The societal impact of business schools: the transformative power of higher education

The landscape of higher education is undergoing a profound transformation, and business schools are part of this evolution. Traditionally tasked with preparing students for careers in finance, marketing, or management, business schools are now expected to play a much broader societal role —one that is transformative. Stakeholders—including students, employers, governments, and accreditation bodies—are demanding that business schools demonstrate a clear, measurable commitment to addressing the pressing challenges of the 21st century: climate change, inequality, social justice, sustainable development, and geopolitical discontinuities. This shift reflects a broader global trend. In 2007, the United Nations introduced the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), an international initiative encouraging business schools to integrate sustainability and ethics into their curricula, research, and institutional culture. The initiative was further reinforced by the 2015 adoption of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which provide a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity and address issues such as poverty, gender equality, clean energy, and climate action. Parallel to this development, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the leading global accrediting body for business schools, undertook a major revision of its accreditation standards in 2020. One of the most ground-breaking elements of the new standards is the explicit inclusion of positive societal impact as a core evaluative criterion. According to Beck-Dudley and Bryant (2023), this focus represents a “game changer,” requiring schools to align their strategies, curricula, research, and outreach initiatives with societal needs. These changes signify a shift from a profit-centered educational model to a purpose-driven model that emphasizes ethics, sustainability, stakeholder engagement, and long-term societal welfare. However, the societal impact of business schools —how it can be effectively defined, implemented, and measured — remains unknown.In a sample of AACSB-accredited business schools, we aimed to examine how they measure, report, and communicate their societal impact. By investigating the frameworks they employ, the depth of their disclosures, and the nature of the metrics used, the research sought to address the transparency challenges inherent in voluntary reporting practices and to evaluate whether current institutional approaches reflect substantive engagement with societal impact or merely symbolic gestures. Prof. Gianluca Colombo, an eclectic scholar who was a thoughtful leader in business education, had a clear, ethics-driven approach to business and management education and research, and its transformative power. Open-minded, professor of management and entrepreneurship with a genuine interest in family business, he knew that business schools had a clear mission to grow the economy as well as the well-being of people, to develop innovation and entrepreneurship while safeguarding the planet, to bring education where individual rights are at stake and poverty may be threatening society. Among the founders of the of business European Management Development (EFMD), several times project leader of EU projects of technical assistance to several countries, and esteemed member of the Social Business Earth, he was fully aware of the role of measurement systems in providing a tight alignment of “ownership”, governance, and leadership to foster substantive, transformative results.