REQUEST FOR COMPANY-BASED STUDENT PROJECT
IN CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Louvain CSR Network (www.uclouvain.be/csr-network)
Louvain School of Management, Université catholique de Louvain
Academic Year 2016-2017
The Louvain School of Management takes a unique approach to educate students in the area of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Through the Louvain CSR Network, we bridge practice and theory by getting students out of the classroom and into real business situations.
From September to December, the Louvain School of Management is offering 1st Year Master Students (in management and business engineering) a Corporate Social Responsibility course, which will be taught by Prof. Carlos Desmet (LSM) and Thierry Bréchet (CORE). We are currently looking for project proposals and invite all interested companies/organizations to submit innovative project ideas.
With more than 650 successful projects under our belts, we are pleased to offer companies and organizations the opportunity to submit a strategic corporate responsibility project of their choice to LSM students. The project will be embedded in the full-semester theory- and case-based course in corporate social responsibility. This is a great opportunity to benefit from our CSR strength, and our students' energy, talent, and commitment to CSR.
Benefits for the company
Project companies/organizations should benefit in numerous ways by engaging with students of the CSR course. Among these benefits:
- Action-oriented, experiential CSR learning for your company/organization, and the student team;
- Assessment by an outside, objective team of students currently immersed in CSR learning as part of their business curriculum;
- Time & focus – to enroll in this class, students commit to put in significant amounts of time on these projects;
- Supervision of the projects from the course instructors;
- Close look at LSM students as potential hires;
- Stronger relationship between your company and the LSM, through the participation of all project companies in our Louvain CSR Network.
Project description
In order for your company/organization’s project to fit the guidelines that we have set for our students’ work, your project proposal should meet the following requirements:
- A contact person inside the company, who is engaged and available throughout the entire project;
- An opportunity for the student team to show creativity in the solutions that they will offer (we are looking for projects that go beyond the application of decisions already taken or only looking for information on a topic);
- The occasion for the student team to interview representatives of different categories of stakeholders involved in the company project.
In addition, the most fruitful projects, from both a student and company/organization standpoint, are those that include the following elements:
- An issue, problem, or decision that is central to your company's corporate social responsibility strategy and related issues therein;
- An opportunity for execution that includes scoping, research, analysis, strategy development, and recommendations;
- The possibility to bring the student team on-site for broader management team presentations and discussions.
Potential company/organization-based projects may include:
- CSR as corporate strategy
- Socially responsible investing
- Stakeholder engagement
- Social entrepreneurship
- Supplier relations
- Environmental responsibility
- Employee rights
- Human rights
- Compliance
- Corruption
- Bottom of the pyramid
- or other innovative ideas…
Project deliverables
We ask students to give you, at the end of the semester, a written report including innovative recommendations (based on specific guidelines designed by the instructors) and transcripts of interviews with stakeholders.
Student team profile
Each team will be composed of six LSM students who are enrolled in this CSR theory/best practices course in their Masters in Management Science or Business Engineering. Supervision and evaluation will be carried out by Carlos Desmet (LSM), Thierry Bréchet (LSM), and Corentin Hericher (the teaching assistant).
Projects submission
We hope that you will take this opportunity to develop strategic, challenging, high impact projects for our talented Master students and help support our work. Each company/organization (small, medium or large) is of course welcome to propose more than one project at a time!
To submit your project(s), please complete and return the Project Submission Form – preferably before September 14, 2015 – to Corentin Hericher at corentin.hericher@uclouvain.be, or by mail (Louvain School of Management – STOR (B307), Place des Doyens 1, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve).
If you have any additional question or for more information about this request, please contact Valérie Swaen, at valerie.swaen@uclouvain.be or 0032-(0)10-47-9156; or Thierry Bréchet, at thierry.brechet@uclouvain.be or 0032-(0)10-47-8186.
List of current corporate/organizational coaches
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Arcelor Mittal |
Deloitte |
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