Five top international business schools are joining forces to create the first Council on Business and Society: A Global Alliance of Schools of Management.

The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth is partnering with ESSEC (France), the University of Mannheim Business School (Germany), School of Management, Fudan University (Shanghai), and Keio Business School (Tokyo) in a new alliance that will take a multicultural, multi-school approach in engaging academics, policymakers, and corporate leaders on key issues at the intersection of business and society.

The council will create a process across schools to study a series of critical issues facing business and society, organize an annual international forum for dialogue, and develop and disseminate educational materials designed to foster continuing debate on the issues. The belief is that combining the expertise of faculty members from each of the partner schools with that of representatives of business, government, and non-governmental organizations from around the world will lead to unique insights and initiatives.

The inaugural forum will be held in Paris in the fall of 2012 and will focus on corporate governance and leadership. Subsequent forums will be organized by partner schools on a rotating basis and focus on issues such as health care delivery, responsible innovation, sustainable development, and financial regulation.

Deans of the partner schools have worked over the past six months to set a strategic direction for the council. They discovered that, despite their differences, the schools share a common belief in the importance of management education and the need for a global approach to the issues facing business and society. Faculty members from the schools will guide the intellectual content and output of the annual forum. The activities of the council will be funded by contributions from the partner schools and support from various corporate and institutional partners.

“The faculty, students, and alumni of the council’s business schools represent thousands of leaders in virtually all aspects of business around the world," says Dean Paul Danos of Tuck. “We will create innovative ways to collect the wisdom of these many knowledgeable people on topics that rest at the intersection of business and society."

Founded in 1900, Tuck is the first graduate school of management in the country and consistently ranks among the top business schools worldwide. Tuck remains distinctive among the world's great business schools by combining human scale with global reach, rigorous coursework with experiences requiring teamwork, and valued traditions with innovation.