Special Features

INSEAD staff and faculty have harnessed the opportunity to innovate when it comes to providing best in class degree and executive education programmes to our community.

Diversity has been central to the ethos of INSEAD since its foundation over 60 years ago. Established with the vision of offering an institution where Europeans could come together to share knowledge after the bloody conflict of World War II, the school has since gone on to develop into an institution with a truly global outlook. There are very few business schools which can count 40 different nationalities among their faculty, over 50 nationalities among its staff and boasts an alumni community living in 180 different countries.

Yet, despite INSEAD understanding the true value of diversity as a source of learning and enrichment, global events in the last few years have demonstrated that this belief is not universal and cannot be taken as a given. There is still work to be done and we must continue to play our part.

These efforts have been ongoing for a number of years, with the foundation of the Gender Initiative in 2017 as just one example of the concrete actions the school has taken, with a new Academic Director, Kaisa Snellman, appointed in 2022. In addition, this academic year saw a concerted push to address these issues more directly, accelerated by the hiring of Sharon Brooks as INSEAD’s first Executive Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in January 2022.

June saw the creation of a Gender Equality and Diversity Officers Network in Europe, while the same month saw the Dean of Faculty Javier Gimeno, along with other senior faculty members and staff, attend the E4E consortium Workshop on Equality and Diversity Beyond Numbers: Structural, Organisational and Cultural Changes in Higher Academic Institutions, aimed at discussing solutions to gender inequality in business schools.

It wasn’t the only INSEAD programming that covered issues around gender equality and raised awareness among community members. Other notable events include the joint Africa Club, INSEAD Women in Business Club and OUTSEAD LGBTQ+ Allyship event in March, and the INSEAD Women in Business Conference – Beyond the Title, which was held in June.

Other more recent developments include the relaunch of the DEI pages on the INSEAD website. As well as giving more details of our current strategies, initiatives and partnerships it also now contains a library of rich media content, including videos and podcasts conducted with business leaders, DEI practitioners and notable INSEAD alumni.

INSEAD appreciates that there is still much more work to be done. While we welcome the gradual increase in female students in our MBA programme to an average of 37% in the MBA'22J and '22D cohorts, there’s still a way to go before we reach gender parity. In the same way, while it was incredibly positive that 50% of the nominees and three out of the four MBA’22J Teaching award winners were female professors, we must ensure that our hiring and training policies continue to allow us to move towards gender parity among our faculty.

The issues around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are clearly incredibly complex – as such, we can’t expect quick fixes and easy wins. Yet, we also cannot stop moving forward and constantly looking at better, fairer and more inclusive ways of working. That involves developing new policies, undertaking fresh research and identifying novel solutions to these issues. But most importantly, we need to ensure that we have a buy-in from our community, as well as an ongoing commitment from the leadership and other key stakeholders to work towards real and lasting change.

As a school, we must continue to build on our foundational values and we must double-down on our commitment to cultivate a community that pursues equity, exemplifies inclusion, and cherishes diversity in all its dimensions. By working together towards this goal, we can help ensure meaningful and lasting change for the better.

At INSEAD, we champion the potential for business to be a force for good through our faculty research, in our teaching and through our engagement with other academic institutes and global organisations. From pioneering research on circularity and sustainable operations to our MBA Master Strategist Day and our ongoing involvement with the World Economic Forum and ChangeNow, we are constantly looking to provide our students, partners and alumni community with the tools and knowledge needed to make a positive difference.

However, as The Business School for the World we must also put the bold leadership, innovative thinking and ethical decision-making that we teach our students into practice – we must also “Walk the Talk”.

Step 1: Measure and account for all GHG emissions

First, we documented key activities at INSEAD and measured the emissions released by those activities. We engaged internal departments and specialist French consultancy, I Care, to help collect and analyse this data across our four sites in Fontainebleau, Singapore, Abu Dhabi and San Francisco.

In line with best practice, our activities were organised into three areas, or scopes, of carbonisation:

• Scope 1 encompasses everything that we own, operate and perform on our premises or property that leads to GHG emissions, such as the gas boilers we use to heat water on campus.
• Scope 2 encompasses the emissions from the generation of the energy we purchase to operate our facilities. Some of that energy comes from burning gas.
• Scope 3 encompasses GHG emissions resulting from activities in our value chain, such as flights taken by our faculty, staff, students and alumni travelling to and across our campuses or emissions embedded in goods and services we use.

Throughout this step, we were reminded of the importance of relying on data – rather than intuition or perception. For instance, it would be easy to assume that our largest campus in Fontainebleau generates more emissions than other locations. In fact, Fontainebleau accounts for only 30% of emissions, while Singapore accounts for 60%. This is due to differences in climate (higher temperatures require more air conditioning) and energy options (most energy in Southeast Asia is gas-based).

When developing our climate pledge, we didn’t just apply rigour to our climate science. We also took a rigorous approach to our stakeholder engagement and business decision-making. That meant convening faculty, staff and experts from within and outside INSEAD to form two committees: a Steering Committee and a Faculty Advisory Committee. Our goal was to avoid internal or external pressures that might inadvertently lead to undesirable outcomes.

Step 4: Engage key stakeholders for buy-in

In the crucial final step, we shared and discussed our findings with a broader group of faculty and staff members. We explored the school’s future carbon reduction strategy, impact of potential solutions on our business model, implications for our brand and reputation and other issues such as the economic impact.

In the end, we presented two plans for consideration. Option one was based on compliance with France’s statutory requirements, new energy regulations in Abu Dhabi and expected legislation in Singapore.

It necessitated a reduction of our energy consumption in France by 40% by 2030. Option two was to exceed that baseline and align more closely with our commitment to be a “Force for Good”. For this, we need additional capital outlays to tap on geothermal energy, which would reduce our GHG emissions by 67% – and potentially up to 82% – on each of our campuses by 2035.

Option two received unanimous support from the various stakeholders and was approved by the Dean and the Board of INSEAD. Achieving this alignment and buy-in from different stakeholders across INSEAD was crucial to our process and we would like to thank everyone involved.

Our next step: Addressing emissions in scope 3

While option two addresses emissions resulting from our assets and the energy we purchase (scope 1 and scope 2), it does not impact emissions from our operations (scope 3), which account for the majority of INSEAD’s total emissions.

INSEAD is now following the same process outlined for scope 1 and 2 emissions to tackle scope 3 emissions, using a scientific approach that engages all INSEAD stakeholders. Our experience from scope 1 and 2 taught us the importance of every constituent at INSEAD agreeing to the course of action, as it will have implications on what we do, who we are and why we exist.

We know, for instance, that if we decide to restrict air travel, we must consider what that means for our core mission of bringing people and cultures together. If we decide to move our courses online, we must consider whether that detracts from our value proposition or dilutes the learning experience. In short, INSEAD needs to address the broader GHG emissions trade-offs within the reality of being a global business school.

INSEAD is not alone in facing these kinds of dilemmas. Every organisation must consider trade-offs when balancing its own needs with those of society and those of the environment. We hope that the process we went through can provide other organisations and leaders with a framework to address this pressing challenge. For a start, a rigorous analytical approach and broad stakeholder engagement are crucial to reaching a good solution.

Applying rigour to stakeholder engagement and decision-making

Thanks must go to all those involved in this project, particularly those who served on the Steering Committee (2020-2022) and the Faculty Advisory Committee (2021-2022) which helped to oversee this process: