Sustainability

Sustainability

With the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals as the bedrock for global change, the pressure on organisations and businesses to align their practices and objectives with them is growing. An increasingly ethically-minded public want business to be more than just about profit and demand they help society and preserve the planet.

From multinationals to SMEs and micro-businesses, this is a complex task, involving global supply chains, legacy IT systems, cultural shifts, stakeholder relations and more, while all the time maintaining a profitable business in a competitive and uncertain environment.

Academics at WBS are leading research into this area, producing practical insights that can help organisations and businesses of all sizes move towards a sustainable operation and help society meet the UN’s goals.

Recent sustainability work includes:

• A staff Sustainability Research Forum was launched to aid the development of sustainability-oriented research at WBS. This aids the sharing of best practice, knowledge, and resources across the faculty groups at the School. The Forum also invites guest speakers from other institutions and industry bodies to showcase their research, with previous speakers from the Bank of England, the University of Bologna, and Saïd Business School.
• A total of £2.73 million has been awarded in research grants, for ESG and sustainability research since 2020. This includes a grant of £1,129,377 to Dr Katharina Dittrich, Associate Professor of Organisation Studies, awarded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) for her project titled ‘Management insights for tackling grand challenges: the case of climate-related financial risks in the financial investment industry’.
• Our academics have published more than 60 sustainability research papers since 2020/21. These include ‘Real effects of climate policy: financial constraints and spillovers’ (Professor Söhnke Bartram, Journal of Financial Economics), ‘The geopolitics of energy system transformation: a review’ (Dr Mathieu Blondeel and Professor Michael Bradshaw, Geography Compass), and ‘”How do I carry all this now?": understanding consumer resistance to sustainability interventions’ (Professor Jorgen Sandberg, Journal of Marketing).

PRME

We're members of Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), a United Nations-supported initiative that aims to raise the profile of sustainability in business and management education. Our membership in PRME holds us accountable; annually we need to submit a Sharing Information on Progress (SIP) report, to document our sustainability work and progress.