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which has since been purchased by many companies and which has helped the center to build up its database for academic research; SCOPE created a database of the societal strategies of the 200 largest companies in the world leading to multiple publications; and Ethicon worked closely with the Dutch employer association VNO-NCW, resulting in multiple booklets for managers on how to improve business ethics in practice, as well as with the advisory firm KPMG to create a database of business codes of ethics. Efforts by the school to concentrate and intensify the research in B-SM were not in vain, as indicated by the results of the Aspen Institute’s Beyond Grey Pinstripes ranking in 2005. The study showed that RSM was ranked 16th in the world of business schools and third in Europe with respect to teaching and research in B-SM. PHASE 4: THE INTEGRATION OF B-SM RESEARCH INTO OTHER RESEARCH Having a well-functioning department of B-SM in 2005 – in teaching and research as well as visibility in society – the question arose of how to integrate B-SM research into other traditional research areas. Socially relevant research should not be conducted solely by scholars specialized in the field of business and society, it is a responsibility of and a challenge to all scholars in the field of business and management. But how was this to be achieved? And how did RSM rise to this challenge? Different, mutually reinforcing, processes were implemented. As in the preceding three phases, it was believed that cooperation in teaching would be a fruitful basis for researchers to interact with others, to recognize the relevance of others’ research to one’s own research, and to start conducting research together and develop new insights. On the one hand, the B-SM department started to offer courses outside its own area but still strongly related to B-SM, for example in the field of corporate governance, leadership, management skills, stakeholder management and institutions. On the other hand, it also started to teach courses together with other departments, for example in the field of corporate law, macroeconomics and intercultural management. Next to integrated teaching, professors were appointed within the B-SM department with the explicit mission to work not only within the borders of B-SM, but also in close cooperation with other departments of the business school or even with other schools at the university and other universities. For example, in 2008 a professor was appointed in the field of ‘corporate governance and normative responsibility’ with the brief to work closely with researchers in the field of corporate governance in the Finance department. In 2005 a professor was appointed in the field of transition management, someone who holds a dual position at the B-SM department and the School of Sociology at Erasmus University, with the aim of studying the relationship between corporate and social sustainability. And in 2009 a professor was appointed to the B-SM department who also holds a position at the Duisenberg School of Finance, an academic research center in Amsterdam, in the field of Globalization, Sustainability and Finance. Next to integrated teaching and dual appointments, RSM also decided to establish research centers in which people from different departments and schools could participate in order to further integrate the societal dimension within traditional research areas. The Erasmus Centre of Behavioural Ethics was founded in 2009 and it draws together researchers not only from
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