Outcome of Students’ Reports

As previously mentioned, students were asked to suggest feasible proposals of ways that companies could contribute to the reduction of economic inequality. The following is an accumulation of the proposals for private companies put forward by students in their final reports.

1. Align CSR initiatives with their core business model
   • Corporate social responsibility initiatives should be align with the corporate operations to achieve much greater overall effect with the same level of CSR investment (i.e. pharmaceutical companies should be lead the fight against the health aspect of inequality).
2. Extent CSR initiatives across the company’s entire value chain
   • Companies should do implement ‘top-of-pipe’ CSR approaches to extend the fight against inequality up to the highest levels of the company’s value chain. This approach would have more impact than simple bottom line donations and can often improve the overall efficiency of the company.
3. Ensure transparency of CSR philosophy across the company
   • Awareness of the company’s internal CSR initiatives as part of the corporate culture. CSR training for employees is imperative for initiatives to succeed (i.e. Corporate employee volunteering initiatives are an excellent start as well as initiatives linking of compensation to CSR performance).
4. Communicate the scope and impact of the company’s CSR efforts.
   • Internal and external communication policy is necessary to indicate to the public the scope and impact of the company’s CSR initiatives (successes and also failures).
5. Collaboration with other actors
   • Companies should collaborate with other key actors as governments (i.e. to commit together in in a certain course of action instead of just a lobbying relationship), NGOs (i.e. companies should identify NGOs’ best practices to identify potential collaborations with them). 

Furthermore, teams were asked to propose ways in which business schools could play a part in reducing worldwide economic inequality. The following is a summary of the suggestions proposed by each of the teams for business schools. 

1. Include the reduction of economic inequality in the school’s mission, vision and values
2. Incorporate in the curriculum of the programme mandatory/elective courses:
   • Focusing on social impact, action-based projects.
   • Combining corporate social responsibility (CSR) and creating shared value (CSV),
And whose teaching and learning methodologies are characterized by:
• The involvement of corporations so that students are convinced employers are interested in economic inequality and global development.
• A strong focus on real cases that present the question from the point of view of different stakeholders and different perspectives, in such a way that students can create their own conceptualization of the factors involved in economic inequality.
• The encouragement of reflective critical thinking skills by proposing students tasks that require multiple framing, discussion and problem solving.
• A focus on the experiential learning and learning-by-doing approaches, so that students can learn about the reality of what economic inequality is and about the real impact that the actions of corporations can make on the field.
3. Partner with non-profit organizations in such a way that they can offer internships and in-company projects and so motivate students to contribute to the task of reducing economic inequality
4. Develop a sound and wide scholarship programme:
   • Aiming at providing talented students with the opportunity to pursue their studies in the school, regardless of their financial possibilities.
   • Targeting studies or entrepreneurial activities aimed at reducing the economic inequality with grants and scholarships.