The Principles of Responsible Management Education: Implementation Case Study

This bachelor thesis investigates the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) implementation at Copenhagen Business School (CBS). The aim of the thesis is to find out how these principles are reflected in the university's annual reports (SIP) and how they influence the university's strategies and daily operations. The research uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis of three key principles - Purpose, Values and Method - in annual reports published between 2011 and 2023. The analysis reveals several key findings. The first stage of the quantitative analysis examined the relative importance of the Purpose, Values and Method principles, with Purpose turning out to be the most important in terms of keyword frequency. However, development trends showed inconsistent reflection of these principles over time. The second phase of the research, conducted through qualitative content analysis, focused on the reflection of the Purpose principle and its impact on the daily functioning of CBS. Despite implementation successes, the work identified areas for improvement, including inconsistent reflection on the principles over time and a lack of evaluation of the effectiveness of strategies and approaches. The thesis advances knowledge about the soft-law implementation by presenting weaknesses in the integration of the principles and suggesting specific avenues for further research. First, it points out the possibility of analyzing the rest of the principles, and second, it recommends analyzing concrete curricula to verify the findings on the reflection of the principles.