Marcel Desautels Institute for Integrated Management

For many people, sustainability in business is an afterthought. Not for me. Over the last two years, I have spent my time at McGill University’s law faculty where my passion for sustainability has grown tremendously. Taking courses on environmental law and business law was an eye-opening experience. Often enough, the law responded too slowly to sustainability issues yet business had the capacity and resources to act immediately.

The Marcel Desautels Institute for Integrated Management (MDIIM) is pleased to announce its selections for the 2012-2013 MDIIM Student Associates Program: Shobhita Soor (3^rd-year MBA/Law) and Shaonan Zhou (U3 Finance) will work with the Institute over the coming academic year to assist with the implementation of innovative teaching, research and outreach initiatives related to integrated management.

The MDIIM would like to thank all of this year's applicants for their interest in the Student Associates Program.

Throughout the last two decades, a wave of studies criticizing current curricula have swept through the field of management, leading to the discussion of widespread reforms throughout educational institutions. Specifically, many criticized the lack of “functionally integrated curricula in higher education,” one that is inclusive of social and ecological factors in business practices.

On September 19th, the Marcel Desautels Institute for Integrated Management (MDIIM), in collaboration with The Bull & Bear and the Management Sustainability Network, held a panel reflecting on the relevance of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s 1962 bestseller that exposed the public to the hazards of synthetic materials in the environment.

If women are from Venus and men are from Mars, as asserted in the 1992 best-selling book by American author and relationship counselor John Gray, then it might also hold true that chemists are from Saturn, engineers are from Mercury and business people are from Jupiter, so different are their respective worlds.

Despite high per-capita spending, health care in Canada consistently underperforms, according to the Commonwealth Fund, which tracks indicators for accessibility, timeliness and outcomes across a number of developed countries. The system that is straining to meet demand today will face an even higher burden in the years ahead, as the population ages. A number of Canadian business schools are looking to meet this challenge by educating future health care managers to bring new perspectives to old problems.