November 30, 2011 - The Pontis Foundation conducted its first training session on Corporate Responsibility in Minsk for MBA teachers in Belarus. We aim to facilitate the beginning of a change in the way Belarusian managers and executives view their business models.
As Belarus’ integration with European economies increases, so must its adherence to European standards of doing business. Increasingly, leading companies in Europe and their supply chains are expected to maintain high standards of corporate responsibility, ensuring that their business practices have a positive impact on the environment, consumers, employees, and their communities. Belarusian private sector executives, managers and future business professionals must be prepared to work with their international counterparts using common language and shared principles with regard to critical aspects of business in the Western world, including transparency, quality control, favourable employee conditions, generally accepted accounting and business practices, and principles of corporate responsibility.
The incorporation of corporate responsibility principles in business is in relatively nascent stages in Belarus. Managers usually do not understand the importance of corporate responsibility or they have very limited knowledge and experience with implementing its strategies. Currently in Belarus, there are very few training opportunities for managers to learn how to include corporate responsibility in their corporate cultures and even fewer experts who are capable of building this capacity among business leaders.
To address this issue, the Pontis Foundation, started to implement the project Slovak experience in corporate responsibility for Belarus since September 2011 together with local partner School of Business and Management of Technology (SBMT) of Belarusian State University, which runs the MBA study program, where all the students are active businessmen. The overall goal of the project is to educate business executives, managers and future business professionals how to incorporate best practices of corporate responsibility into their business models. The project builds on the Pontis Foundation's more than ten years of experience with developing the concept of corporate responsibility in Slovakia, Serbia, Macedonia, and Belarus. In Belarus, we relate and build on our project that aims to develop cross-sectoral partnerships between non-governmental organizations and the business sector. Consequently, the training series for MBA lecturers as a part of the project is as a way of combating this paucity of expertise.
On the 25th and 26th November through a set of 2-day trainings for MBA lecturers at SBMT we focus on theory, practice and methodology of how to teach corporate responsibility as a cross-cutting topic in their subjects and how to integrate its principles across their teaching disciplines. We expect that at least 4 MBA subjects will have corporate responsibility lessons and practical exercises incorporated into syllabuses. Students will be able to attend at least 8 different corporate responsibility classes, which will be included in the compulsory subjects as their integral part. Therefore, all students of the English MBA program in Belarus will have a firm grasp of how these principles should be applied in every aspect of business.
The second training will take place in January and will be lead by an expert from Great Britain. Training series for MBA teachers in the topic of corporate responsibility takes place under the frames of the project Slovak Experience in Corporate Responsibility for Belarus that will run until December 2012 and is supported by funds received from the Slovak Official Development Assistance – Slovak Aid.
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