Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME)

Curriculums of business schools have been questioned in terms of the relevancy and practical application of real life scenarios. Business schools have a responsibility to promote and encourage responsible management education within their curricula and learning experience. Being responsible allows business schools to produce graduates who will become responsible leaders who have a lasting impact on businesses, communities, the environment, the country and the world. There is rising pressure for business schools to promote responsible management education through initiatives such as the Principals of Responsible Management Education (PRME). This chapter seeks to identify the challenges and benefits of PRME and the role that business schools play in implementing it in their curriculums.

A Systemic Approach towards Responsible and Sustainable Economic Development

A possible way to increase responsible and sustainable economic development is to enhance collective innovation and entrepreneurship on various systemic levels in order to gain socio-economic developmental momentum. In an era which faces socio-economic changes on multiple systemic levels, especially within the mundosystem, collective and creative approaches towards systemic activities are necessary, not only to drive businesses forward, but to give momentum to global economies. In this chapter, the author philosophizes about entrepreneurship, systems theory and socio-economic momentum and how these play an important role to give momentum to responsible and sustainable economic growth.

Corporate Leadership and Sustainability

Due to pressures of globalization and competition, the quality of corporate leadership has come under great scrutiny as questions are being raised worldwide regarding the ability of leaders to deliver long term growth on a sustainable basis. This can be referred to as the “sustainability leadership cavity.” The chapter attempts to explore: what are the evolving challenges companies faces, what are the implications on demands placed on leaders and what new leadership competencies are required to ensure sustainability goals are achieved. It also intends to provide cases of successful sustainability leadership. Through grounded theory, in-depth literature review and contextual analysis the core of this chapter is to understand the organizational elements, structure, challenges and competencies crucial and critical for sustainability leadership.

Sustainable Business Model Innovation

Establishing a sustainable energy future can justifiably be considered the next frontier in global sustainable development under the agenda laid out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The newly adopted Paris Agreement which seeks to hold global average temperature increase to “well below 2°C” above pre-industrial levels inserts additional urgency into this agenda. To realize the commitments outlined in the agreement, implementation of innovative sustainable business models capable of producing strong mitigation and adaptation outcomes is required ‘on the ground' and needs to be available for subsequent diffusion across different countries, contexts and domains. This chapter explores the value of polycentric climate change governance through an investigation of sustainable business model innovation. An example of a sustainable business model, called the Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU), is evaluated and an assessment of United Nations-based programming to aid future diffusion of such business models is conducted.

The Role of Leadership in Cultivating a Responsible Collective Creative Work Environment

This chapter examines the concept of collective creativity in the work environment and in particular the manufacturing sector in Gweru, Zimbabwe. The chapter analyzes the role of a leader in fostering a work climate that cultivates collaborative efforts by followers in creating new ideas and for the sustainability of business operations. Literature relating to leadership role in enhancing sustainable and responsible collective creativity is reviewed. The chapter adopted a quantitative approach in which a survey questionnaire was pilot tested to assess the clarity of the questions on the questionnaire and test the internal consistency of the questions. A pilot test of the situational outlook questionnaire (SOQ) was conducted on 20 respondents in the manufacturing industry to assess the questions for clarity and internal consistency. The final survey questionnaire was distributed to 60 employees in the manufacturing sector in Gweru, Zimbabwe. The items on the questionnaire were rated on a 5 point Likert scale. Data was analysed using SPSS version 23. Data was analysed to determine the correlations between the independent variables and dependent variables. Transformational leadership constructs, namely idealised influence, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation and individualised consideration constituted leadership independent variables. Analysis of research data reveals that high performance is related to sustainable business practices such as the creation of environmentally friendly and affordable products. Unethical business practices are found to be negatively related to business performance and collective creativity. Analysis of the data revealed a positive correlation between individualised consideration construct of transformational leadership and ideal support (r=.527, p=.001) and a positive correlation between individualised consideration and openness (r=.343, p<.001), and a positive correlation between individualised consideration and involvement (r=.123, p<.001) This means that when a leader displays support through taking into consideration the individual needs of his or her followers, subordinates feel that the leader is encouraging them to participate in company activity and increase their perception of an involving climate. Acts of leadership support also stimulate subordinate views of an open forum where they can contribute to collective creativity within the organisation.

Connecting the Dots

Calls for businesses to act with concern for the environment and society create new operating scenarios in which sustainability concerns must be taken into consideration along with the primary objectives of profitability and competitiveness. These additional obligations contribute to dynamism of the marketplace and make it important for businesses to draw on creativity and innovation to find connections between the unrelated in order to establish new efficiencies that can create competitive advantage and differentiation in the environment they find themselves. The central theme of this chapter is how bisociation informs collective creativity and innovation, and influences sustainability for business organizations competing in an environment that is in a permanent state of flux. This chapter trails a series of concepts to find the relationship between the concept of bisociation, collective creativity and sustainable business practices. The aim is to show how consistent creative thinking and exploration of information in different spaces of thought can proffer innovative solutions organizations require for their long term survival and prosperity.

A Need for Cyber Security Creativity

Information technology is rapidly increasing and evolving all the time in pursuit for better solutions and products for the digitized world. Technology advancement and greater connectivity has moved organizations to better economic markets for sustainability. Together with better technology and greater connectivity, cybercrime is swiftly growing on par with these developments. This chapter focuses on the cyber security landscape and threats faced by organizations. The growth and sophistication of cybercrime is stressed. Cyber security creative approaches security risk assessment, cloud collaboration and data analytics are provided. This chapter ends with propositions that security creative approaches should be used as a method of managing cybercrime and ensuring that the organization's sustainability and governance are improved.

Educational and Business Co-Operatives

One tendency among co-operatives is to establish co-operatives not only for the purposes of business but also for the purposes to teach collaboration practices in business education. This study investigates and compares traditional business co-operatives and educational co-operatives as the environments of entrepreneurial learning communities. The data, which consist of interviews with members of both types of co-operatives, have been analyzed using the content analysis method. The main outcomes show that in both types of co-operatives sense of community and creativity are manifested as the parts of the entrepreneurial learning process. When considering if the learning processes were manifested as single- and double-loop learning – and the development of collective creativity – some differences were observed between educational co-operatives and business co-operatives.

Co-Engagement of Organisational Leadership in Collective Decision-Making

Co-engagement of organisation leadership in collective decision-making is recognised as a key modality for encouragement of collective creativity as well as responsible and sustainable business practices. In cases of public enterprise (PE) collective decision-making regarding organisational policy is necessary for organisation leadership to co-engage with key decision-makers in government to ensure responsible and sustainable execution of policy. Often policy-making and implementation allows little scope for innovation and creativity, in other words, for flexibility, with direct consequences for success or failure of collaboration. This chapter explores key inferences such as the need for creative strategic intent; need for co-engagement; need for responsible and sustainable business practices to build morale and the need for innovate approach to policy-making.

Social Marketing to Achieve Sustainability

That sustainable practices are necessary for the earth's survival, is well documented, but how to creatively balance the needs of the multiple stakeholders of society, the economy and the earth, is a major challenge. Individuals, businesses and societies require substantial changes to how they behave with regards to the earth's limited resources. Social marketing is the application of marketing principles to behaviour change and thus has the potential to guide efforts to achieve sustainability. This chapter discusses the principles and theories of social marketing and uses them to recommend actions to achieve sustainability. Exchange theory, relationship and network theory, and critical marketing theory provide guidelines to improve the success of social marketing interventions designed to achieve sustainability.