As businesses gain unprecedented power, it’s up to B-schools to keep them honest

The World Governments Summit in Dubai last week was also attended by policymakers and business leaders. Antonie Robertson / The National

As leaders in government came together in Dubai for last week’s World Governments Summit to help solve and ideate upon global issues and opportunities, it inspired reflection on the influence business schools wield in this space – or could and should.

One only needs to look to last month’s inauguration of US President Donald Trump and the front row seats afforded to billionaires and business leaders Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai to understand the ever-growing influence of business on government.

Many will say that the power business holds is, now more than ever, both unchecked and anti-democratic. Business schools, with their intense study of all things business, are best placed to describe, create and affect the philosophy that underpins contemporary commerce. Indeed, business schools could shape the contours of how the very power of business should look and behave, incentivising responsible, world-bettering behaviour.

The students who emerge from top business schools seek to learn how to become leaders on sustainability as well as business leaders in their own right. They want to affect the world positively and profoundly, beyond the bottom line, and for their legacies to shine on bright into the future, untarnished by malfeasance.

From an educator’s perspective, promoting and forming the world’s best ethical leaders relies on the ethos of individual schools to turn out students equipped with the right tools and knowledge to fundamentally impact and improve the world.

Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk at US President Donald Trump's inauguration. AFP

Would everyone agree on what “right” looked like here? Perhaps not, but consensuses are forming, pushed by the ethical motivations of the students themselves. They often already know what an idea of right looks like and seek to learn the best ways of implementing it while at business school, learning as well as picking up a few more ways of being right and being challenged on their preconceptions along the way.

The power and influence of business exists, and it is on track to only grow. If business schools can help finesse ethical leadership and nudge the world into a better place, to all-in-all aid human flourishing, then they should.

Business as a force for good is not a new concept.

Quaker-led businesses of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Cadbury, put their workers’ welfare first. More recently, Ben and Jerry’s has incorporated ethical considerations into its business models, with its commitment to sourcing Fairtrade-certified cocoa, sugar, vanilla, coffee and bananas, ensuring that farmers in developing countries receive fair wages, work under ethical conditions and benefit from sustainable farming practices.

The B Corp movement, a certification for businesses meeting high social and environmental standards, has helped companies such Patagonia to embed sustainability and ethical sourcing into their missions. History and the contemporary world prove beyond doubt that business can be made ethical.

The desire for businesses to do good, or at the very least no harm, is one felt deeply from Oxford to Dubai. People want business to work for them and the world in which they live.

If you look at the world’s leading business schools, millions of alumni are leading across every industry, taking what they have learnt from us to inform their approach to working and leading. Also, consider the many executive education programmes between governments and business schools, upskilling thousands of civil servants every day, to help them deliver for the communities they serve.

But what more can, and should, business educators do?

If you look at the world’s leading business schools, millions of alumni are leading across every industry

Together, they can harness their collective influence, engagement and expertise, and debate, create and push for a sound, thought-out and globally applicable set of values to uplift and undergird a proper and ethical way of doing business in today’s world.

Imagine what could be achieved if business schools harnessed their collective influence. For one, they could aid in making the world a better governed, safer and more equitable place. They could support governments to deliver on climate change, health care, harnessing technology, or delivering major infrastructure – thereby defanging malignant actors, who hope to shape business to cravenly personal and not planet-bettering aims.

If they combined their strengths to embed excellence around the world – a global super campus made up of a network of leading business schools – the edge of space is the limit to what they could currently achieve.

In the competitive world of business schools, this may sound idealistic, but it is already happening.

The Business Schools for Climate Leadership, formed at Cop26 in 2021 (made up of some of the world’s premier institutions) is a great example of the community harnessing its collective power. The initiative has seen six business schools in Africa and eight of them in the Middle East come together with the founding schools to help protect humanity from climate change.

The group’s primary aim is to equip future business leaders with the knowledge and tools necessary to drive climate action. One key tool so far developed is the Climate Leadership Toolkit, which provides executives with practical frameworks to implement sustainable strategies within their organisations.

By embedding values into everything they do, being open to change and flux, and prioritising global collaboration, business schools the world over can drive profound and responsible change in the world. Together, they can create a flourishing future for the benefit of generations to come, by educating these very generations.

The business school community knows that this could happen, and it should happen, for the good of all.