City Research Online

Abstract

In this paper , we reflect on the values reflected by certain practices of evaluating a social responsibility project run at a business school in the UK. We concur with the idea that business schools have to act as responsible members of their localities and take the opportunity and their relatively privileged and financially powerful position in society, at least amongst educational institutions, to promote the social good, well-being, and social mobility. Consequently, we argue, when evaluating such educational social responsibility projects run in the local community, business schools have to be clear about the values embe dded not only in the project itself but also in the evaluation framework developed to ascertain its effectiveness and impact. We suggest that evaluation methods developed in the 1980-90s ,primarily responsive contextual evaluation, that have since been pushed into the background by neoliberal forms of governance should be adapted to complement methods prevalent nowadays, such as social return on investment (SROI) in the field of social responsibility and quantitative scientific frameworks in the field of education studies. This paper connects to two rationales of the sub-theme. On the one hand, it is humanistic in that our argument aims to counter the reductionist tendency in the evaluation of social responsibility projects. On the other hand, it is also self-critical inasmuch as we argue that business schools have to take responsibility for their practices not only in terms of what they research and teach but also in how they deliberate the social value of their activities.

Publication Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Departments:	Bayes Business School > Management

Export

Downloads