AMBA & BGA EXCELLENCE AWARD WINNERS
Through co-designed executive education, the University of Edinburgh Business School has helped a leading UK bank create the conditions for positive action on climate change. Dean Gavin Jack tells Tim Banerjee Dhoul how the impact of this award-winning initiative highlights the power of partnerships
How did it feel to win the Best Business School Partnership Award 2025? “It was a wonderful feeling and we were particularly pleased to win given the outstanding quality and impact of all nominees in this category from across the globe. It highlights the power of business school partnerships to drive meaningful, positive change. “Our collaboration with NatWest Group stands out as a clear example of how we bring our mission to life: creating meaningful change for people, organisations and the environment through research and education. We can only do this collaboratively, by building effective external partnerships through co-designed initiatives and establishing mutual trust and shared vision.” The University of Edinburgh Business School won this award for its learning and development partnership with NatWest Group on the topic of climate change. What were the partnership’s underlying aims? “Our partnership with NatWest Group had three underlying aims. The first aim was building agency by equipping colleagues in priority roles with the capability to do their jobs, manage climate-related risks and support customers through the transition to net zero. The second was to drive awareness, providing easily accessible climate awareness learning, enabling people to take ownership and act. From there, the third aim was to inspire action and innovation through learning, thought leadership and global outreach. “Between September 2020 and December 2023, the collaboration successfully evolved from a targeted training initiative for a small group of frontline early adopters into a far-reaching programme. Ultimately, it
empowered 99.9 per cent of NatWest Group’s headcount with the tools and understanding to engage with the risks and opportunities that climate change presents for the organisation and its customers.” What are the biggest challenges in achieving a net-zero carbon economy and narrowing the gap between ambition and action? “One of the key challenges in achieving a net-zero carbon economy is that fossil fuels remain highly profitable. This means that there are large and powerful constituencies that either lobby actively against decarbonisation or advocate for a longer and slower transition to a net-zero carbon economy. These constituencies are diverse and include high net-worth individuals, oligarchs, sovereign wealth funds, opportunistic populists, petrostates and trade unions within the oil and gas sector. “Another obstacle is the mismatch of time horizons. Politicians and investors often have short-term horizons and even though the impacts of climate change are already being felt, the major impacts may be perceived to be over the horizon for many. Of course, time horizons and institutional/business decision-making are known to differ by cultural context. For instance, the Chinese government tends to work on a very long horizon. Knowing that an energy transition is inevitable, it has invested and now dominates key technologies, such as solar power and electric vehicles and the rare earths needed to make them. “Narrowing the gap between ambition and action is, then, partly a question of political will and time horizons and partly of setting realistic expectations about how quickly institutions and individuals may be capable of behavioural change.”
Ambition • ISSUE 3 • 2025 25
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