The Importance Of University Social Responsibility

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Ethics could come from many parts including religious education, family institution but also school education and therefore UNESCO (1996) considers that higher education should not only be provided for personal development. Indeed, UNESCO believes that education plays a decisive role for social, economic and environment development for societies. Also, it is considered as a major player in the achievement of a sustainable future (UNESCO, 2007).
Nowadays, business students are likely to explore the concepts of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at school. In fact, since the global recession of 2007, business schools have realised the importance of including CSR topics to their programs. Social responsibility refers to the responsibility …show more content…

USR can be defined as “a policy of ethical quality in the activities of the university community, through responsible management of the educational, cognitive, labour and environmental impacts of the university, in a participative dialogue with society to promote sustainable human development” (Vallaeys, 2013). In other words, USR refers to all the actions undertaken by education institutions to sustain the social, ecological, environmenta and economic development.

Enhancing CSR topics in the curricula of business schools could not only result in the development of more responsible leaders, it could also upgrade the status of the schools allowing them to distinguish from the competition.

Business schools and social …show more content…

It is obvious that the school aims to be a major player in the development of a responsible and sustainable economic and social environment. According to me, this is mainly visible through the large number of courses offered related to social responsibility topics, the CSR research seminars and CSR days.

By contrast, while studying at Warwick Business School (Coventry, UK) and BI Norwegian Business School (Oslo, Norway), I did not notice any sign of social responsibility investment, except the huge number of courses related to this topic proposed.

I have clearly experienced different social responsibility commitments in different environments. According to me, IESEG and PSB are strongly committed in enabling students to acquire the knowledge required to develop a responsibility-driven vision of the role of organizations in society. However, other schools (like Warwick or BI in my case) are not committed enough and should invest more in CSR

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