Mona School of Business and Management (MSBM) won the award for the best whitepaper featuring disaster risk management as a new academic offering at a workshop held at the Shulich Business School, York University in Toronto Canada, March 23-24, 2016. .  MSBM's submission titled: "Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Management (DRM) in Management Education” was co-authored by Dr Indianna Minto-Coy and Dr Lila Rao-Graham. The paper will be published as part of the proceedings from the event as well as a book chapter in a forthcoming publication from Emerald Publishing. 

The workshop was organised by the UNISDR Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies (ARISE) and Florida International University with support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). MSBM was invited to participate in the project based on work being done in the school on competitiveness of small economies and the recognition of the case for small island developing states (SIDS) who currently face a number of environmental threats and peculiarities relating to business and management at the local and international levels that have heightened their vulnerability. 

White papers and presentations were made by business schools from  the following  universities: Florida International University, Brazil’s FGV-EAESP Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo; University of Toronto ,Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business and York University’s School of Administrative Studies, from  Canada; the University of Chile; Colombia’s Universidad EAFIT; the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore; the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Gadjah Mada, Indonesia; the Business School, Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, Mexico;  the ESAN Graduate School of Business, Peru and  the University of the West Indies’s Mona School of Business and Management.     UWI Mona  was represented by Dr Indianna Minto-Coy, Senior Research Fellow of the MSBM. 

The workshop is a vital aspect of the UNISDR(ARISE), a global grouping which was launched in November 2015 and marks the move towards realising its goal of strengthening disaster risk management in the curricula and professional training programmes in business schools and MBA programmes.‎ The award comes with a US$10,000 prize to assist the MSBM in integrating disaster risk reduction into its programmes.  

In reacting to the award, Prof. Densil Williams, Executive Director of MSBM noted that: “ the award signals the consistently high quality work which MSBM/ UWI continues to produce as it seeks  to make a solid contribution to nation building across  the Caribbean.  The school continues to be a leader in not only conceptualizing but also applying, cutting edge solutions to contemporary problems which pose a threat to the sustainable development of Jamaica and the wider Caribbean region.”  

While receiving little attention over the years, disaster risk management is of major importance to businesses in the Caribbean given the devastating impact of disasters on business sustainability and growth. Indeed, economic losses from disasters are expected to reach US$414 billion globally by 2030, a significant increase from the US$260 billion seen in 2015.  

Through the partnerships created at the Workshop, MSBM  is also now a pioneer in global efforts to mainstream DRM in business schools globally.