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An Invitation from Prof. Kamran Mofid

Founder, Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative, UK

And

Prof. Jamshid Damooei
Director, Centre for Leadership and Values, California Lutheran University, USA

Dear Colleagues,

Given your deep commitment to education for responsible business and a sustainable economy, we are writing to seek your kind advice regarding the proposed "Sustainable Business Education Initiative."

We are seeking your support and input in launching the following initiative:"The Common Good Business Council for Sustainable Business Education (CGBCSBE)"

Our initiative is influenced by very different values and concerns from those of the recent past.  The (CGBCSBE) is a distinctive and innovative model for business, economics, finance and management education, transforming paradigms and priorities in the student experience, curriculum and education process.

The world has changed considerably since the time when business studies and the MBA programmes were first introduced. With climate change, population growth, resource depletion and social change becoming of much greater importance to business leaders, time is now to revisit the business education in general and the MBAs in particular.  Businesses need to develop more sustainable strategies, and this requires value-led leadership, innovation and transformational change. To train and educate a new generation of leaders with the understanding and skills required to think and act more strategically and responsibly in order to build successful, profitable and sustainable businesses which have a positive impact on the environment and society, requires a different set of goals, vision, mission and values.

Motivation: The universities and business schools have not - by and large - risen to the challenge of providing a sound business education that awakens students to their responsibilities not only to shareholders, but to their workforce, society and the environment. Whilst there may be some individual contributions in this direction, they have been insufficient to create the required collective impact. It is high time for the business school’s community to come together in a spirit of solidarity and cooperation for the common good, to organise a collective effort towards this goal.

We are writing to invite you to become a founding member of this initiative, enabling us to begin a constructive and fruitful debate, so that together we may take a first step towards this goal, recognising the need to establish an educational, as well as organisational structure, to include all relevant stakeholders in the business and business education community as our joint efforts gain momentum and speed.

Our hope is that this initiative will bring together various groups and individuals who see the necessity of joining hands and building alliances in support of promoting business education with social responsibility. We hope that you would agree that our time calls for bold actions and leaves no room for apathy and indifference. Our vision of promoting business education with social consciousness is to create a large tent and an umbrella that can bring educators, activists, educational institutions, and people of good intentions who refute commercialization of education and believe in the value of an educational system that can contribute to the quality of human life.

Our action is rooted in our hope for a better educational system that emanates from formation of morally and politically enlightened and active academia. We know that such academia do not come out of a vacuum and we need a sustained political debate and activism that can bring such changes in our politics in general and politics of education in particular.

We are very much looking forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience, so that together we can document the "Vision", "Mission", "Objectives", and the "Purpose" of our initiative and take the necessary steps to launch the project.

Kind regards,

Kamran Mofid and Jamshid Damooei