Promoting responsible leadership
In March 2023, Smith became the first business school in North America to become a member of the Council on Business & Society (the CoBS), a global alliance of business schools dedicated to promoting responsible leadership, research and education.
Recognizing the enormous role businesses can and must play in helping solve global issues, the CoBS brings together leading business schools from around the world to create and disseminate knowledge about these issues and train future business leaders to solve them.
Member schools recognize the need for a multicultural approach to global issues, practices and projects, seeking to bring greater value to their students, stakeholders and to the public by combining the strengths of their institutions.
The CoBS “is committed to positively changing the world by educating tomorrow’s responsible leaders to bring sustainable solutions to business, society and the planet,” said Vincenzo Vinzi, dean of ESSEC Business School and president of the Council on Business & Society.
The CoBS launched in 2011 with four founding members: ESSEC Business School (France, Singapore, Morocco); Keio Business School (Japan); FGV-EAESP (Brazil); and School of Management Fudan University (China), rounding out its ranks in subsequent years with Warwick Business School (U.K.); Trinity Business School (Ireland); IE Business School (Spain); Stellenbosch Business School (South Africa); and, most recently, Smith (Canada).
“We are proud to be the first North American partner school in the Council for Business and Society. It’s an honour to be part of an influential group of global business schools that are committed to responsible leadership and the common good,” said Wanda Costen, dean, Smith School of Business.
The CoBS is dedicated to promoting its member schools’ expertise in responsible leadership and sustainable business practice. The council creates and disseminates materials to encourage a multicultural perspective among students, academics and practitioners, and provides visibility for the member schools’ research, programs and events with a responsible business, management and leadership dimension.
The council produces editorial resources featuring thought leadership that are free to the public, including its CoBS Insights platform and Global Voice, the alliance’s quarterly magazine, featuring the global perspectives of faculty and student experts from member schools in the areas of business, management and leadership, and business, society and the planet. The CoBS is also producing a book series, Focus on Responsible Business, together with Routledge.
The CoBS also runs several inter-school faculty-student initiatives in the field of CSR, including a faculty exchange and research initiative, forums focused on issues at the crossroads of business and society and an annual student CSR article competition.
Finally, the alliance engages faculty, students, business leaders, practitioners, NGOs and policymakers to explore how business can positively contribute to society, the planet and the common good, to offer knowledge and solutions to today’s major business and society issues.
The CoBS regularly collaborates with groups such as the United Nation’s Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative, the Global Business School Network (GBSN), the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Business for Inclusive Growth (B4IG), as well as social enterprises and other NGOs.