CEGBI Guest Seminar - The Roaring Twenties revisited: can the SDGs provide a way? What role for teaching and research?

Event details

The world is presently facing a ‘cascade of crises’ (dixit United Nations) or a ‘poly-crisis’ (dixit World Economic Forum) that confronts governments, companies, NGOs, but also universities with fundamental questions on how to act ‘responsibly’.  Parallels with the ‘roaring twenties’ of the 20^th century are easily drawn. But while the ‘League of Nations’ in the 1920s proved unable to deal with rising conflicts, this era the United Nations has arguably introduced a more innovative way for dealing with political-economic tensions: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs present a multi-stakeholder approach to societies ‘grand challenges’ in which companies, governments, NGOs and knowledge institutes promised to join forces to enable a systems transformation by the year 2030 based on ‘principles-based’ and ‘goal-oriented’ governance approaches. But progress clearly goes too slow, not in the least because it proves difficult to implement SDG targets in the day-to-day practice of all actors involved. Many universities have also embraced the SDGs as inspiring knowledge agenda. They also face substantial implementation problems. How to deal with these challenges?

In this seminar prof. Van Tulder of the Erasmus University will share his experience on how he was able to adopt this global – and rather complex - agenda into teaching and research at the Rotterdam School of Management – a leading business school in sustainability research and teaching. He will thereby introduce his recently released book ‘Principles of Sustainable Business. Frameworks for Corporate Action on the SDGs’ (Routledge, 2023) which is also accompanied by an extensive website containing tools, resources and a variety of teaching formulas (such as MOOCs and SDG cases) that can support researchers and educators around the world to embed the SDG-agenda into their curricula. The aim: by better aligning universities, companies, governments and civil society organizations around the SDG agenda, contribute to positive change during the ‘roaring twenties’ of the 21^st century.

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Rob Van Tulder is Professor emeritus of International Business-Society Management at RSM Erasmus University Rotterdam and Academic Director of the Partnerships Resource Centre.

He is co-founder of the department of Business-Society Management, one of the leading departments in the world organizing research and education on the way business can create value for society either alone or through cross-sector partnerships. He advises international organizations, governments, multinational enterprises and international NGOs on issues of sustainability and strategy. He published 100+ articles in a wide variety of scientific journals and wrote 20+ books on political-economic issues related to sustainability, international business, strategy, regional integration, technological change and skill development. His latest books include: Principles of Sustainable Business. Frameworks for Corporate Action on the SDGs (2023); Getting all the motives right (2018); Skill Sheets: an integrated approach to research, study and management, (2018).   He made scientific knowledge practical in a variety of directions, for instance: (1) to help managers assess the transition stage they are in (www.betterbusinessscan.org), (2) to help societal parties and students assess and address wicked problems (wicked problems plaza), (3) to help partnerships identify relevant intervention points and theories of change (www.rsm/prc), (4) to help students apply analytical frameworks to corporate cases and their personal leadership ambitions (posters, checklists and profilers). More information: www.principlesofsustainablebusiness.nl or www.robvantulder.nl