The PRME Commons is a novel and multi-level technological platform that aims to facilitate global knowledge exchange among business schools, focusing on responsible leadership and sustainable practices. The platform seeks to transition from traditional economic shareholder approaches to more inclusive stakeholder models, with societal betterment as the ultimate goal.

The PRME Commons has six objectives spread across three layers. In the first layer, it serves as a self-reporting database for PRME Signatories to track their progress and share evidence of their evolution from first to second-generation responsible management education. The second layer focuses on resource sharing, expanding the repository to include data from beyond PRME Signatories and forming alliances with data providers. This layer aims to curate content and develop narratives and metrics of progress.

The third layer emphasizes advancing systemic change in responsible management and education on a global scale. It provides institutional profiles of PRME signatories and showcases their efforts and progress. Additionally, it offers community statistics and qualitative narrative data to monitor and promote responsible management practices.

The PRME Commons intends to incentivize global change by freely sharing an open science platform accessible to the public. It seeks to influence existing rankings and accreditations by integrating second-generation responsible management education indicators. By leveraging open infrastructures and smart technologies, the platform aims to foster knowledge sharing and challenge the status quo in business school education, promoting diversity and best practices.

The platform consists of three layers that build upon one another incrementally with different purposes and that will each be launched subsequently:

1. PRME Commons SIP Reporting

2. PRME Global RME Repository

3. Global RME Portal

The platform consists of three layers that build upon one another incrementally with different purposes.

The first level will replace PRME’s current Sharing Information on Progress (SIP) Reporting process and will serve as a self-reporting database for PRME Signatory Members to report on progress towards implementing the PRME Six Principles while also providing collective evidence of progress.

In the second level, the focus is on the business school sector, data providers, and stakeholders in the ecosystem. The platform will extend Level 1’s repository of business school reports by adding a substantial amount of data that is not self-reported and emerges from beyond the PRME signatory base. The aim is to build data alliances with data providers to import legacy data on responsible management education (RME) from a diversity of sources and repositories, currently distributed. Harvesting the codified body of RME knowledge and making it accessible will enable PRME to build a collective memory of progress on RME. We aim for active faculty involvement in the curation of content at the platform and to develop narratives and metrics of progress.

Business schools will have a way to showcase best practice examples and narratives based on the responsible management (RM) model. The model will focus on categorising different themes like Economics of Mutuality, climate change, sustainable finance, and gender equity. This organization will enable schools to compare and contrast practices on issue areas and identify particular potentials and challenges across regions, countries, and schools, facilitating knowledge exchange among schools and encouraging them to innovate based on industry examples and narratives.

In level three, the emphasis is on advancing and scaling systemic change on RM and RME that extends far beyond the PRME ecosystem. This level will offer free access for the general public to source aggregated data on RM and RME practices and knowledge.

Early Adopters

Between December 2022 and January 2023, a call was launched for the PRME community, inviting institutions that were interested in piloting the new PRME reporting logic, through the SIP Questionnaire. A group of 25 schools engaged in a 3-month process in order to meet the expectations below:

• Set the new global tone for developing and implementing a new logic of business school reporting on sustainable development reporting (i.e. SDG, ESG, CSR, RME) with a set of guidelines that will be used in the future for all PRME community and other stakeholders (such as accreditations and local/global rankings);

• Provide recommendations for a new infrastructure/platform for reporting under PRME expectations;

• Collaborate with leading HEIs and the SIP Committee members on a project of value to the PRME community by contributing to the flagship project PRME Commons;

• Inspire creativity & learning towards progress by enabling emulation, foster problem solving, encourage collaboration, and in the end, make a better world.

• Learn with the journey as the new logic seeks to create a process of self-reflection within the institution based on different levels of progress and maturity;

• Inspired by open science values and smart technology, explore the emerging (selective open) knowledge base of stored information that will help business schools serve the world by helping each member school best serve its own internal and external stakeholders.

Coming soon!