PRME Principles Refresh

Since the Six Principles for Responsible Management Education launched in 2007, the world has changed significantly. Our PRME principles-based community has unitedly navigated through this fast-paced changing world, dealing with new and more complex challenges and contributing to cutting-edge solutions for the betterment of society and the planet. Responsible Management Education has moved to the spotlight of global debates as a critical factor in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

While these changes have brought PRME’s role within business schools into greater focus, PRME has also been sharpening and elevating its commitment to responsible management education through its strategic reviews in 2015 and 2019. The 2019 strategic review exposed the need to review the SIP (Sharing Information on Progress) Reports, which had become cumbersome and offered less value than they could. Established by the PRME Board in 2020 to review the SIP reporting system, the PRME SIP Impact Sub-Committee proposed changes not only to the SIP reports, which will be ratified in June 2023, but also recommended that the PRME Principles be lightly ‘refreshed’ to align with the proposed changes to the SIP reports and the changing business landscape. Some of the changes they recommended were to add principles that spoke to signatories' own operations and the commitment to continuous learning through the application of responsible and accountable practices into their own operations, which ultimately supports the implementation of the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact in academic institutions around the world. They also proposed to make the Principles more declarative and assertive, rather than simply aspirational.

Following these recommendations, the PRME Board struck the PRME Principles Task Force (PPTF) to finalize the process of lightly refreshing PRME’s Principles. Starting with the SIP Impact Sub-Committee’s recommendations, PPTF has been capturing input of our global community to base its work. PPTF conducted focus groups with PRME community leaders and then solicit written feedback from all community members through an open survey. PPTF will then table the draft Principles to the PRME Board for ratification in October 2023 (see the process timeline below).

Central Objective of the Principles Refresh Process:

• Motivating Action
• Streamlining Language
• Fostering Knowledge Sharing
• Guiding SIP Reporting system
• Adding a Principle on ‘practices and operations’
• Supporting the implementation of the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact

The PRME Board requested the creation of a PRME Principles Task Force (PPTF) on 4 October 2022 to finalize the Principles Refresh process recommended by the 2015 and 2019 strategic reviews and initiated by the SIP Impact Sub-Committee in 2020. The PPTF consists of five members representing the PRME global community:

The PRME Principles Task Force (PPTF) has been building its work on the 2015 and 2019 PRME strategic reviews as well as the PRME SIP Impact Sub-Committee (created and approved by PRME's Board on 30 November 2020).

Since the PPTF's creation in October 2022 and the formal process approval by the Board during its last meeting on March 2023, the PPTF has called the PRME Community to engage in global consultations:

• Focus Groups:

  • Several two-hour focus groups with 40+ participants from all PRME constituencies (Chapters, PGS, Champions, etc.) from 23 countries.

• Survey:

  • Eighty-seven responses have been collected so far, yielding 195 pages of feedback.

  • Participants from 38 countries across all of PRME's constituencies and external partners

• Communications and outreach:

  • PRME Newsletter announcements

  • Social Media posts

  • Email blasts

  • 2023 PRME Global Forum