Social Value Impact in Business Education: Beyond Ethos, Towards Principles, Methods, and Technical Practice

Business education is increasingly integrating sustainability and moving towards the responsible management agenda, with the rise of the United Nations’ Principles of Responsible Management Education initiative. This includes reference to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, although its reach remains limited in terms of the operations and culture of business schools. Empirical evidence continues to highlight that economic and financial ideologies and considerations often usurp wider issues of sustainability including social impacts. This study draws from an international expert inquiry into the understanding and use of social value and social impact principles and methods in business education and involved stakeholders across 16 countries. The findings highlight that whilst there are practices aligned with the broad notion of social value and social impact, there needs to be a more nuanced understanding of social value impact methodology and its technical methods and tools. This paper therefore outlines eight key principles and associated methods of social value methodology as a basis to prompt new directions, and an urgent call for more holistic thinking across the university ecosystem.