2019 Dialogue at WEF Davos on Business School Rankings (11 Feb 2019)

A report from the January 23, 2019 Dialogue at Davos convened by Corporate Knights and the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), facilitated by Julia Christensen Hughes and Claire Sommer of GRLI. The dialogue examined business school rankings for the twenty-first century, drawing on research by David Pitt-Watson and Ellen Quigley that critiques how existing ranking systems create unintended consequences for management education.

The document explores how conventional rankings have distorted faculty research priorities, curricular innovation, and student experience by overemphasizing MBA programs, graduate salaries, and publications in elite journals. This narrow focus has disadvantaged undergraduate education, interdisciplinary work, teaching excellence, and research addressing societal challenges like poverty and sustainability. Participants—including business school deans, corporate executives, and UN Global Compact representatives—discussed why rankings matter to different stakeholders and identified desired future states for evaluation systems.

The dialogue also highlights the Mission Possible Foundation's emerging Positive Impact Rating, designed to capture student perspectives on learning quality and institutional culture. This resource is relevant to anyone concerned with aligning business education incentive structures with responsible leadership development and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.