Social Responsibility

Want to know about Hanken's social responsibility initiatives, then continue reading!

A founding element Hanken’s operations is the promotion of social responsibility in all our activities. Ethics, responsibility and sustainability are values that permeate studies, research, and contacts to business life and society.

Responsible Business Education

A key element in Hanken’s work towards increased social responsibility is the signing of the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education PRME. Hanken was the first Finnish university to sign the principles in 2008 and our determined work was acknowledged in 2013 when Hanken was selected member of the PRME Champions Leadership Group, a group of 30 international schools that lead the global development towards responsible management education. Hanken has also twice received a prize for our PRME report. Hanken's PRME reports are available on the PRME website and here.

Hanken also offers a cross-disciplinary study module in corporate social responsibility that includes courses in CSR, responsible management, and sustainability.

Research Ethics

To achieve the highest possible level of ethics within research, Hanken has signed and follows the RCR Guidelines for the Finnish Advisory Board of Research Integrity. We have also endorsed the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers.

Hanken has a number of research projects connected to social responsibility and two research centres with the task on increasing the level of responsibility and sustainability in companies and society as regards corporate governance and humanitarian logistics.

Community Outreach

Through our extensive executive education activities as well as the positions our faculty and staff have in external boards and committees, Hanken bears its responsibility to support and promote responsibility in both business life and society as a whole. We encourage our students to community engagement by, for example, conducting projects for companies and organisations, and we support entrepreneurship among our students through Hanken New Ventures. 

Response to refugee crisis

As a response to the UN PRME Call for Action in the refugee crisis, Hanken has interacted with other institutions in the Finnish education system, in order to find feasible ways of contributing to helping refugees and asylum seekers entering Finland. As the only Swedish-speaking business school in Finland, Hanken supports multiculturalism in all its activities.

Hanken School of Economics hosts the Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Research Institute (HUMLOG Institute), which is a joint research institute founded by Hanken School of Economics and the National Defence University of Finland. The HUMLOG Institute collaborates closely with humanitarian organizations, on a local level especially with the Finnish Red Cross, which is also represented in the board of the institute. The HUMLOG Institute supports The Finnish Red Cross based on request. Through the HUMLOG Institute and the expertise in humanitarian logistics, Hanken will continue to support humanitarian actors in coping with the refugee crisis based on identified needs. Moreover, Hanken takes part in the Finnish Government’s national project “How to support refugees/asylum seekers to integrate into Finnish society”. 

Hanken further pledges to:

  • offer students a possibility to get volunteer work for a humanitarian organization credited as an internship or coursework
  • offer open university courses without fees for asylum seekers and refugees
  • encourage alumni to find out if their companies/employers could take asylum seekers or refugees on board for professional internship and providing companies that do so with training relating to employing asylum seekers and refugees
  • share the PRME recommendations for companies with alumni
  • offer asylum seekers and refugees a course on Finnish/Nordic business culture
  • include a project relating to the refugee crisis in the master’s level course “Project Course in CSR and Humanitarian Logistics” in the spring term 2016
  • offer entrepreneurship related courses to support asylum seekers and refugees in considering if they would see their career to be developed as entrepreneurs

Related pages

PRME - UN Principles for Responsible Management Education

Sustainable development at Hanken

Study module in Corporate Responsibility

Intensive Course on Finnish Business Culture to Asylum Seekers

Panel Debate on Refugee Employment

 
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PRME