The Central and Eastern European Management Association (CEEMAN) has selected W. Michael Hoffman, founding executive director of the Bentley University Center for Business Ethics, to receive a Champion Award for outstanding achievement in fostering responsible management education. The award will be presented at CEEMAN’s annual conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, September 21 to 24.

“I am greatly honored to receive an award from such a prestigious international association as CEEMAN for work on which I have devoted a significant part of my life,” Hoffman says. “In 1975, I applied for and received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the United States to begin research on and teaching of business ethics at Bentley, and that passion and effort continues to drive me today.”

According to CEEMAN, the Responsible Management Education Award is given for any of, or a combination of the following: 

• Contribution to institutional progress in implementing principles for responsible management education (PRME) and achieving PRME objectives by instilling the purpose and values of global social responsibility, adapting curricula, teaching methodologies and processes, conducting conceptual and empirical  research, and developing educational materials, concepts and frameworks to embed corporate responsibility and sustainability into the mainstream of the institution’s business-related education.
• Facilitation and support to a dialogue among management educators, businesses, government, consumers, media, civic society organizations and other learning partners on critical issues related to global social responsibility and sustainability, and building partnerships and alliances aimed at more effective responding to the related challenges.

“As the founding executive director of Bentley’s Center for Business Ethics, Mike has consistently been at the vanguard of the field of business ethics,” says Bentley President Gloria Cordes Larson. “His work has been the cornerstone of Bentley’s work in business ethics, and a central part of who we are as an institution.”

“I can think of no more pressing need in management and business education, especially today, than to develop strategies for the appropriate integration of ethics and corporate responsibility into the business curriculum,” Hoffman adds. “This is what we have done and continue to do, not only at Bentley, but also with faculty at universities throughout the world.”

Hoffman has been founding executive director of the Center for Business Ethics for more than 35 years. He also co-founded the Society for Business Ethics 31 years ago and is the founding executive director of the Ethics & Compliance Officer Association in the U.S.