nucleus and crystallization for innovative solutions for a more sustainable future.

PRME is still a relatively young initiative. First evidence shows that the PRME initiative is successfully contributing to educating a new generation of managers who are better prepared for the global challenges of sustainable development.

Reflecting emerging concerns about Principles of Responsible Management Education’s (PRME's) reach beyond the West, the authors provide an analysis of its contribution to responsible management development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Drawing on 18 PRME MENA signatories' Sharing Information on Progress Reports, the authors examine levels of engagement with PRME, as well the practices used in the region to progress its six principles. The authors examine the depth of integration based on Rusinko's (2010) typology and its success in addressing local responsible management challenges.

The analysis revealed modest levels of engagement with PRME in MENA. Consistent with other regions, for those actively participating, the authors identified a wide variation in PRME responses. First, the authors found wide variation in the interpretation of the six principles. Second, the authors found a diversity of practices, especially the extent to which efforts were linked to progressing local management challenges. Third, the authors also found variability relating to the depth of PRME's integration into the curricular of MENA signatories with, most displaying Ruskino's (2010) narrower approaches.

The authors address calls to understand the contribution of PRME beyond Western contexts and offer suggestions for how PRME can be strengthened to facilitate responsible management development in MENA.

The purpose of this paper is to explore structural drivers and barriers that distinguish US business school Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) signatories from nonsignatory peer institutions, and identify structural drivers of PRME institution strategic integration of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into their ongoing responsible management education reports.

This study uses a case–control method to compare the US PRME signatory sample to a size-matched random sample of US business management programs/schools. This study uses conditional inference tree and correlation analyses to highlight distinctive structural characteristics associated with US PRME signatories and with their strategies to highlight sustainability through the SDGs.

There are significant and practically meaningful structural differences between US-based PRME signatories and US programs/schools that have not adopted the PRME principles. Further, PRME schools differentially integrate SDGs in their information sharing based on structural characteristics.

Understanding school/program characteristics that align with PRME and different sustainability strategies affords a better comprehension of where targeted resources might be most effective in broadening the appeal and adoption of PRME and subsequent sustainability strategy integration.

While previous work on PRME signatories has depended heavily on case studies of successful implementation and has examined the content of PRME activity by school, the present work compares the population of actual US signatories with a random sample of nonsignatories to determine leverage points for enacting broader PRME adoption. The study also examines the strategies that PRME schools use to integrate the UN SDGs and the structures that support such.

With more than 332 signatories, the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) is probably the most solid initiative to inspire and champion responsible business education globally. The purpose of this paper is to examine the activities undertaken by the first intake of signatories – universities and business schools – with regard to each of the six principles (offering a systematic analysis and “distilled” categorization of those initiatives). It also aims to evaluate the difficulties and tensions that may be entailed in integrating PRME in both the strategic intent and daily operations of educational institutions, and how to overcome some of these. Finally, it aims to offer a critical reflection on the “non‐compliance and non regulatory/measurement” nature of PRME (the initiative assumes that signatories act on the basis of principled pragmatism), offering suggestions for improving the reporting mechanism on which the whole initiative is based.

The authors analyze the first 100 “Sharing Information on Progress” (SIP) reports uploaded to the PRME web site. These reports are the main mechanism established by the PRME Secretariat to build learning and accountability and allow signatories to communicate their progress. Elements from grounded theory and other qualitative analytical approaches were used to allow themes to emerge from within the (often messy and irregular) data from the reports. Graphical representations are also used.

Activities undertaken by PRME signatories are portrayed for each of the six principles: principle 1 on purpose (capabilities of students); principle 2 on values (incorporated in curriculum and academic activities); principle 3 on learning approaches; principle 4 on research (with sustainable, social, environmental and economic value); principle 5 on partnership (interaction with business managers); and principle 6 on dialogue (among key stakeholders). Tensions regarding ideology, integration and implementation are also identified, as well as possible weaknesses, e.g. on integrity, quality and reporting policies, in the current “SIP” framework.

This paper is the first scholarly work depicting comprehensively the activities of PRME signatories worldwide.

The governing bodies responsible for drafting and promoting the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) apparently envisioned a completely voluntary initiative without concern for accountability. Public concern and commentary led to the addition of a reporting requirement in 2010. Two years later, program administrators began to update statuses. As of January 2016, PRME listed 636 signatories on their website. Because the reporting requirement took effect, approximately 86 schools have broken their commitment to comply with the PRME standards. Some schools were de-listed for inaction, whereas others actively left the program. This study aims to understand those who intentionally chose not to comply with PRME.

This study utilized a heroic quest typology to analyze and understand the behavior of institutions that intentionally chose not to comply with PRME. Narrative analysis of these concluded quests included strategic plans, research summaries, course syllabi and descriptions, press releases, PRME Sharing Information on Progress reports, UNGC letters of commitment, Communication on Progress reports, and internal informants.

