Beyond Grey Pinstripes
RHODES INVESTEC BUSINESS SCHOOL RANKED 80TH IN AN INTERNATIONAL SURVEY OF 600 BUSINESS SCHOOLS IN THE AREA OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT IN 2007
Rhodes University's Investec Business School (RIBS) has been ranked 80th in an international survey of 600 such schools offering the MBA degree or its equivalent.
The survey "Beyond Grey Pinstripes" is an biennial undertaking by the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program "and", says its executive Judith Samuelson, "in the Beyond grey pinstripes survey, success is measured not by how much new MBA graduates earn, or how many offers they get, but by how well prepared they are to guide a company through the complex relationship of business and society, where issues relating to the environment or the well-being of a community can impact a company’s performance and reputation."
Dr Kevin Whittington-Jones, who coordinates the environmental management elective stream, says that RIBS is the only business school in Africa which offers such an elective stream as part of the MBA curriculum. "In the process", he says, "we endeavour to capitalise on the strengths of Rhodes University in the areas of Environmental Education and Environmental Science. With Al Gore having highlighted the threat of global warming in his movie, "The Inconvenient Truth", and with the King II Report having highlighted the need for business organisations to report and be accountable in terms of the "Triple Bottom Line", environmental and broader sustainable development issues may simply no longer be ignored by business."
It has been suggested that the world has moved from the information age to the low-carbon age. "This means that the environment is no longer just a stakeholder in business but that environmental issues lay the ground rules for the way in which business has to 'play the game'," he elaborates. "In the low-carbon age, environmental imperatives constantly throw up business threats and opportunities which need to be addressed within a strategic planning framework. Doing business with a foreign investor may compel a South African business organisation to be environmentally compliant. "Additionally, the threat of environmental disruptions to global supply chains may oblige business organisations to make contingency plans. New possibilities such as biofuels and 'carbon trading' may demand a place in a company's strategic thinking. Sustainability demands that business organisations make tough decisions about the trade-off of increased costs and investments, in the short term, against sustained (and, hopefully increased) profits in the long term," Whittington-Jones believes.
Students choosing the RIBS Environmental Management MBA elective stream, which is designed to equip them to grapple with these issues, are able to study a suite of six environmental management electives comprising Principles of Sustainability, Environmental Law, Environmental Economics, Environmental Project Management, Environmental Risk Assessment and Environmental Management Systems. In addition, students are required to do their dissertations on an environmental management topic.
According to Whittington-Jones environmental management considerations have become an integral strategic part of modern management. Locally The Johannesburg Stock Exchange has a Socially Responsibility Investment index (SRI), against which South African companies are evaluated. "Companies have to go beyond compliance," he comments, "and locally we are experiencing trends already in practice overseas, which are obliging fund managers to influence their choice of investments according to three additional criteria; environmental, social and corporate governance. In Norway and Sweden, over $US400m has been moved out of companies which did not comply."
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