Breaking Corporate Social Responsibility news

Social responsibility, sustainability, ethics and innovation are the fundamentals for the MBA programme which AVT is introducing for its new MBA students. Grundfos is participating in the programme as a “live” case. During the whole programme, Grundfos will work with professors from AVT to present the coming MBAs for the problems that real companies face and want feedback about.

Core values
“The themes which the programme contains are core values at Grundfos,” says Henning Sandager, Group Senior Vice President Industry at Grundfos. “This is the first time we see the principles of Globally Responsible Leadership integrated into a management educational programme so we want to contribute to making the principles as visible and concrete for the MBA students as possible. At the same time, we look forward to being inspired and benefiting from the cooperation with both AVT’s professors - who come from Berkeley and some of the world’s most recognized universities - and with the MBA students themselves. They will all most certainly use their own management experience and know-how in their work with the live cases we present for the class.”

Live cases
“The development of companies today places great demands on the abilities of managers to handle the ethical, social and economic challenges in the global marketplace. That is why it is necessary to expand the traditional management programmes with these elements and train students in situations that are as close to reality as possible. By working with live cases, the difficult dilemmas are made visible. I believe this is the right way to do it,” says Irene Quist Mortensen, CSR Manager at Grundfos.

Unique Institution
The AVT Institute for Executive Education is a unique Danish educational institution that is a partner in The Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative – an initiative between the UN’s Global Compact and the European Foundation for the Management Development. AVT is also the first Danish business school that teaches the UN’s Principles for Responsible Managers Education (PRME).

A series of dilemmas
“Together with Grundfos, the MBA class follows the whole course of production from innovation to production – or the whole value chain if you will – in a globally active and thinking company. And during the process, our MBAs are presented for a series of dilemmas where ethical considerations must be weighed against production and economic considerations. And they see where these fine principles must be translated into practice – across many different cultures. It isn’t always easy – and it reflects the reality that managers face today. Plus it promotes an overall understanding of the complexity that characterizes today’s global companies. By working with Grundfos as a live case, we will keep grounded in reality during the whole process. Both Grundfos and the companies that our candidates come from will have the chance to benchmark how they are managing in relationship to each other and I believe this will be valuable for both parties,” says Thiesgaard.

For further information please contact:
Grundfos: Irene Quist Mortensen, CSR Manager +45 2460 3420

AVT Institute for Executive Education: Per Junker Thiesgaard
+45 2870 0191