No more ‘business-school-as-usual'

Dear PRME community,

As 2020 is coming to a close, we can all think back on a year that has been filled with unprecedented challenges and uncertainty. This has not been a year of ‘business-school-as-usual.’ We are facing deep and urgent environmental, social and economic crises globally, all exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, itself a symptom of unsustainable environmental practices. We have witnessed a massive transition to an online reality and lockdown periods with huge implications on our professional and personal lives. We have been forced to learn, teach and improvise with new technologies in ways and with a speed that we had never imagined.

2020 has opened novel ways of thinking about the role of higher education and the importance of responsible management education. Today, approximately 3 million students are enrolled at PRME’s more than 860 + Signatory schools around the world. Of course, this does not mean that all the 3 million students are actively engaged in responsible management education, but it provides an idea of PRME’s potential collective reach to engage future leaders in understanding the importance and the frameworks needed to create a more just and sustainable world. The pandemic’s necessary social and physical distancing has opened our eyes for the ease of engaging students and colleagues from ‘the other side of the world’ in knowledge exchange and debates. In 2021, with the working title ‘PRME Global Students,’ we will start to explore how students at PRME Signatory schools may engage in virtual network activities via PRME, to further stimulate sustainable development.

Throughout 2020, it has been wonderful to see the continued engagement and support from everyone in the PRME Chapters, PRME Working Groups, PRME Champions, and in all the work in committees, sub-committees, conferences, webinars, and meetings. Whether this has been happening in your schools, across schools, in your regions or across the globe, it is all this work in and around the classroom that makes up PRME.

As we enter 2021, PRME is firmly grounded in its ‘re-set’ with a new PRME Board, a revised MoU for PRME Chapters, a new PRME Global Chapter Council, new regional Chapters in emergence, a new business model, a new global website, and in process towards a renewed and emboldened engagement with UN Global Compact. And all the exciting events and activities that are occurring at local, regional and global levels. 2021 will be a year to support the implementation of and follow-up on the decisions from 2020 as well as a year where we will launch new initiatives and offer new opportunities to engage for PRME Signatories around the world.

It is a privilege to work as Head of PRME, the United Nation’s largest initiative on responsible management education. As we are all working to recover from the pandemic at a professional and a personal level, it is truly inspiring to see how PRME Signatory schools continue to develop national and international educational practices with the purpose of creating a more sustainable, more just and more resilient world for the future.

I look forward to advancing PRME with you on an exciting journey in 2021!

I wish you a Happy New Year!

Mette Morsing