In September, 1st year Master students from LSM learned about the B Corp certification during the Corporate Social Responsibility course.
B Corporation is a movement of companies doing business as a force for good, looking beyond economic impact. To be eligible, a company must reach a score 80 on the B Impact Assessment, an online tool allowing to assess social and environmental performance. In Belgium, the movement is getting more and more attention while more than 3.000 companies are now certified worldwide. Most of these companies are small or medium structures; but with the movement getting bigger, B Lab is trying to further develop the certification for multinational companies, which opens gates for new opportunies but also challenges and debates.
This year, they decided to step in this discussion: students get to work in culturally diverse teams on one case study among 10 multinational companies. Their task is the following: complete the B Impact Assessment for the whole multinational company and further provide recommendations based on their results and their critical perspective. Through this exercise, students develop not only knowledge on B Corp but also project management, interpersonal skills and systemic thinking through an approach that is both scientific and practical.
In order to foster their critical thinking, they invited Sonia Bonus from Danone (which already certified some of their subsidiaries in Belgium and in other countries) and Philippine David, a young graduate from LSM who did her Master’s thesis on B Corp and offered critical perspectives on the evolution of the movement.
Results of this exercise will be available end of October, when around 70 groups of students will share their recommendations during oral presentations and will discuss and debate their results with other groups.