The College, its Programmes and services, support professional practitioners and others with similar responsibilities and needs in the UK and globally. To this end the College seeks to:

• Assist the development and spread of more effective Corporate Environmental Management,
• Help develop and disseminate the knowledge and understanding of, and tools and skills for, Sustainability Management, and
• Promote appreciation of sustainable development as a key component of good management.

CSEM supports these aims through its Programmes:

• Management Education and Seminar Training
• Research , principally Collaborative Management Research
• Consulting Services: Sustainability Advisory Services

How do these work together to support CSEM aims?

We design our Programmes to be completely interactive with one another and to provide the greatest possibility of learning and dissemination. The Education and Training Programmes draw on our own and our associates' research and practice. Their research and practice is informed by and draws from the management and organizational knowledge, concepts, frameworks, techniques and tools developed and communicated in our Education and Training Programmes.

We continuously learn from our research partners, clients , students and seminar participants, they from us and from each other. CSEM Research Programmes overlap and merge with CSEM Consultancy Services , which mirror the breadth and depth of our Education and Training Programmes .

Annual practitioner gatherings further facilitate growth and spread of learning within the Centre and to its clients, stakeholders and wider communities.

Background

CSEM (pronounced ceesem) was formerly the Environmental Management Centre (EMC) , founded in 1990 by Ross King and Ken Knight within the Brunel Management Programme (BMP) and residing in 1997 and 1998 within the Graduate Management School at Brunel University. Ken had founded BMP in 1971, within BIOSS, Elliott Jacques' Brunel Institute of Organisation and Social Studies, remaining until 1991 Director of what was, by then, an internationally respected, strategic and specialist, management training programme.
BMP , EMC and CSEM have always been self-funded, managed and organised, with their own business infrastructure and systems, operating autonomously within their host institutions (see Introduction).

Activities

CSEM's major activities are Education & Training (at both post-graduate and seminar level), Research and Consultancy , directed to its prime purpose of supporting the development of Sustainable Business in the UK and world-wide.

Structure

CSEM , like BMP , is a small-core / large periphery organisation, a model shared with many of the most successful present service organisations. The core has typically been the Director and one or more close collaborators and the administrative office. The 'periphery' normally includes many senior Associates focused around seminars/modules and arising collaborative research and consultancy.

People

Members of both the core and periphery are selected on the basis that they are already successful academics, managers or consultants in their field. They need to have the commitment, knowledge, professional reputation and personal skills in Environmental and Sustainable management development to be fully credible and attractive to delegates and clients. In particular, what makes them credible to senior managers, is their generally strong record of achievement in corporate business, government or consultancy. See the list of Associate Faculty & Contributors .

Record

CSEM /EMC has a strong ethos and record of achievement.

• Was the first programme of Environmental Management training for senior and functional managers, directors and their advisers in the UK.
• In the eight years to 1998 typically supported 25-30 seminars a year with over 1700 delegates to over 160 Seminars - and 40 participants in the seminar-based MSc course.
• Pioneered 11 out of the 15 principal subjects in the field, designing the first public seminars and presentations.
• This included designing the first professional on-site Environmental Audit training in 1991/2, taken up by the Environmental Audit Registration Association and leading to a global explosion of such training over the next five years.
• For example ran five such demonstration courses for the Japan Management Association, assisting it to set up its own Environmental Management Education Programme.
• In the mid-nineties conducted a comprehensive "cascade" programme of environmental awareness training for a leading motor manufacturer in the UK .
• Ken Knight was joint author of Strategy for Sustainable Business (McGraw-Hill, 1995).

Transition

After nine years intensive development and delivery, we used the period 1999 - 2002 migrate the unit to collaboration with Middlesex University to facilitate a new phase of work.

Our first focus is always serving the needs of practitioners and managers deliver 'really useful' - genuinely effective - environmental management and CSR (corporate social responsibility) programmes. In this phase we also recognise that the Sustainable Development agenda has moved on - and we need to serve the needs of practitioners and managers to make steps beyond performance improvement - to greater integration and, more challengingly, to processes to achieve real ecological sustainability. To this end we have a new modular Masters Programme called 'Integrated Sustainable Management for Business', operated from beautiful surroundings in the 'Greenbelt' north of London, UK.

Management

The current Management Group of CSEM consists of -
Ross King - Chief Executive
Michael Baker - Research Director
Peter Martin - Mentoring/Coaching Director - designate

Participation Opportunities

CSEM welcomes the participation of companies and individuals in its work.
Opportunities include -

• Participation in the Collaborative R&D programme The Sustainable Company
• Membership of sector-based Educational Advisory Group
• Collaborative Consultancy and Training Projects
• Sponsorship of aspects of our work
• New SD Training Centre Project
  

Contacts