Back in 2015, when the United Nations set out its Sustainable Development Goals, business and accounting expert Professor Ven Tauringana spotted a big problem. All the hard work on a global scale to make business more sustainable was being done by the large, multinational corporations. But they weren’t the biggest drivers of climate change – 70 per cent of pollution created by business comes from the activities of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
When asked why they failed to act on advice on how to become more sustainable, SMEs the world over cited a lack of expertise to quantify their impact on the environment or of time or money to spend doing that work – or, in many cases, all three.
While he was pondering the problem, Ven – now Professor of Accounting and Sustainability at the University of Southampton – and his colleagues noticed another issue. Graduates of the University’s Business School were leaving the institution with an exceptional academic understanding, but lecturers, students and their future employers too all would like them to have more experience working in a real world business environment.
There are so many SMEs that have been trained in sustainability reporting but they are often a one-man or -woman band. They don’t have time to carry out what they have been trained to do.
Professor Ven Tauringana
Meanwhile, the things the SMEs lacked their students had in spades. They spent months understanding how to carry out effective sustainability reporting to measure the climate impact of any business, and they also had the time and energy to invest in working on the frontline.
“We’ve got a problem here of SMEs lacking time and we’ve got our students going away needing more practical experience,” Ven explains. The University had the resources that the small businesses lacked and the desire from its student population to be put to work. So the Business School started a matchmaking service, pairing students hungry for practical work experience with organisations that desperately needed help to understand their ecological footprint.
Two trials of the idea were held in the 2021–2022 academic year to prove the concept, starting small with just 15 students working with six SMEs. From that, four full reports were published – “a more than 50 per cent success rate, so we saw that as a good sign”.
We invest in every graduate in Southampton so they go away with sustainability knowledge. We can teach any student coming to the Business School how to do a sustainability report.”
Professor Ven Tauringana
