Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative

Last updated
Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative
AbbreviationGRLI
Formation2004 (2004)
Headquarters Brussels, Belgium
Region served
Global
Website www.grli.org

The Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative(GRLI) is a non-profit community of businesses as well as business schools and educational institutions. Based in Belgium, Brussels, its purpose is to catalyse the development of globally responsible leadership and practice in organisations and society worldwide. [1] The GRLI was founded in 2004 and counts numerous [2] organisations that are its partners and members. [3] GRLI is an official partner of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for Quality Education and Responsible Consumption and Production. [4]

Contents

GRLI's strategic partners are the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) and the United Nations Global Compact. [5]

Mission and Role

The mission of GRLI "to catalyze the development of globally responsible leadership and practice worldwide" is in line with the view promoted by GRLI that: [6]

"The management challenge for the 21st Century is to create resilient societies, sustainable economies and a healthy environment in which all human beings can flourish and prosper. This calls for individual and collective leadership that strives not to be the best in the world but the best for the world."

The GRLI aims at building a world where leaders contribute to the creation of economic and societal progress in a globally responsible and sustainable way. A starting point for global leadership includes, according to GRLI, fairness, freedom, honesty, humanity, tolerance, transparency, responsibility and solidarity, and sustainability. [7] Considered a resource for business education for cultivating leadership integrity, [8] the GRLI challenges business schools and other learning institutions to explain and promote organizational cultural changes toward social responsibility. It also cooperates with institutions of higher education to further develop their curricula. [9]

The initiative has catalysed the creation of two new academic journals: the Journal of Global Responsibility and the Sustainability, Accounting, Management and Policy Journal. [3] [10] [11]

The GRLI, in partnership with Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) and other networks, has given rise to several projects including: [12]

History

The GRLI was founded in 2004 by the European Foundation for Management Development and the United Nations Global Compact. [3] The initiative's 2005 founding report identified a need for deep systemic change in business, recognizing that this change "needed to take place at the personal, organizational and systemic levels". [14] It was founded with the purpose of developing a next generation of globally responsible leaders through the development and support of projects and initiatives. [15]

See also

Related Research Articles

United Nations Environment Programme Aims to help solve environmental issues

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is responsible for coordinating responses to environmental issues within the United Nations system. It was established by Maurice Strong, its first director, after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in June 1972. Its mandate is to provide leadership, deliver science and develop solutions on a wide range of issues, including climate change, the management of marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and green economic development. The organization also develops international environmental agreements; publishes and promotes environmental science and helps national governments achieve environmental targets.

Corporate social responsibility Form of corporate self-regulation aimed at contributing to social or charitable goals

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a form of international private business self-regulation which aims to contribute to societal goals of a philanthropic, activist, or charitable nature by engaging in or supporting volunteering or ethically-oriented practices. While once it was possible to describe CSR as an internal organisational policy or a corporate ethic strategy, that time has passed as various national and international laws have been developed and various organisations have used their authority to push it beyond individual or even industry-wide initiatives. While it has been considered a form of corporate self-regulation for some time, over the last decade or so it has moved considerably from voluntary decisions at the level of individual organizations to mandatory schemes at regional, national, and international levels.

The United Nations Global Compact is a non-binding United Nations pact to encourage businesses and firms worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies, and to report on their implementation. The UN Global Compact is a principle-based framework for businesses, stating ten principles in the areas of human rights, labor, the environment and anti-corruption. Under the Global Compact, companies are brought together with UN agencies, labor groups and civil society. Cities can join the Global Compact through the Cities Programme.

Asian Institute of Management

The Asian Institute of Management (AIM) is an international management school and research institution. It is one of the few business schools in Asia to be internationally accredited with the AACSB. It was established in partnership with Harvard Business School and uses the Harvard Business School case study teaching methodology. Prof Stephen Fuller of the Harvard Business School was its first President, to be succeeded by another professor from Harvard. It was described by Asiaweek magazine as the best in the Asia-Pacific region in terms of executive education.

Global Reporting Initiative

The Global Reporting Initiative is an international independent standards organization that helps businesses, governments and other organizations understand and communicate their impacts on issues such as climate change, human rights and corruption.

Simon Zadek is a writer and advisor focused on business and sustainability. He is the Co-Director of the UNEP Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System.

Business School Lausanne

Business School Lausanne (BSL) is a private business school located in Lausanne, Switzerland, and is part of the Lemania Group of Swiss Private Schools.

Paul Polman Dutch businessman (born 1956)

Paulus Gerardus Josephus Maria Polman is a Dutch businessman. He is a former Procter & Gamble president for Western Europe. In 2006 Polman joined Nestlé as chief financial officer and became vice president for the Americas in February 2008. From 2009 to 2019, he was the chief executive officer (CEO) of the British consumer goods company Unilever. In 2019, he created a new organization called Imagine, along with co-founders Valerie Keller and Jeff Seabright, to help businesses "eradicate poverty and inequality and stem runaway climate change."

Klaus M. Leisinger

Klaus M. Leisinger is a social scientist and economist. Klaus M. Leisinger is founder and president of the Global Values Alliance in Basel. Until 2012 he was Managing Director and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Novartis Foundation in Basel, Switzerland.

CBS International Business School

The CBS International Business School (CBS) is a state-recognised, private business school which emerged in 2020 from the individual brands Cologne Business School (CBS) and European Management School (EMS). At its locations in Cologne, Mainz and Potsdam, it offers approximately 1,900 students its predominantly English-language business management study courses with the academic degrees Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science, Master of Arts, Master of Science and MBA. The CBS Cologne Business School GmbH is the responsible body of the university.

