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The partygoers who gathered on a small farm outside campus were not your typical gaggle of business school students. Sure, some would soon move on to plum jobs at investment banks and oil companies, but instead of traditionally celebrating their success, they opted for a "sellout party." The event was held by students at the University of Michigan Erb Institute, a three-year, dual-degree program between the university's business and natural resources schools. Most of the institute's students are environmental advocates first, business people second, yet see the importance of money in making a difference. They represent a small but growing cadre of M.B.A.-wielding social activists who plan to bring about change, one PowerPoint presentation at a time.
Greg Shopoff, a third-year student at the Erb Institute, studied geology at Colorado College and briefly considered going into environmental law. But he found the legal profession too slow for his tastes and opted for business school. "If you can harness the impact of business for good," he says, "you have the potential for larger-scale change in a shorter period of time." More students have begun thinking like Shopoff, and business schools clearly see the shift. At the Erb Institute, director Tom Lyon notes the program has grown from five new students a year to as many as 25. The sheer number of business school classes like Corporate Social Responsibility and Competitive Environmental Strategy is up across the country, and school officials say students are asking for more conferences, lectures, and workshops on social and environmental stewardship. "This generation has grown up with a much higher global awareness," says Kriss Deiglmeier, director of the Stanford School of Business Center for Social Innovation. "They see what kind of problems we're facing and want to be engaged in solving them."
On the hiring side of the job market, recruiters from both non- and for-profits are looking increasingly for this type of multifaceted talent. In the nonprofit sector, the push makes good business sense. More money is now at stake within mission-based organizations than just a couple of years ago, and nonprofits compete more fiercely with one another for funds and with corporations for government contracts. "A decade ago, nonprofits would not have appreciated as much how useful an M.B.A. would be," says Sharon Oster, director of the Yale School of Management Program on Social Enterprise. "Now there are more opportunities for M.B.A. grads to move into that sector."
Corporations provide the rest of the rising demand for these students, especially as they see that environmental values can help boost the bottom line. Both companies and environmental consulting groups are hiring. Environmental Defense–a nonprofit advocacy group that partnered with FedEx to promote its hybrid electric fleet and also helped McDonald's phase out Styrofoam packaging–actively seeks out multidisciplinary employees who understand environmental issues but use business acumen to address them.
The intersection between financial know-how and social responsibility is not really new–just look at the number of CEOs on the boards of nonprofits and charities. But as M.B.A. programs have stepped up, schools serve not only as the nexus between corporate America and students but also as the link between business savvy and the need for social and environmental advocacy. |
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