The Centre for Sustainable Business at Stockholm School of Economics (CSB) is an independent institute within SSE Riga, founded in 2012. Its aim is to foster a discussion in the business community as well as in society in general on sustainability. To raise the awareness of sustainability, CSB, in cooperation with its partners, provides research, teaching, training, and contributes actively to the public debate. The Sustainable Business Centre activities cover Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

In order to raise the awareness of sustainable business, the CSB’s planned activities are as follows:

• Teaching

The Centre will integrate sustainable business into the curriculum at SSE Riga. Initially the course on Business Ethics at SSE Riga would be transformed into a course titled Sustainable Business, and delivered to undergraduates. After updating, a similar course would be offered at the Executive MBA level.In addition, the Centre will work through SSE Riga Executive Education programmes, recognising the fact than an important mission for the Centre is to foster implementation of sustainable thinking in companies in the region. SSE Riga Executive Education will, in cooperation with the Centre as well as with international partners, develop training programmes for management in the region with a focus on CSR and CR.

• Research

To understand the business environment in terms of sustainable (as well as unsustainable) business practices, there is a need to undertake research that is applied to the Baltic context. Examples of research areas include the waste of human, energy, and environmental resources, unjust and openly illicit business practices (e.g. corruption and grey economy activities), governance, tax related behaviour, sponsorship and corporate citizenship, and corporate social responsibility (taking a stance and acting upon it).The research will result in empirical findings, regularities and trends that will form the basis for the Centre’s various activities.

• Events/Policy activities

An integral part of the Centre’s activities will be to raise awareness of sustainable business. This requires an active communication strategy involving events such as open lectures and seminars, workshops, guest lectures, roundtables, and media activities. Events will be aligned with the release of reports, a calendar of notable dates, and current issues.

The activities of the Centre are organised by SSE Riga. The Advisory Board of the Centre is comprised of representatives from SSE Riga, the funders/contributors, and experts. The Advisory Board assures the independence of the Centre and its activities, as well as supervises, monitors and approves the work plan.

Role of CSB in the project:

• Coodinate the mapping exercise in Latvia and complete the template for data collection.
• Assist in the development of an online platform of resources as well as get familiarised and review the online tool.
• Contribute to the bi-annual newsletters.
• Provide feedback to the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) framework.
• Contribute to the dissemination and exploitation of the project outputs, outcomes and future network activities.
• Participate at the trial of the academy for ESD in HE.
• Participate and actively contribute to the discussions generated in regional and annual meetings, seminars and conference.

Operational and financial management:

• The project team will coordinate the above administrative and academic project activities.
• Financial administration will be handled by the project team who will liaise internally with the institution’s finance department.