Sustainable International Business - Global Poster Competition 2025

Welcome

Aim. The Sustainable International Business Poster Competition (“The Competition” thereafter) aims to address the world’s critical sustainability challenges by pooling resources of engaged International Business scholarship in research and teaching to help organisations engaged with international business activities to add (net positive) value to society.

Objectives

Here are the main objectives of the event:

• Empower Students. The Competition provides a means to empower and energise students around the world to help business organisations (multinational enterprises, importers, exporters, and born globals) to become sustainable by creating organisation-specific proposals for transformation in the format of research-and-solution oriented posters.

• Empower Educators. The Competition, by building a community of practice, supports engaged scholars to explore ways to integrate responsible (international) business principles, such as Sustainable Value Creation, Inclusive Growth, Human Development, and addressing wicked systemic problems, into existing curricula.

• Empower Businesses. The Competition will engage business stakeholders through a partnership with academia, where members of the partnership can contribute to and draw on the (big data) insights from the posters and a pool of co-created resources for sustainable business

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Awards ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Awards shall be given in each of the following eight categories:

Global ‘Decade of Action’ Sustainable Development Award
Best Sustainable Strategy Award
Best Sustainable Business Model Award
Best Sustainability Analytics Award
Best Sustainability Partnership Award
Best Visualisation for Sustainability Award
Best Sustainable Technology Award
Best Sustainability Research Award*

​*The Best Sustainability Research Award is exclusively for doctoral students. For all other awards, each category will have one winner from the undergraduate, postgraduate, and MBA levels.

Eligibility

To be eligible for the Award, a submitted poster (“the Submission” thereafter) shall meet ALL the following requirements:

1. The Submission is original work, in accordance with the Competition's AI use policy).

2. The poster is created and authored by a minimum of one student and a maximum of six students.

3. If there are multiple authors, all must be at the same study level (i.e., a group of only undergraduate, postgraduate, or MBA students).

4. Each student author is associated with only one Submission to the competition.

5. ​The Submission is in English.

6. The Submission is made by the announced deadline.

* Undergraduate students refer to those who are enrolled in a bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) at the time of the poster submission. Postgraduate (also sometimes called “graduate”) students refer to those who are enrolled in a taught master’s degree (or equivalent) at the time of the poster submission. As postgraduates, MBA students may have professional backgrounds and therefore possess unique qualities, which is why they are considered as a separate cohort for the competition.

Poster components

A Sustainable International Business Poster is the presentation of an investigative project that answers this research question: ​

“What transformation should an international business organisation adopt in order to take effective action on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?”

The poster should begin by identifying the sustainable development challenge related to the selected business activity but must focus its analysis on an active international business (IB) organization. This could be a multinational enterprise, an exporter, an importer, a 'born global,' or a component of the global value chain of a for-profit organization. The poster should include a well-formulated recommendation to help the business transition toward higher levels of sustainability.
The poster must incorporate all four components from Section A and at least one component from Section B, as outlined below.

Note: The bullet points in Sections A and B serve as guiding principles expected to be reflected in the poster.

Section A

1. Problem

• What is the SDG Problem or combination of interrelated SDG problems the IB organisation should address?

• Who is responsible for the SDG Problem (not) being solved?

• What is the current approach of the IB organisation towards the SDG Problem?

• To what extent can the problem be (re-)framed as a business opportunity?

• Is there a business case for addressing the SDG Problem?

2. Analytics

• What Sustainability Analytics (data, analytical approach, and results) can be leveraged to support the arguments of the Poster?

• What data should the IB organisation collect and use to make informed decisions?

3. Evidence

• What are the sources (literature, theories, empirical findings, reports, and databases) that the analyses in the Poster have relied on?

4. Visualisation and infographics

• What Visualisation can be used to communicate the key message of the Poster in an original and effective way?

• Is the advice for an IB organisation visualised in a persuasive manner?

Section B

​5. Agency and governance​

• What organisational logic defines the starting position of the organisation, i.e., is the organisation a public, private, or hybrid one?

• To what extent does this starting position influence the capabilities of the organisation to address the SDG Problem: what are the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation towards taking action towards the SDG Problem?

• Where in the (international) value chain can the organisation be positioned and to what extent does this influence the ‘room to manoeuvre’ for the organisation towards addressing the root causes of the SDG Problem?

6. Strategy

• What Sustainable Strategy should the IB organisation adopt to effectively address the SDG Problem?

• How does the organisation deal with the gap between sustainable intentions and their realisation?

• Is the present value proposition supportive for this ambition and what should change?

• What actionable targets or leverage points for the year 2030 should the IB organisation prioritise to effectively address the SDG Problem?

• What are the key performance questions that the IB organisation needs to consider to enable change in a sustainable direction

• If any: what key performance/practice indicators can the organisation target in order to induce the biggest change?

7. Technology

• What Sustainable Technology (a specific technology, a technology portfolio, or a set of technological solutions) should the IB organisation rely on to implement its Sustainable Strategy?

• What are the opportunities and risks associated with adopting the Sustainable Technology?

• How should the innovation involving sustainable technology be organised: open and/or closed; inside the organisation, outside the organisation; with internal and external stakeholders?

8. Partnerships

• What combination of Sustainability Partnerships should the IB organisation develop?

• What partnership portfolio management decisions can the organisation take in order to increase the leverage of its partnerships and create a high ‘fit for purpose’

• What are the best ways to build these partnerships and maintain them?

9. Business model

• What is the Sustainable Business Model the IB organisation should embrace and what are the global (cross-country) and local (e.g., country, subnational-region, city, town, village) contexts in which this model can be implemented?

• How should the functional areas of management (e.g., marketing, supply chain, HRM, finance, innovation, communication) be aligned to enable a successful transformation?

• What evaluation should be conducted by the IB organisation to ensure the actionability of its Sustainable Business Model?

For more information and a starter pack of resources please visit https://www.aib-uki.org/poster-competition.html

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