having previously considered how business responded during the crisis, our masterclass gave us the opportunity to develop our students’ thinking further, to focus on what organisations can do to contribute more widely to the societies in which they operate. Again speaking to our UNPRME commitment, the masterclass enabled students to acquire the knowledge and develop the skills involved in creating thriving social enterprises. The impact of the week of guest lectures and discussions featuring successful social entrepreneurs, networking and teamwork was palpable: several months later, one of the students reported that he had led his organisation to create an education and welfare social enterprise, which ran parallel to its day-to-day business. Several other students have also apparently worked within their organisations to develop a social enterprise arm. As an institution we pride ourselves on being Citizens of Change and our aim is to be able to use our high quality, AMBA-accredited business education as a vehicle to help make the world a better place. By focusing our masterclasses on leading through Covid-19, sustainability and social enterprise, we are taking every opportunity to develop responsible business leaders through whose efforts we can collectively influence positive global change. Honing project management skills Closer to home, we call on our MBA students and alumni to influence and help shape who we are as a school of business. Professor Adam Boddison is a Leicester MBA alumnus and CEO of the Association for Project Management (APM). Boddison is both an ardent proponent of project management and a great educationalist, having received a PhD in education. Working in collaboration with him, we devised the theme and content for our most recent MBA residential workshop, Practical project management: real world techniques for project success . Along with Dr Ian Clarkson, project and programme management practice director at tech talent and training organisation QA, and our residential workshop academic team, Boddison designed and delivered the two-day workshop. During the two days, we introduced Project Canvas, developed by Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, the author of the Harvard Business Review project management handbook. MBA students are pragmatic learners who like to collect a repertoire of adaptable tools and techniques – and Project Canvas certainly falls into this category. It structures
Brookfield House, the former residence of university founder Thomas Fielding Johnson, is now the home of the School of Business
part of our institutional commitment to the UN’s principles for responsible management education (PRME) and sustainable business, this masterclass introduced students to climate science before they collectively explored the role that businesses, and their own organisations in particular, played in both creating and remedying the climate crisis. Embedded within the masterclass was the chance for students to achieve their personal carbon literacy accreditation. Awarded by the Carbon Literacy Project, accreditation required students to commit to personal and organisational climate- positive changes. As a result of the OSC, half of the participants gained personal accreditations and several went on to spearhead global sustainability initiatives in their companies, including a tree- planting project in Uganda to reverse deforestation and the mandated inclusion of sustainability criteria in institutional investment decisions. We are very proud to report that the OSC was one of the final four shortlisted for AMBA’s Innovative Teaching Award in 2022. Moreover, this has now been rolled out to the senior leadership teams in the university and has become a core component of its MSc in sustainable futures, testament to the idea that good business education transcends disciplinary boundaries. Creating thriving social enterprises When, in 2022, the Leicester masterclass finally returned to our new School of Business campus at Brookfield, our attention turned to social enterprise. The global pandemic had had a devastating impact on widening existing social inequalities still further;
20 | Ambition | FEBRUARY 2024
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