INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network towards the end of 2025. In so doing, it became the global initiative’s 11th country network in Africa and the second in the Middle East, further highlighting the importance of collaborative platforms and dialogue as a means of sowing seeds of change and inspiration. This year, the AUC Business Forum convened for the seventh time, bringing together academics, practitioners and policymakers from 12 different countries under the theme of the NextGen Business School. At the event, discussions delved into current trends and challenges in today’s global business ecosystem. One roundtable, for example, focused on family businesses – enterprises that form the backbone of the private sector in the MENA region – and the need to advance related governance practices to improve their efficiency, effectiveness and longevity. Not only was this a highly relevant topic for the region, but it was also an opportunity for the school to address one of its current strategic targets: that of empowering economic development in Egypt and the region through the family business ecosystem. In this sense, the forum’s insights built on the school’s recent efforts in this area, particularly the MENA Family Business Research Conference, launched last year by the school’s Centre of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Over the years, therefore, the AUC Business Forum has provided a crucial means of using dialogue to move forward and inspire change. Simply put, discussion is not merely an option but a necessity for any business school operating in today’s complex and dynamic world. Ideas flourish when they are shared and acted on and initiatives like the forum seek to move these exchanges beyond words that echo in a conference hall and transform them into genuine, lasting impact.
As school dean Sherif Kamel emphasised, its main aim is to acknowledge the role of business schools in addressing climate change and ensure they can effectively address its challenges through “teaching, curricula, cases and projects, including research endeavours and business development activities, as they help shape the next generation of leaders to impact society”. With the aim of advancing climate change leadership in the region and helping achieve the vision of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27), the school took up the theme of sustainable finance and development in the 2023 edition of the forum. Discussions at this event centred on fostering environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) practices in the corporate landscape, as well as the role of business schools in conducting research that provides the data needed for effective checks and balances in this area. This led to the introduction of the ESG barometer, a tool designed to assess corporate engagement in the field. More than 100 companies in Egypt formed the basis of this initiative’s first set of results and were presented at last year’s forum. The 2024 iteration of the forum, meanwhile, included a discussion of how environmental issues affect specific industries, with a focus on how the hospitality and tourism sector can collaborate with local communities to foster sustainable practices. In the same vein, another Onsi Sawiris School of Business research centre, the John D Gerhart Centre for Philanthropy, Civic Engagement and Responsible Business, launched the Egyptian chapter of the
Leila Abdellatif is a senior content specialist at the Onsi Sawiris School of Business at the American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt, having previously served as senior editor of the school’s knowledge portal, Business Forward
Business Impact • ISSUE 2 • 2026
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