CRO’s Top 10 Executive Training Programs in Corporate Responsibility 2008

By Danielle Lee

Many of the top business schools in the country have announced plans to move into the sustainability and/or corporate responsibility space with programs relevant to these emerging corporate trends.

Schools on CRO’s Top 10 Executive Training Programs in Corporate Responsibility 2008, however, are ahead of the curve, having already integrated the fundamentals of this growing movement in their open enrollment programs, and offering the necessary resources to companies wishing to expand their knowledge in the subject through custom courses.

See CRO's Top 10 Executive Training Programs in Corporate Responsibility 2008 List (pdf) 

In compiling this Top 10 list, we contacted schools and used public and school-submitted information to research the number of open-enrollment programs they have dedicated to corporate responsibility and all its tenets—ethical behavior, talent diversity and development, environmental sustainability, global awareness and social concerns—within the executive education program at each institution.

CRO gained an understanding of the number of faculty members and course listings on these topics from the schools’ websites and from school administrators and faculty. CRO then chose the Top 10 using that old axiom of “depth and breadth” of corporate responsibility and sustainability-related offerings; the sheer number of related courses; the expert faculty; and the number of years these programs have existed. Because the development of these topics is still in infancy stages, as they co-exist with the more “classic” business courses at many universities, we used their presence and volume in course catalogues as the key selection factor for the Top 10.

The Stanford Graduate School of Business is a leader in this field, with executive course offerings including everything from “Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability” to “Corporate Social Responsibility: Strategic Integration and Competitiveness.” Primarily focused on a balance between business and environmental objectives, the business strategies offering is a five-day retreat in the Sierra Nevada that in 2007—its first year—included a CEO, vice presidents and managers in a group of 31 that explored case studies in sustainability. Participants did not shy away from discussions about the realities of their companies going green, including increased costs and pressure from activist organizations, said Mark Powell, Vice President for Fish Conservation at Ocean Conservancy, who blogged about his experience.

“Why can I learn so much from a business school perspective?” Powell wrote. “Simple really, the study of business strategies is just the study of change, and I’m in the business of promoting change. No wonder the insights are relevant.”

Stanford, in its CSR course, similarly banks on the relevancy of social values impacting the bottom line. The course is designed to help executives develop best practices for integrating social and environmental concerns in their businesses using case studies and discussions about how they tie into business strategies.

Harvard Business School also offers a “Corporate Social Responsibility” program, with about 60 executive participants yearly. Now in its fourth year, the program focuses on a top-down approach to shifting corporate culture.

“Our curriculum areas are dedicated to corporate responsibility as it relates to corporate strategy; leadership in particular,” says Charles Breckling, Managing Director of Marketing for the executive education program. “Most of the work that goes into the corporate social responsibility programs we have is less about public relations and philanthropy and more about getting corporate social responsibility initiatives into corporate strategies and into corporate culture so they become higher priorities in an organization and become measurable, to prepare organizations for trouble spots.”

Vice presidents of social compliance, corporate responsibility managers, board members and other executives from corporations including Molson, Siemens, Coors Brewing Co. and Bank of America participated in Harvard’s previous CSR program.

Harvard also joins a few other schools on the Top 10 that focus on women’s leadership, with a so-titled forum that focuses on innovative leadership and personal development.

Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management offers “Women’s Senior Leadership,” “Women’s Impact Series” and “Women’s Director Development” programs, while Stanford offers an “Executive Program for Women Leaders.”

Kellogg buttresses these options with other talent development programs that also focus on leadership, including the “Soul of Leadership,” which gives “insights into group dynamics, loyalty, creativity, vision, security, and achievement,” according to its website. “Managing the New Workforce” is geared toward leveraging employee diversity and the Advanced Executive Program (AEP)—catering to senior executives—includes “The Ethical Environment of Management” as a component.

Kellogg also joins Stanford, which offers yoga classes to participants in its environmental sustainability program, in providing a well-rounded experience to participants. Nutrition and fitness expert Jack Groppel, author of “The Corporate Athlete,” teaches another AEP course, “Maximizing Physical Energy.” This session bolsters Kellogg’s AEP promise of “educating mind, body and spirit.”

