Five years of the Centre for Responsible Business

Thanks to the five years of funding from Lloyds Banking Group to help set up and support the Centre for Responsible Business from 2017-2022, the Centre has gone from strength to strength. We've collaborated with thought-leaders from both business and academia, hosted prominent events and communicated to a global audience.

Here you will find our archive of events, news and videos, providing a showcase of the Centre's successes during those five years, and offering responsible business learning to all, academic and industry alike, and we at the Centre are looking forward to a bright, responsible future.

Explore our virtual gallery

Wander our virtual gallery and travel back through five years of the Centre for Responsible Business, featuring a visual feast of design and videography in an innovative 3D museum setting.

Our virtual gallery

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Responsible Business Hub

A responsible business is a company that judges its purpose and practices against all of the United Nation’s Global Goals (see below), embedding them in its strategy and operations. These companies aren’t only driven by profits but by their desire to help make a better world.

Access the hub

Our Experts

Over the last five years the Centre has welcomed academics from around the world, with expertise varying from fast fashion to macroeconomics, to work together in an interdisciplinary way on the challenges of responsible business. Explore more of their research and publications here.

Responsible business research highlights

Win best research paper prize at the British Academy of Management Conference for pioneering the theory of ‘aesthetic diversity’ and the need for a more inclusive approach to ‘invisible’ employee traits in the workplace, such as neurodiversity. 

Lead an in-depth evaluation of the innovative Nigerian Oil-Spill Monitor (OSM), which allows affected local communities to challenge corporate and official accounts of oil spills in the Nigerian Delta. 

Embark on a two-year international research project with Procter & Gamble, surveying consumer habits in the US and UK and identifying the patterns and barriers to more sustainable consumption

Publish a landmark research paper on electric vehicles in the UK and the need for a circular economy for their batteries, which involved extensive and revealing interviews with car manufacturers, vendors, policy makers and other key stakeholders. 

Create a new and adaptive model of responsible business governance based on a long-running study of Heart of Midlothian FC and their supporter-owned structure, which helped inform later discussions around the government’s review of football. 

Develop a scenarios-based decision-making framework to help localise the Global Goals through grassroots consultation, which is tested in a series of workshops with Birmingham schoolchildren and youth leaders. Published as open source, making the tool widely available and helping carry forward similar research in other communities around the world.

Have our Equal Parenting Project mentioned in Parliament by Maria Miller MP as part of an International Women’s Day debate in the House of Commons. The project is also cited in the New Statesman and The Guardian

Contribute to the University of Birmingham’s curtain-raising series of climate change essays, 'Addressing the climate challenge', ahead of COP26. 

Publish ‘Net Zero Accounting for a Net Zero UK' that exposes the inadequacy of carbon accounting methodologies used by businesses and governments, making a mockery of the UK government’s net zero plans. The report is picked up by magazines and newspapers in the UK and US.

Reveal the mental as well as physical health benefits of personal protective equipment for frontline medical staff during the Covid pandemic in new research in Spain. 

Delve deeper into consumer emotions and behaviour in response to personalised online advertising, with research exploring the effects of overt and covert data collection. 

Agree to provide rolling data analysis for Business In The Community’s Race At Work initiative, which surveyed almost 75k employees across the UK, with trends and best practice identified for future surveys and recommendations.

Launch Keeping 1.5 Degree Alive report at Houses of Parliament 

Events and Webinars 2017 - 2022

 

The Centre for Responsible Business Presents

crb-promo2

Carbon Accounting Matters


Centre videos


Birmingham Plastic Network - Plastic: a call to action


Urgent Business book advert : in collaboration with Bristol University Press


Urgent Business book advert : Centre staff


2021: A thank you to António Horta-Osório

Responsible Business Success videos


December 2019: Creating Positive Change Through Responsible Business Research


December 2019: Working in Partnership with the Lloyds Banking Group Centre for Responsible Business


December 2019: Shared Values Between Lloyds Banking Group and the University of Birmingham


December 2019: Embedding Responsibility into Business Education

Responsible Business Award winners 2018

Holly Birkett and Sarah Forbes: Shared parental leave: driving the take up to improve gender equality in the workplace


Holly Birkett and Sarah Forbes:
Shared parental leave: driving the take up to improve gender equality in the workplace

Danny McGowan: Licence to deal: did deregulation of mortgage brokering lead to risky lending?


Danny McGowan: 
Licence to deal: did deregulation of mortgage brokering lead to risky lending?

Jane Glover: Visual representations of sustainable agriculture


Jane Glover:
Visual representations of sustainable agriculture

Charika Channuntapipat: Ethical norm in fast fashion industry: the paradox of fashion design piracy and accountability of fast fashion retailers


Charika Channuntapipat:
Ethical norm in fast fashion industry: the paradox of fashion design piracy and accountability of fast fashion retailers

Events and Awareness

Salma Moolji speaks about modern slavery for International Womens Day 2019.


December 2019: Salma Moolji speaks about modern slavery for International Women's Day 2019.

Delphine Gibassier explains why biodiversity is so important


December 2019: Delphine Gibassier explains why biodiversity is so important and why it's vital for children to learn about the impact they and others are having on wildlife conservation practices.

Lilith, Amber and Paul of the Drag Punk Collective talk about what drag means to them


December 2019: Lilith, Amber and Paul of the Drag Punk Collective talk about what drag means to them, what it means to be a role model and how important it is for the younger generation to see themselves represented.

Kiran Trehan, Director of WE-LEAD, explains why the 'Leaders Unlike You' event series is so important


December 2019: Kiran Trehan, Director of WE-LEAD, explains why the 'Leaders Unlike You' event series is so important.


News and Blogs from the Centre for Responsible Business

4 Feb 2022
The Covert Truth about Online Personalised Advertising

15 Feb 2022
COP26 and the Four Pillars of Responsible Capitalism 

16 Feb 2022
Responsible Business Governance and Football: is it Time for Change?

16 Feb 2022
Responsible Capitalism and Climate Change: Does Business Ownership Matter?

3 March 2022
Which? Greenest Supermarkets

19 Aug 2022
Recent High-Profile Greenwashing Cases has Thrown Inactivity of Business into the Spotlight  

21 Sept 2022
CWG SDG

13 Oct 2022
Financing the Transition to Net Zero 

17 Oct 2022
Diverse Workforce

19 Oct 2022
The Taxing Question 

24 Oct 2022
Growth and the City 

7 Nov 2022
The UK's Broken Promises Need Mending at COP27 

11 Nov 2022
How Scenarios Thinking Can Help Localise Net Zero Targets from COP27 

16 Nov 2022
Taxing Banks Fairly

23 Nov 2022
The UK's Golden Goose Strategy 

1 Dec 2022
Why Inflation for the Wealthy Could Prolong the Recession
 
13 Dec 2022
Christmas, Business and the Cost of Living Crisis 

14 Dec 2022
The True Price of Winter Warmth 

15 Dec 2022
Eco-Labelling

7 Feb 2023
Loopholes wide enough to ‘drive a diesel truck through’ – how to tell if a business is really net zero

10 Feb 2023
Cash is Back - But Who Should Pay For It? 

8 Mar 2023
Embracing Gender Equality in Academia 

Centre for Responsible Business News Archive

18 October 2022

The Taxing Question

Emeritus Professor Andy Mullineux examines the recent confusion of government tax proposals and reversals and asks if they’re fair and effective.

More News

 

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