Beedie School of Business News

Keynote speaker Dr. Wolfgang Engshuber, chair of the UN’s PRI committee.

The CIBC Centre for Corporate Governance and Risk Management at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business in partnership with the Shareholder Association for Research and Education (SHARE) hosted a meeting on February 28 welcoming delegates from the United Nation’s Principles for Responsible Investing (PRI) committee. On the agenda was the role of responsible investing in ensuring risk management and building healthy, sustainable capital markets.

Daniel Shapiro, Dean of the Beedie School of Business, introduced keynote speaker Dr. Wolfgang Engshuber, chair of the UN’s PRI committee. In his opening remarks, Shapiro said that the Beedie School of Business was proud to have committed itself to upholding many of the same values that define the PRI as a signatory to the Principles of Management Education (PRME). Both initiatives adhere closely to the UN Global Compact on long-term ethical sustainability.

Founded in April 2006, as a vision of former UN secretary Kofi Annan, the number of signatories to the PRI has grown from less than 200 to over 1500, managing combined global assets of 35 trillion US dollars. Annan’s goal was to minimise global instability by encouraging financial organizations into thinking long term about their risk management strategies in addition to addressing environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

Reflecting on the time elapsed since the creation of PRI, Engshuber remarked that while preparing for this auspicious meeting he had read a paper on fiduciary responsibility from the SHARE website. Though well written, he was puzzled; why had certain key sources not been referenced? His question was answered on the front page – “The document had been written in 2005 and the problems are already addressed. Now there isn’t a conflict; fiduciary responsibility is an actual responsibility,” said Engshuber. Keep reading…

Tags: Beedie School of Business, capital markets, CIBC Centre for Corporate Governance and Risk Management, Daniel Shapiro, Kofi Annan, Michael Parent, NEI Investments, PRI, Principles of Management Education, responsible investing, risk management, Robert Adamson, SHARE, Shareholder Association for Research and Education, United Nation’s Principles for Responsible Investing, Vancity, Wolfgang Engshuber

The Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University is pleased to announce that it has been awarded SSHRD Insight Development Grant (IDG) funding for four separate business research initiatives – projects that will bring new understanding and knowledge to the areas of social innovation, capital markets, sustainability and business ethics.

They include research focused on liquidity and market efficiency in Canada conducted by Assistant Professor Karel Hrazdil and Professor Dennis Chung, and a project by Associate Professor Sudheer Gupta focused on inclusive economic development and poverty alleviation. Keep reading…

Tags: Aidan Vining, Andrew Von Nordenflycht, Andrey Pavlov, brokers, business ethics, capital markets, Daniel Shapiro, Dennis Chung, government, Karel Hrazdil, Network for Business Sustainability, regulation, Research, securities, social innovation, SSHRC, Stephanie Bertels, Sudheer Gupta, sustainability

VANCOUVER– A ranking of international business schools has rated the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University as among the best in the world for business and management research.

The measure, published by the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), a leading repository of business academic papers, shows that based on article downloads by institution, Beedie ranks 54th in the world out of more than 1000 business schools included in the survey.

According to Beedie School of Business Dean Daniel Shapiro, the school’s ranking can be attributed to the Beedie faculty’s prolific output, which focuses on key strategic areas such as innovation and technology, sustainability, international business and capital markets.

“This ranking is yet another measure that highlights the significant impact of our research,” said Shapiro. “It is a testament to both the breadth and depth of our faculty’s research output that we are able to rate so highly.”

SSRN was established in 1994 by Michael Jensen, a financial economist at Harvard Business School. In a 2008 New York Times profile, SSRN was held up for being “increasingly influential” in academic circles. According to the article, “With a precision common to the digital age, its rankings of downloads can be sliced and diced in many ways with only a click: most downloads over all or most downloads in the last 12 months, either by article, by author or by institution.”

The rankings can be viewed online at: http://hq.ssrn.com/rankings (free registration required)

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Tags: capital markets, Daniel Shapiro, entrepreneurship, Harvard Business School, innovation, international business, Michael Jensen, MIS, New York Times, social entrepreneurship, Social Science Research Network, SSRN, sustainability, technology