• Business and management degrees have long been recognised as versatile qualifications
• Business schools encourage interdisciplinary collaboration to prepare graduates to solve complex global challenges
• By deepening ties with communities, business schools are creating the next generation of leaders not just in business and finance, but across almost all sectors

Business and management degrees have come a long way in enhancing their professional versatility. From developing ever more specialised Masters to embedding new innovations, technologies and disciplines into modules and, more recently, new attitudes and thinking. The applicability of leadership skills taught in business education has empowered many graduates to step outside the traditional career pipeline into the finance and corporate sectors.

Increasingly, those graduates are taking on roles where they can focus on having a positive societal impact. Therefore, delivering on ESG (environmental, social, and governance) commitments is becoming a strategic priority as well as meeting a business need.

The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) reports that 94 percent of prospective business school students say that sustainability is at least slightly important to their academic experience.

This sentiment is applied to potential employers too, with 68 percent of prospective students saying a company’s sustainable and ethical practices would impact their decision about whether to accept a job there.

Beyond the schools themselves, this attitude is so ingrained in best practice that it has started to not only feature in international rankings of institutions, but influence entirely new ones. For instance, QS, a leading analytics platform for the global higher education sector, now publishes an annual World University: Sustainability ranking.

The importance of offering business education with societal impact is likewise reflected in the other key measure of an institution’s calibre: accreditation bodies.

AACSB International, the world’s largest and oldest accrediting body for business schools, highlights innovative business school initiatives with a societal impact focus through its annual Innovations That Inspire honourees list. The organisation also launched its Leader Generation spotlight series in collaboration with BBC Storyworks to platform the voices of students, faculty, and alumni at business schools around the world who showcase collaborative, community-minded approaches to leadership across a range of sectors.

A business school for healthcare

With a curriculum based on health policy, understanding health systems, health strategy, and fostering leadership skills, UCL Global Business School for Health is one featured in the series. Its programmes draw in students both with corporate experience seeking to pivot into healthcare, and qualified medical practitioners who want to develop their management skills to have a wider impact on the sector.

One such individual is Nayol Santos, who studied an MSc in Global Healthcare Management at UCL GBSH from 2022-2023. Originally from Portugal, Santos moved to London a decade prior to beginning her studies to pursue a career in midwifery. “I always wanted to help mothers and babies,” she tells the Leader Generation series. “I was compelled to look for how to increase your impact in healthcare beyond clinical practice.”

“There are five million students enrolled in AACSB business schools. Imagine the impact they can make…”

– Lily Bi, the President and CEO of AACSB

Mohammed Seyam, a doctor who also chose to study an MSc in Global Healthcare Management at UCL GBSH, from 2023-2024 held a similar motivation. “I wanted to change how we treat patients and be proactive to create a sustainable system that has its protocols in improving the health of the population,” he says. Since studying, Seyam has used brought his leadership experience into working as an external consultant for the World Health Organization (WHO) and his current position in the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in the UK.

Santos was also able to translate her additional understanding of how healthcare businesses operate to evolve her career. She founded BodyOwn, an app that helps women through postnatal recovery. “UCL really backed me up and offered me the tools to create a viable business,” she says.

A team of entrepreneurs combat wildfires

The Silvaye team also exemplifies the kind of interdisciplinary collaborations across industries and academic disciplines that business schools encourage. A startup that uses artificial intelligence-powered technology to predict the likelihood and potential severity of wildfire outbreaks, Silvaye’s three co-founders combine their knowledge of computer science, environmental science, and entrepreneurship.

The venture started as an entry in NASA’s Wildlife Climate Tech Challenge. Andrew Saah, Silvaye’s CSO with a BSc in Environmental Science from the University of San Francisco (USF), connected with Andrew Pearce, now CTO with a BSc in Computer Science and Business from Lehigh University, and Owen Sordillo, Silvaye’s CEO with a BSBA in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from USF’s School of Management.

“No one builds a ground-breaking business all by themselves. They always have a team. That’s why we want our students to go outside of their disciplines and learn how to work with people from different backgrounds”

– Otgontsetseg Erhemjamts, Dean of the University of San Francisco School of Management.

“We are extremely focused on making sure our data is accessible to community managers, planners, and fire departments, so that we’re able to mitigate risks for entire neighbourhoods and really try to protect personal property and lives in the event of fires,” Sordillo tells the Leader Generation series.

Otgontsetseg Erhemjamts, Dean of USF School of Management, says the institution emphasises the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration to solve complex societal challenges. “No one builds a ground-breaking business all by themselves. They always have a team. That’s why we want our students to go outside of their disciplines and learn how to work with people from different backgrounds,” she says.

The business of growing old

In addition to their teaching, business schools also contribute to societal challenges through their research.

The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Business School Ageing Research Collaborative is a research group that brings together experts from across the university. Experts in business, design, law, architecture, health, and engineering work together to design evidence-based solutions to the biggest problems in ageing and age care.

Nicole Sutton, Associate Professor at UTS Business School, tells the Leader Generation series: “We pull together workforce data, financial data, quality and safety data, and demographic data to develop independent, robust evidence, analysis, and commentary about the most pressing challenges we can see coming, and also the changes that are coming online as the sector develops year on year.”

The group engages with aged care advocates like Gwenda Darling, a member of the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care. “I believe you can tell the value of a society by the way they treat their elders,” says Darling, who is 72 years old. “We need to work with younger people who will be designing and creating the aged care programmes of the future.”

Carl Rhodes, the Dean of UTS Business School, says the institution’s overall vision is grounded in being a socially committed school, asking important questions such as how business contributes to society.

Creating leaders who care

Business schools have historically been highly interdisciplinary learning environments, reflecting the fact that the business world is constantly shaped by external forces, from science and technology to geopolitics. Their ability to foster a community of collaborations, motivated by the broader impact they can have on the world around them, will be crucial for the future.

As the understanding of global challenges continues to grow more complex, all industries will need professionals with the creativity and critical thinking skills to innovate new ways of transforming organisations and entire industries to meet the changing needs of consumers, patients, stakeholders, and society.

Institutions that offer entrepreneurship and management education are on the front lines of training the next generation of leaders across all sectors, not just in banking and finance. By deepening ties with their communities, business schools are looking not just at the present, but also towards the future, to create a generation of leaders with the skills to lead the world five years from now.

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