The Schulich School of Business has been rated one of the world’s best when it comes to equipping future business leaders with the tools needed to manage in today’s changed business environment. Schulich placed 2nd overall in The Aspen Institute’s Beyond Grey Pinstripes survey, a global ranking of the top 100 MBA programs that are preparing future managers for the environmental, social and ethical complexities of modern-day business.

The Beyond Grey Pinstripes ranking, published every two years by the Washington, DC-based Aspen Institute, rates the top 100 global MBA programs in the world that are providing future business leaders with a comprehensive and integrated understanding of the social and environmental issues that are reshaping the way businesses are managed – everything from increased consumer activism and greater transparency in labour and environmental practices to changes in corporate governance policies and executive compensation. A total of 149 business schools from 22 countries took part in the survey.

According to the Aspen Institute, this year’s ranking marked the first opportunity since the global economic downturn to comprehensively measure the extent to which MBA programs are altering the content of their curriculum – and the result has been a sea change in the way that business schools are focusing on social, ethical and environmental issues in the classroom.

“The global corporate landscape has changed dramatically in the last few years and a greater number of businesses are dealing more seriously with the triple bottom line of social, environmental and economic issues,” said Dezsö J. Horváth, Dean of the Schulich School of Business. “Adopting a broad, triple bottom line approach is more than just good corporate citizenship – it’s simply good business management. The Dow Jones Sustainability Index confirms that corporations that focus on the triple bottom line also generate higher shareholder value on average over the mid-to-long term.”

Horváth said that businesses are facing increased expectations and demands on the part of governments and the public. “The narrow shareholder model of the past has been overtaken by a much broader stakeholder model – one that considers the implications of strategic decisions on everyone from consumers and employees to investors and citizens.”

Added Horváth: “There is a growing awareness that business issues are rarely isolated from social, political and environmental considerations. The Beyond Grey Pinstripes ranking measures how well business schools are preparing students for this new reality, and Schulich is proud to be rated a world leader when it comes to graduating managers who have the tools necessary to lead in the new world of business.”

Schulich placed 2nd overall, close behind #1 ranked Stanford University, and ahead of Michigan, Yale, Northwestern, Cornell and UC Berkeley in the world’s top 10 business schools. Schulich also ranked either first or second in the world in three of the four categories measured by the survey – the only school to do so:

• Schulich was ranked #1 in the world in the categories of Faculty Research and Relevant Coursework (Stanford ranked 4th and 2nd, respectively).
• Ranked #2 in the world in the category of business impact, which measures the total number of courses offered that focus on the role that for-profit business can play as a force for positive social and environmental change (Stanford placed 1^st).
• Schulich ranked 13^th in the category of Student Exposure (Stanford ranked 24^th).

Dean Horvath said he “was particularly proud of our #1 ranking in the category of faculty research – another strong indicator of the first-rate, leading-edge research that Schulich professors are publishing in peer-reviewed business journals.”