The Embedding Project, a global sustainability initiative that helps companies integrate social and environmental factors into their decision-making, has won recognition by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB).
The 2019 Innovations That Inspire challenge invited members of AACSB’s Business Education Alliance, the world’s largest business education network that accredits more than 800 business schools worldwide, to identify ways they are inspiring new approaches to thought leadership and increasing its impact through the co-creation of knowledge. The AACSB recognised The Embedding Project as one of 21 business school collaborations from across the globe serving as champions of change in the business education arena.
Co-hosted by the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) and the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University in Canada, the Embedding Project brings together academic researchers from six institutions (SFU’s Beedie School of Business, Cambridge University’s Judge School, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Rotterdam School of Business, HEC Montreal and University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business).
“We’re excited about this award because it recognises our efforts at the UCT Graduate School of Business to collaborate with managers to co-create both theoretically and practically relevant knowledge, which is useful to managers and also in our classrooms,” says Professor Ralph Hamann, Director of Research at the UCT GSB and co-founder of the Embedding Project South Africa.
“I think there is a general recognition that business schools need to be engaging in research that is meaningful and relevant, and making contributions to society,” Stephanie Bertels, the Embedding Project’s founder and lead researcher, says. “It’s exciting to see AACSB shining a light on different initiatives and we are delighted to be included among those they chose to highlight”.
The Embedding Project partners with dozens of global companies, including South African sustainability leaders such as Nedbank, Santam and Woolworths, and civil society initiatives including WWF-SA and the NBI. It uses these peer-to-peer networks, where companies engage in structured peer coaching, to co-create sustainability knowledge and develop best practice.
The project has also received other accolades in the past. It received the 2018 Academy of Management’s inaugural International Impactful Collaboration Award for its practical and scholarly impact in embedding sustainability into the operations and decision-making of global companies, and it has also been recognised with two Clean50 Top Project awards (2016 and 2018), which annually highlights leading Canadian projects with an impact on sustainability.
For more information about the Embedding Project and to receive the free public resources created, please visit www.embeddingproject.org
