Corporate Social Responsibility has always been practiced in the business world for decades, and of late, it has become embedded in a lot of top-ranking PGDM institutes in India as higher education leaders are seeking alternative ways to stay engaged in civil and community services. With time, more and more of these PGDM institutes in India are even incorporating social responsibility into their mission statements, including their teaching and research missions, proving that higher education is well off when it gives back to the society that equally contributes in significant ways.
An institute like IMI Bhubaneswar, for example, considers CSR important since it enables not just the students but also the faculty to actively join in outreach programs where they contribute their skills, knowledge, and technical expertise to the community. Moreover, CSR at institute level propels and encourages students to imbibe the qualities of rational leadership and thereby infuses in them a sense of confidence and trust about themselves and the whole of the community. Additionally, programs like CSR roundtable for civil society and CSR for the corporate heads held within and by the institute gives the students an opportunity to serve the underprivileged section of the society and improve their quality of life by willingly taking efforts in the said direction.
Being a premier PGDM institute in India, IMI B, at its own local level, has endeavoured to undertake CSR projects through different means by conducting a guest lecture by Prof. J.F. Cronje, Director, BenchMarks Centre for CSR School of Social and Government Studies, North West University, South Africa; arranging NGO visits; forming an in-house club named “Prayas” to lead activities; and collaborating with leading independent and government-controlled NGOs catering to different issues of the society.
This Bhubaneswar-based top PGDM institute in India lives by the ideology that exposure to such experiences will inevitably strengthen students to solve society’s problems. And thus, other than providing financial aid, the institute has been making continual efforts to educate people around them and bring awareness about the numerous advancements in technology and research so as to get them empowered and make them self-reliant!
