Last March, students from MSc Global Operations and Supply Chain Management and students from MSc International Business and Strategy – Global Challenges, participated in the annual auditing exercise assessing companies’ sustainability and ESG reporting.
Their investigations were facilitated by the collaborative and open data platform Wikirate. The activity aimed to empower our students and support them in developing a critical eye on sustainability reporting by collecting, analysing and assessing data on companies’ sustainability performance.
What learnings were gathered from this activity?
Our students share their insights:
“One of the key takeaways from this experience was the realisation that sustainability reporting is crucial for future business leaders to understand. It goes beyond compliance to embody a company’s core values and its relationship with the wider world.”
“We learned the importance of transparency in building trust with stakeholders and the role of detailed reporting in demonstrating a company’s commitment to a sustainable future”.
“Our main learnings from this group work are that despite platforms like WikiRate providing valuable resources, it remains a challenge that some company reports, particularly sustainability reports, lack complete transparency, making it difficult to access comprehensive data, especially with larger corporations”.
Why should business students care about understanding sustainability reporting, the quality, and the completeness of its information?
Our students share their view:
“Business students should prioritise an understanding of sustainability reporting due to its pivotal role in elucidating a company’s ESG commitments, which are progressively becoming more crucial for investors and stakeholders. Proficiency in analysing sustainability reporting equips students with the essential skills to comprehend the multifaceted impact of business decisions on society and the environment.”
The University of Bristol Business School is keen on fomenting critical and inquisitive minds in our students and teaching them to be the leaders the world currently needs. We want to thank the students that delivered the best presentations of their work: Mia Bains, Morgan Lewis, Chen Chen, Yupeng Luo, Christian Kaas, Ran Ang, Zirui Huang, Chenxu Guo, Ziyi Lin, Hanzi Pan, Song Wang, Long Wei, Hongwei Chen, Xiaowei Jin, Xiangyu Liu, Xianong Yang, Deson Zhang, Wenjin Tang.
We also want to thank the Wikirate team for their continuous support and for offering these great opportunities to advance student engagement with corporate accountability and ESG reporting:
“WikiRate is a useful platform for assessing a company’s sustainability data, it provided a collaborative space for our team to gather, analyse, and compare M&S’ information”.
Written by Business School students: Mia Bains, Morgan Lewis, Chen Chen, Yupeng Luo, Christian Kaas, Ran Ang, Zirui Huang, Chenxu Guo, Ziyi Lin, Hanzi Pan, Song Wang, Long Wei, Hongwei Chen, Xiaowei Jin, Xiangyu Liu, Xianong Yang, Deson Zhang & Wenjin Tang.