ICR Background

The GW Institute for Corporate Responsibility is uniquely positioned to take advantage of multiple opportunities and resources in order to become the central institute for the study of issues pertaining to corporate responsibility and to be a resource to the national and international community on the topic. There currently exist many initiatives, programs, centers, and institutes on the topic. Typically, these efforts are the work of one or two individuals in an academic institution or nongovernmental entity on a particular topic. The GW Institute for Corporate Responsibility, however, is designed to be a comprehensive intellectual endeavor capturing the major issues of corporate responsibility.

In addition, there is intense interest in the topic, framed in a variety of ways. Legislators regularly pass new laws in an effort to reign in the excesses of business or to direct business activities in responsible and sustainable ways. Nongovernmental organizations, the media, and Internet sources increasingly focus attention on the actions of corporations, thereby creating a need for corporate responsibility programs in the past ten years to an extent never seen before. As reflected by the efforts of AACSB, business schools now see the need to far more comprehensively address this issue in the curriculum, outreach, and research while the intersection of business and society sparks intellectual inquiry from a variety of scholars outside of business schools as well. In short, there is a strong demand for focused, comprehensive engagement with this topic that the Institute for Corporate Responsibility can address both because of the resources already existing within the GW School of Business as well as throughout the University and also because GWSB has already claimed leadership in the topic.

The Institute for Corporate Responsibility is devoted to the development and dissemination of scholarship, including research and teaching pertaining to corporate responsibility. It serves as a vehicle for continuing education, curriculum development, conferences and seminars each of which will address needs of the School of Business, GW University, and the wider Washington, D.C. community. More specifically, ICR will leverage its location to become a leading resource to the business community through business associations and the policy community through federal agencies, Congress, local and regional governments, non-governmental organizations, and international organizations.  By fostering such a business-university-government partnership—US and global—the ICR presents a unique knowledge creation and dissemination asset on our campus, building scholarly capacity for our faculty and students, and enhancing GW's prestige worldwide.

The Institute has four primary program areas. Each program may focus solely on research or on teaching (including continuing education) or it may engage in both. Externally focused programs, such as conferences and speakers, would be included as having dimensions of both research and teaching. The University as a whole, and its new CIBER program in particular, offer a rich set of potential resources for collaboration in this regard.

The intention of the founders of the Institute is that these programs are not rigidly bounded nor will they be static. It may well be that one of the program areas focuses more on the development of research, for instance, on social issues while a second program, also focused on social issues, may then take a turn toward Executive Education or conferences.

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