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European business schools have surpassed US ones in the FT’s annual responsible business education awards, which credit them for more innovative teaching on issues of sustainability and research with positive impacts on society.
Five winners were selected by a panel of international judges drawn from business, academia and non-profit organisations for the best overall business school award. Singled out were the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, Aalto University School of Business from Finland, Iéseg from France, VU Amsterdam School of Business and Economics and Colorado State University College of Business.
The awards for innovative teaching went to the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, IE Business School in Spain, Kedge Business School in France, Vlerick Business School in Belgium and Loyola Marymount University in the US.
The awards for academic research with impact went to teams of researchers led by authors at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Cambridge: Judge, Bocconi University, ETH Zurich and the University of Virginia.
Universities and researchers decided whether to submit for consideration for the award, which is run in partnership with InTent, a sustainability foundation. Assessments were based on the judges’ evaluation of information provided rather than a comprehensive analysis of practices.
However, the results come at a time when environmental, social and governance (ESG) is increasingly under political attack in the US. Conservative Republicans characterise ESG as part of “woke” leftwing indoctrination that has taken over America’s institutions.
Despite the criticism, a large number of leading US business schools now offer core as well as optional electives in ESG as part of their MBAs and other programmes. This has been in response to pressure from investors, activists and regulators seeking to account for climate risk.
At the COP28 climate summit, a number of US and international business schools including Columbia, Harvard, New York University, Berkeley, Darden, Duke, Yale, Wharton, MIT and Michigan Ross launched a series of free online teaching resources around sustainability.
One of the FT’s academic award winners was Gas, Guns, and Governments: Financial Costs of Anti-ESG Policies, written by Daniel Garrett from the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania and Ivan Ivanov from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
They calculated that Texas legislation in 2021, prohibiting municipalities from contracting with banks with certain ESG policies, led to the exit of five of the largest municipal bond underwriters from the state and cost more than $300mn. Their work sparked similar studies in other US states.
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