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Abraham Lincoln once said: ‘give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe’. In the global field of corporate responsibility there is still plenty of axe sharpening to be done, and Nottingham University Business School is all too aware of that. The school’s International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (ICCSR), founded in 2002 with the aim of bringing CSR education into mainstream business teaching, now offers MBAs, MA/MScs and PhDs in responsible business, and not just to students from its home base in the UK.
According to the centre’s database, over the past five years its MBA in CSR has been taken by 27 different nationalities, including alumni from Swaziland, Bangladesh, Chad, Costa Rica, Malawi and Peru. ICCSR director Jeremy Moon says this reflects the broader strategy of the centre as an international hub for research and teaching, and is mirrored by the international composition of its academic team and postgraduate students. ‘The international nature of all these cohorts enhances the student experience, because they bring such a range of perspectives to classroom debate,’ he says. ‘Students are attracted to the university for a range of reasons, but its international reputation and the fact that we also have campuses in China and Malaysia definitely helps.’
Jonathan Moreno, a student from the Philippines who has been studying at the ICCSR on a Chevening Fellowship programme, funded by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, says the range of backgrounds he has encountered has been one of the highlights, allowing him to pick the brains of people with very diverse experiences of corporate responsibility. ‘One thing the course impressed on me is that addressing the challenges of responsible business requires a constant exchange of new ideas and best practice,’ he says. ‘ICCSR, in this respect, is a reservoir of responsible business knowledge.’
There are also benefits to the ICCSR itself, as Moon points out. ‘The experience of various international perspectives is invaluable for our research,’ he says. ‘Through this interaction we all gain a better appreciation of the global context for CSR.’
Maggie Royston, ICCSR’s business development and centre manager, adds that there is a pay-off for UK businesses too, as many of the students spend time on placement with British companies, bringing with them some of their local knowledge. ‘Increasingly UK businesses are benefiting from the international perspectives that our students bring,’ she says. ‘We sometimes receive a specific request for a student with a particular background to provide support to an organization exploring CSR in China or Turkey, for example.’
Moreno, for one, believes that this promotes valuable cross-fertilization. ‘What has really impressed me is the way my course has seeded the environment with people who then commit to promoting and implementing responsible business practice in their respective countries,’ he says. ‘That can only be good for the development of corporate responsibility.’
According to the centre’s database, over the past five years its MBA in CSR has been taken by 27 different nationalities, including alumni from Swaziland, Bangladesh, Chad, Costa Rica, Malawi and Peru. ICCSR director Jeremy Moon says this reflects the broader strategy of the centre as an international hub for research and teaching, and is mirrored by the international composition of its academic team and postgraduate students. ‘The international nature of all these cohorts enhances the student experience, because they bring such a range of perspectives to classroom debate,’ he says. ‘Students are attracted to the university for a range of reasons, but its international reputation and the fact that we also have campuses in China and Malaysia definitely helps.’
Jonathan Moreno, a student from the Philippines who has been studying at the ICCSR on a Chevening Fellowship programme, funded by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, says the range of backgrounds he has encountered has been one of the highlights, allowing him to pick the brains of people with very diverse experiences of corporate responsibility. ‘One thing the course impressed on me is that addressing the challenges of responsible business requires a constant exchange of new ideas and best practice,’ he says. ‘ICCSR, in this respect, is a reservoir of responsible business knowledge.’
There are also benefits to the ICCSR itself, as Moon points out. ‘The experience of various international perspectives is invaluable for our research,’ he says. ‘Through this interaction we all gain a better appreciation of the global context for CSR.’
Maggie Royston, ICCSR’s business development and centre manager, adds that there is a pay-off for UK businesses too, as many of the students spend time on placement with British companies, bringing with them some of their local knowledge. ‘Increasingly UK businesses are benefiting from the international perspectives that our students bring,’ she says. ‘We sometimes receive a specific request for a student with a particular background to provide support to an organization exploring CSR in China or Turkey, for example.’
Moreno, for one, believes that this promotes valuable cross-fertilization. ‘What has really impressed me is the way my course has seeded the environment with people who then commit to promoting and implementing responsible business practice in their respective countries,’ he says. ‘That can only be good for the development of corporate responsibility.’
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