Highlights > Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility

Rigoberta MENCHUSince 2003, Burgundy School of Business has been involved in the promotion of responsible citizenship, notably by organising a forum «Social justice and corporate ethical behaviour» presided by Rigoberta MENCHU, Nobel Peace Prize 1992.

 
 

Global Responsibility is one of the strategic axes of the school whose mission is to train managers to behave as responsible citizens in their companies as well as in society at large. The current economic and financial crisis underlines the pertinence of this position.

The school’s commitment to Global Responsibility follows three main themes:

 

1 - Global Responsibility at the School and in society at large notably consists in:

 
  • associating those involved from the school (students’ representatives and professors) and those from outside the school (companies, local government bodies, personalities from academia…) with the decisions of the School’s Management Committee;
  • making students, professors and administration of the school aware of the major challenges of the century, for example energy and climate change;
  • describing Global Responsibility in terms of everyday behaviour (energy saving, reduced paper consumption, sorting and recycling waste…);
  • fostering diversity and parity among the School;
  • fostering equal opportunities to students for admission (for example, via scholarships financed by the school for the most deserving students);
  • conducting student-targeted prevention campaigns for health risks and addictions as a standard policy of the school. Psychological support will be made available to students in difficulty;
  • participating in campaigns to promote solidarity and to fight against discrimination and exclusion, such as giving support to the Burgundy Food Bank, and providing assistance to set up microcredit or via Learning through Community Work;
  • providing support to initiatives of student associations in the field of Global Responsibility.

 2 – Teaching that integrates Global Responsibility based on:

 
  • compulsory and optional lessons taught in French and/or in English in every school programme, on themes including sustainable development, ethical management, company governance and micro-finance
  • conferences on subjects such as: energy issues, eco-design, social and solidarity economics, diversity, microfinance,
  • students projects validated in the context of their curriculum (professional thesis, business work placements...);
  • Learning through Community Work: to ensure that the school’s teaching commitments have concrete applications, a module entitled Learning through Community Work was created in September 2005. This unique training programme for active citizenship has been recognized by the HALDE  (The French Equal Opportunities and Anti-Discrimination Commission)  
 3 - Research into Global Responsibility, which aims to:
 
  • make companies aware of their Global Responsibility and accompany them in their strategy formulation;
  • inform managers and train them in Global Responsibility;
  • provide the school’s professors with favorable environments to conduct their research in Global Responsibility;
  • enrich existing courses and offer new courses derived from this research.