The Cranfield School of Management is committed to improving the practice of management – which is why so much of the school’s work is in executive education, and particularly in customised, in-company programmes.
Busy managers with no shortage of competing demands to “fill the unforgiving minute” need well-researched and practical syntheses of “how-to.” This is why the Doughty Centre is producing a series of practical “how-to” guides covering some of the key aspects of embedding a commitment to corporate responsibility and sustainability.
We have, however, neither resources, spare time nor the intention or inclination to duplicate. We have, therefore, been mapping for our own purposes, what how-to guidance already exists so that we can focus our energies on filling gaps. We have now decided that the work we have done for our own needs could also usefully be shared. Hence this guide to existing how-to guides is now available.
Our criteria for including a particular publication was very simple:
• Is it practical? Does it offer actionable how-to guidance that busy managers can follow and implement?
• Is it accessible? We recognise that there may be other proprietary materials available for a fee – but we have focussed mainly on material freely available for download from the web.
• Is it up-to-date? As a general rule, we have limited our trawl to material produced in the last five years (with a few exceptions for excellent material where we have not been able to discover anything more recent that is as good).
Inevitably, with the relatively limited time and manpower available to us to complete this guide of guides, we have probably missed something. If so, we would be delighted to have suggestions for possible inclusion in a second edition.
Meantime, our thanks to Cranfield alumnus and Doughty Centre associate Nadine Exter who has researched and written this guide; to those authors and organisations whose publications we have included, for checking “their” entries, and Andrew Wilson of Corporate Citizenship for advising us on the inclusions of guides to review.
We hope it will help improve the practice of responsible management.