Out of the 15 entities, 4 exhibited dual or quasi-heroic quests. Their experiences offered two viable and practical alternatives for institutions seeking to transcend the business ethics industry limitations of the PRME initiative.

The narrative analysis of this study encompassed a sufficiently large amount of data for confidence in the typological characterization of each institution’s heroic quest. Additional insights from informants would no doubt strengthen the analysis.

The existence of the business ethics industry casts doubt on the ability of business schools and their accreditors to offer substantive change to create a genuine form of responsible management education. This study concludes with two alternative paths taken by schools attempting to escape the narrative of irresponsible management.

The PRME publicly lists signatories in non-compliance. While most of these result from passive inaction, a small number of institutions intentionally choose to leave the PRME. No research has been done to understand these intriguing cases and the heroic quest typology is a unique application in narrative analysis.

This paper aims to assess the contribution of the UN’s Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) in higher education, covering education, research and outreach in Brazilian higher education institutions (HEIs) after becoming signatories.

Teachers representing Brazilian HEI signatories to the PRME were interviewed. The IRAMUTEQ software was used for content analysis, descending hierarchical classification and similarity tree, allowing to quantify the quality variables originating from the professors’ beliefs and opinions.

The PRME helps Brazilian HEIs to review or create disciplines related to responsible management education and adopt transdisciplinarity for sustainability. The signatories’ PRME-influenced research is interdisciplinary, focusing on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Social responsibility is promoted through local-community projects, while partnerships, initiatives and innovative pedagogies from foreign-signatory HEIs provide international experiences for teachers and students. However, within one initiative, which had 170 signatories in 2008 and over 800 in 2020, indicators should be formulated to analyze and enhance HEIs’ sustainability profile. The PRME contributes to educating young people and adults in Brazil via education, research or outreach; however, this contribution needs to be assessed.

Prior studies have not collected data through interviews to consider professors’ perspectives on the PRME’s contribution to signatory HEIs in Brazil. This study interviewed professors involved with the PRME to broaden their understanding beyond bibliometrics and assess the alignment of the PRME and UN SDGs.

The purpose of this article is to explore what ISO 26000, the global guidance standard for organizations wanting to implement corporate social responsibility (CSR), has to offer to improve the principles for responsible management education (PRME) and its implementation by business schools.

Through an in‐depth analysis of ISO 26000 and beyond the general value of ISO 26000 in providing suggestions for CSR implementation, several insights for management education are derived. These insights are consequently applied to both the principles within the PRME framework and to results from research into the application of the PRME.

The article argues that ISO 26000 offers insights related to the revival of corporate morality, the importance of idiosyncratic CSR (particularly relating to internal organizational processes), the credibility enhancement of PRME‐based CSR commitments and the importance of engaging in community involvement by business schools. Next to these findings, the value of ISO 26000 may even extend to opening up new avenues for engaged and humanistic forms of scholarship and formulate more comprehensive strategies to secure and strengthen business schools societal license to operate.

The findings lead to conclude that ISO 26000 may complement the PRME in supporting business schools in integrating CSR in their programs and their organization and suggest several adjustments to the PRME framework.

As the first article on this intersection, it provides new insights in how the PRME can be improved and business schools can be supported by ISO 26000 in their endeavours of developing and delivering responsible management education.

The purpose of this chapter is to present secondary data around how the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) are adopted in a global context whilst making comparisons with the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index from the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2019. The discussion is centred around young adults (Generation Z) and their potential role and importance. In essence, we are trying to examine if tourism sustainability educational practice adopted within countries appears to transition into industry practice. For this, we consider success both from the perspective of tourism sustainability and general economic competitiveness. The findings suggest significant gaps (or current failure) between PRME delivery and achieving tourism sustainability globally, but generally highlight economic success where PRME uptake is strong. Thus, it would appear that PRME is not yet transitioning into industry practice; therefore, more needs to be done or adapted to achieve greater tourism sustainability, and we emphasise the role of Generation Z within this.

This paper aims to present the progress of the implementation of sustainability in business schools in line with the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) and its principles of responsible management education.

By analyzing the content of the Sharing of Information on Progress reports from PRME signatories, this study identified significant developments in the strategies business school use to implement sustainability. However, it seems that a framework that business schools can apply to accomplish that goal is still lacking. This paper proposes a framework that addresses four components of the integration process and stresses the important role of stakeholders. The authors discuss the results from 2021 in comparison to the results of a previous analysis of the first 100 signatories from 2010 and analyze the findings in relation to the developed framework.

This study shows that business schools have improved their sustainability engagement in many areas (e.g. education offerings and teaching methods, campus practices and engaging stakeholders). However, less attention has been paid to other aspects, such as reviewing and assessing, capability development or communication, which could slow the transformation process. The authors discuss further implications of the findings for enhancing the PRME signatories’ ability to implement the underrecognized aspects.

While the analysis focuses on the status and progress of the integration of PRME within business schools during the past decade, the framework may enable higher education institutions to analyze their potential to implement change and plan future transformation strategies.