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The of Peace When students learn how commerce can lift communities out of poverty, rebuild nations after war, and create alliances between countries, they get a glimpse of what business can do to promote world peace. by Sharon Shinn N ations that share profitable enterprises are less likely to war against each other. Individuals with wealth and status have a stake in avoiding conflict. Developing countries whose poorest citizens can engage in entrepreneurial activity have a chance to lift themselves out of poverty. If, as many business leaders believe, commercial enterprise can promote peace, then business schools can play a part in improving the world. By teaching stu- dents the principles and consequences of business, they can demonstrate the powerful connection between business and peace. Many business educators are already in the vanguard of the "peace through com- merce" movement, including David Cooperrider at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. "Business could be the most important ground and force for peace," Cooperrider argues in a foreword he wrote to the 2006 book Appreciative Intelligence. "The 21st century is going to be a time when we learn to unite the dyna- mism and entrepreneurial capacities of good business with the global issues of our day." Cooperrider is founder and director of the school's University Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit, a global forum for finding and disseminating information about ways to improve business and the human condition. Case Western is among the dozens of schools that shared information about their peace-based initiatives with AACSB International in a recent member survey. AACSB's board of directors launched its Peace Through Commerce Task Force last summer to explore the relevance of peace-related issues to business schools and to collect and share data on what business schools can do. This survey was one of the task force's initial steps. AACSB's international structure makes it particularly suited to promoting world peace through business, notes Richard E. Sorensen, dean of Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business in Blacksburg, Virginia, and AACSB's chairman of the board. With more than 1,000 academic members from all over the world—including 515 educational institutions in 28 nations—AACSB is truly a global force, he points out. "Through AACSB, people from different cultures have learned to work cooperatively together for our common goal. Through our 'thought leadership' initiative, we are now accepting the challenge to work cooperatively together toward an even higher goal of enabling peace through commerce." AACSB members who responded to the Peace Through Commerce survey described a wide variety of efforts both massive and intimate—everything from helping former Russian provinces develop degreed business education programs to helping Haitian villagers set up a bakery. The following stories, drawn from the surveys, underscore the many diverse and powerful ways that business schools can contribute to peace. 24 BizEd MAY/JUNE 2006