The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University also takes a multipronged approach in its leadership program, which covers research on “organizational behavior, sociology, psychology and political science.” The prevalence of the word “innovation” in the titles of some of its other program offerings—“Leading Innovation and Change” and “Global Leaders Program: Growing and Innovating in a Flat World”—is a fitting descriptor for its whole program, given its “Climate Change Leadership” option. In partnership with the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Cambridge University, and The Climate Group, Fuqua tackles the hot-button issue within a three-day course focused on assessing the risks and opportunities of climate change.

The Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan maintains a broader leadership focus with two programs that utilize the “positive organizational scholarship” discipline, developed by University of Michigan faculty members Bob Quinn and Kim Cameron. The programs, created for leadership development and organizational success, rely on transforming positive corporate culture and practices into management and business success.

“The most significant trend in curriculum over the last several years is an increasing focus on these leadership issues, including an overall team emphasis including coaching and mentoring,” says Paul Gediman, Director of the school’s Office of Marketing Communications.

The Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship (BCCCC)’s executive education program has integrated corporate citizenship in its programs for more than two decades, beginning with courses in 1983 for corporate community-involvement managers. The school has had 6,000 participants from more than 1,000 corporations since then. The curriculum was recently organized into seven competency areas, including one dedicated to “Corporate Citizenship or Community Involvement Strategy.” The three executive education certificates at BCCCC are also offered in these topics.

Though the program has 17 academic and corporate practitioner instructors on staff, the focus remains on the participating executives.

“Participants want to hear from and learn from their peers,” says school Communications Director Peggy Connolly. “Our programs are increasingly designed to help them do that.”

In the Albers School of Business and Economics at Seattle University’s eight-month executive leadership program, topics range from “Ethical Leadership” and “Leadership for a Just and Humane World” to “Building Vision for a Global Commons.” The program thrives on a similar networking-focused maxim.

“Some challenging themes in business are recurrent, perhaps because businesses involve people and few individuals are fully enlightened,” says John Dienhart, Director of Albers Business Ethics Initiative and “Ethical Leadership” professor. “Many business crises, scandals, and failures can be traced to leaders who take a narrow, rather than broad view, of self- or organizational interest. They fail to understand relationship—how everyone is connected.”

The curriculum’s personal development focus extends to the community; all participants work on a social justice project. One group of students worked with the Washington state legislature to push for passage of a law enabling foster children to get educational aid after they leave the foster system at 18 years old.

The Olin Business School at Washington University in St Louis’s executive education program is concerned with the “Noble Enterprise” and the “Value-Driven Organization” in these and other one and two-day seminars offered throughout the year.

The recently completed “Sustainable Growth” seminar addressed sustainability’s challenges with case studies and exercises.

Columbia Business School recently added a “Strategic Intuition: The Key to Innovation” course, which received the highest student ratings in spring 2007, and joins other policy-based programs like “Leading Strategic Growth and Change” and “Corporate Directors’ Responsibility: Enhancing the Integrity of Financial Disclosure” in the corporate responsibility canon. As with many other schools on the list, leadership is also a prime focus, with two programs dedicated to “implementing change and managing culture.”

The “Leadership Training for High Potentials” program at New York University’s Leonard M. Stern School of Business also adheres to the innovative leadership model, challenging participants to examine the meaning of leadership while focusing on governance, accountability, and driving effective change through the organization.

The school’s “Investing in China” program highlights a globalization approach that many other schools in the Top 10 share. Taking an in-depth look at the opportunities and risks associated with the country, the program focuses on investment opportunities in the region while touching on the social realities and sometimes-corrupt practices that shape the country’s global reputation.

Wall Street veteran and Clinical Associate Professor of Management Communication Aline Wolff works as a consultant for the Stern executive education program, specializing in cross-cultural communication and communication theory.

All of the schools on the Top 10 also offer corporations custom programs in addition to their open-enrollment options. The expert faculty and resources used in their established courses carry over to corporate-client partnerships, and the custom programs can be tailored to meet an organization’s sustainability and corporate responsibility needs.

The Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan also offers this as part of its Michigan Speakers Bureau, with presentations on topics like environmental strategy and sustainable development available for special events or planning sessions.

Fuqua at Duke University’s Corporate Education department is a nonprofit corporation in its own right, a carve-out of the business school that has delivered custom courses in 55 countries across six continents.