PRME Partner Interviews

PRME Partner Interviews: Flávio Hourneaux Junior, University of São Paulo

Interview with Flávio Hourneaux Junior, Professor at the School of Economics, Management, Accounting and Actuarial Science at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

BI is a member of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), a global network of more than 800 business schools committed to advancing responsible management education (RME)—a key element of BI’s strategy.

PRME

Through this interview series, we introduce PRME partner schools from around the world and explore their approaches to responsible management education. The series aims to raise awareness of the PRME network within BI, showcase how peer institutions are embedding responsible management education in their teaching and research, and support BI’s internationalisation by fostering connections with business schools across different regions.

Interview with Flávio Hourneaux Junior, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil

Flávio Hourneaux Junior

  1. How does your school work with Responsible Management Education (RME)?
    The school has several initiatives to promote RME. The most relevant ones are a large number of courses addressing the RME themes, many research groups and independent faculty who research RME in many different topics, the existence of numerous extra-curricular activities, mainly student entities which are directly related to the RME topics, especially regarding social issues, not to mention the school’s vision and mission statements, which foster social, environmental and ethical competences, and highlight the importance of management education to address societal issues. Nevertheless, despite being a PRME signatory for more than 10 years, there is still room for more structured and systemic initiatives to enable more effective RME implementation.
  2. What initiatives or practices have been particularly effective?
    Among all the initiatives listed above, possibly the most effective for developing Responsible Management competences is the presence of more than a dozen student entities. Each initiative addresses specific topics in RME, such as supporting NGOs’ and private social projects, ESG management, and DEI issues, among others. This opportunity to be close to reality in a complex and difficult context, such as Brazil, makes a difference in changing students’ mindsets and understanding.
  3. What advice would you give to other schools seeking to strengthen their work with RME?
    Despite all the efforts of initiatives like PRME, the main actor in developing and supporting RME remains each faculty member. My advice for them (us, actually) is to keep insisting on promoting the RME topics, concepts, and practices in their daily activities as much as possible. The fact is that the battle to change students’ mindset from business-as-usual to responsible management is hard to fight, and “we” must prevail, hopefully. Otherwise, the future of these students will be more challenging, even if they don't consciously know it.