Making an Impact: AUC School of Business Receives the Business School Impact System (BSIS) Label

The AUC School of Business has successfully completed the European Foundation for Management Development's Business School Impact System (BSIS) process and received the BSIS label, with the findings verifying the School’s significant impact not only on Egypt but also extending to the MENA region and beyond.

At a time when all organizations are increasingly being held accountable for their activities, there is often a need to demonstrate, with well-documented evidence, the impact that they have on their immediate environment. Being mindful of that, the AUC School of Business underwent the BSIS process, the European Foundation for Management Development’s (EFMD) first comprehensive impact assessment tool for business schools that identifies the tangible and intangible benefits that a business school brings to its local environment.

“At the AUC School of Business, we are committed to realizing a positive impact on the society that is both scalable and sustainable by developing entrepreneurial and responsible leaders. To demonstrate this impact and identify the benefits the school brings about to the community at large, we have undergone the rigorous EFMD's Business School Impact System (BSIS), which assessed our impact across the BSIS’ seven dimensions: financial, educational, business development, intellectual, regional, societal and image”, remarked Dean Sherif Kamel.

During the process, factors relating to student admissions flow into the school’s degree programs from the country, region, and internationally were assessed, as well as student flows into the job market, along with the managerial impact of the school’s Executive Education programs, to assess the overall impact of the school on the local environment through the fulfillment of its basic educational mission.

In addition, the degree of economic development contribution by the school through new business creation, offered services to established companies, availing students as valuable resources of the local economy during their studies, faculty’s contribution to the cultural life of the community as well as their impact upon the managerial community through their intellectual output, were examined.

BSIS further looked into the school’s constituents' involvement in public life within the community along with the degree of integration of the school into the regional ecosystem of higher educational institutions, professional associations, public bodies, and local authorities, meanwhile delving into the school’s explicit policies in the area of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainable development and assessing their integration in teaching, research, and management.

Finally, the nature of the school’s local, national, and international image was studied to measure the impact of the school’s contribution to the image of the country and the region.

Michel Kalika, Director, BSIS, congratulated the school by saying: “AUC offers great examples of the business development impact on its students and at the same time provides significant opportunities for local, regional and national companies. The fruitful activities and initiatives of the AUC School of Business can be illustrated by the AUC Venture Lab – Egypt’s first university-based incubator and accelerator; the AUC Angels – the first university-based angel investor network in the MENA region, or the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI), whose mission is to support the growth and evolution of entrepreneurship in Egypt and the Arab region. We are positive that the AUC School of Business, a leading innovative and open-minded institution, will be able to leverage the BSIS process and the label for greater international recognition, for their stakeholders and broad societal impact.”

Running as a joint venture between the EFMD Global Network and FNEGE (a French foundation for the development and involvement of academic education in all the management fields) since its launch in 2014, BSIS has granted its label to 47 schools across 15 countries.

“This exercise was a true eye-opener and granted us a powerful tool to comprehensively measure the school's impact on Egypt, the MENA region, and beyond, as well as offered us an outstanding opportunity for self-reflection on our quest for continuous improvement and value creation to our different constituents both on and off-campus,” asserted Dean Kamel.

The BSIS process at the AUC School of Business had begun in April 2019, with a strategic objective of methodologically and analytically assessing its impact and demonstrating it to the internal and external stakeholders. Today, the school has successfully obtained the BSIS label, which attests to its outstanding impact in Egypt, the broader MENA region, and beyond.