A sustainability organization is (1) an organized group of people that aims to advance sustainability and/or (2) those actions of organizing something sustainably. Unlike many business organizations, sustainability organizations are not limited to implementing sustainability strategies which provide them with economic and cultural benefits attained through environmental responsibility. For sustainability organizations, sustainability can also be an end in itself without further justifications.

Teach For All is a global network of 60 independent, locally led and funded partner organizations whose stated shared mission is to "expand educational opportunity around the world by increasing and accelerating the impact of social enterprises that are cultivating the leadership necessary for change." Each partner aims to recruit and develop diverse graduates and professionals to exert leadership through two-year commitments to teach in their nations' high-need classrooms and lifelong commitments to expand opportunity for children. The organization was founded in 2007 by Wendy Kopp and Brett Wigdortz. Teach For All works to accelerate partners' progress and increase their impact by capturing and sharing knowledge, facilitating network connections, provisioning global resources, and fostering leadership development of staff, teachers, and alumni.

Fondation Guilé is a Swiss foundation. This non-profit organization of Swiss private law has been founded in 1997 by the Charles Burrus family headquartered in Boncourt, Switzerland. The foundation’s mission is to promote corporate responsibility in the process of globalization, focusing on human and labour rights, environmental protection and business ethics. The foundation supports and promotes the ten principles of the United Nations Global Compact through the engagement with companies about their sustainability and corporate responsibility efforts and by organizing high-level events on the topic. The foundation defines its role as “catalyst in helping companies implement and report on the ten principles of the Global Compact” according to the founders Nado and Charles Burrus.

Multistakeholder governance is a practice of governance that employs bringing multiple stakeholders together to participate in dialogue, decision making, and implementation of responses to jointly perceived problems. The principle behind such a structure is that if enough input is provided by multiple types of actors involved in a question, the eventual consensual decision gains more legitimacy, and can be more effectively implemented than a traditional state-based response. While the evolution of multistakeholder governance is occurring principally at the international level, public-private partnerships (PPPs) are domestic analogues.

Sustainability Management School Swiss business school

Sustainability Management School (SUMAS) is a business school focused on sustainability and a responsible management education. This training center was founded in 2012 by Ivana Modena, PhD with the mission of Inspiring Innovative Leaders.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) is a nonprofit made by the United Nations in 2012 to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Greenleaf Publishing

Greenleaf Publishing is a UK-based publishing imprint specializing in corporate responsibility, business ethics, environmental policy and management, future business strategy and practice, and sustainable development. Founded in 1992 as an independent publisher, the company became part of GSE Research Limited, an online scholarly publisher specializing in governance, sustainability and the environment, in 2012. In 2017, the company was sold to Taylor & Francis and became part of its Routledge imprint.

Together for Sustainability

Together for Sustainability AISBL (TfS) is a joint initiative of chemical companies, founded in 2011. It focuses on the promotion of sustainability practices in the chemical industry's supply chain, currently gathering 30 companies around a single standard of auditing and assessment.

Globalization of supply chains and pressure to lower production costs have negatively impacted environments and communities around the world, especially in developing nations where production of high demand goods is increasingly taking place. Since the 1990s, awareness of these negative impacts has grown, leading stakeholders to push companies to take responsibility and actively work to improve the sustainability of their supply chains. It has come to be understood that a company is only as sustainable as the start of its supply chain, bringing about the need for sustainable sourcing. Sustainable sourcing refers to the inclusion of social, environmental, and economic criteria in the sourcing process.

Robert Sroufe is a scholar of sustainability, integrated management, high-performance buildings,supply chain management, and operations. He is the Murrin Chair of Global Competitiveness at Duquesne University and the Palumbo-Donahue Graduate School of Business. His research utilizes a systemic outlook to understand the triple bottom line performance metrics reported to internal and external stakeholders. More specifically, he focuses on what the most successful systems and tools for measuring and managing the relationship between performance and environmental, social and financial practices of businesses. His list of publications are primarily about: how firms can create productive management systems, integrate them across business functions, and measure and manage their performance; the main drivers of sustainability; the process and importance of existing buildings becoming high-performance buildings; UN Sustainable Development Goals; and the strategic change process that occurs during a firms sustainable development. His Ph.D. was conferred by Michigan State University.

References

  1. "Vision & Mission". GRLI. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  2. "Our Network | the GRLI".
  3. 1 2 3 "Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI)". LinkedIn. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  4. "Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI) - United Nations Partnerships for SDGS platform".
  5. "Strategic Partners". GRLI. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  6. "GRLI In Brief". GRLI. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  7. Andreas Rasche; Georg Kell (16 June 2010). The United Nations Global Compact: Achievements, Trends and Challenges. Cambridge University Press. p. 177. ISBN   978-0-521-14553-4.
  8. Robert C. Chandler (10 March 2014). Business and Corporate Integrity: Sustaining Organizational Compliance, Ethics, and Trust [2 volumes]: Sustaining Organizational Compliance, Ethics, and Trust. ABC-CLIO. p. 151. ISBN   978-0-313-39598-7.
  9. "Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative". Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  10. "Journal of Global Responsibility". Emerald Group Publishing . Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  11. "Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal". Emerald Group Publishing. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  12. "Leading global networks initiate Collaboratory for responsible management education". GRLI. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  13. "Share Your AIM2Flourish Nominations Ideas". AIM2Flourish. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  14. "Globally Responsible Leadership – A call for engagement". GRLI. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  15. The Globally Responsible Leader. A Call for Action, GRLI, 2009, ISBN   978-1-871992-53-3, page 2.