Cork University Business Schools’ Strategic Vision 2026-2030 ‘Making a Difference: Vision to Impact’

16 Apr 2026

Cork University Business School launches new strategic vision.

A Message from the Dean

I am immensely proud to introduce Cork University Business Schools’ (CUBS) Strategic Vision - Making a Difference: Vision to Impact. This builds on CUBS’ successes to date whilst ensuring that we continue to be well positioned to continue thriving in a period of global turbulence and in a world that needs business, workers and citizens to change and do better.

As a Triple Crown Accredited Business School, something held by less than 1% of global schools, we are a school centered on excellence, continuous improvement and generating greater value and impact for our communities. This requires our research and educational offerings to be more focused on assisting organisational managers and leaders to evolve and transform to enable greater social and economic benefits for all.

Our ambitious new strategy has been shaped extensively by the University College Cork’s Strategic Plan 2023-2028 and through extensive engagement and collaboration with our stakeholders. It builds from our consultative approach to revising our mission and vision statements with our values represented in the mnemonic CAIRDEAS, the Irish for ‘friendship’. We see these as underpinning all our engagements and relationships with our local and global UCC community and partners. My thanks to all colleagues who engaged in these consultations.

Business can be a better force for the greater good. Through better serving our communities and satisfying societal needs more sustainably, we all benefit. We firmly believe in the need to innovate for a better world and that we must better protect our environment whilst enabling profitable and sustainable businesses and economies that deliver decent work and quality of life for our communities.

However, as a school we also recognise the dilemmas, the challenges and the greyness that typically encompass the decisions that organisational leaders must make. We want to ensure all individuals in society have more equal access to opportunities, resources, benefits regardless of background or identity. We seek to make a difference by ensuring organisational leaders more explicitly consider the wider impacts of decisions and engage with the dilemmas regularly faced.

We recognise that we can and must play a key role in shaping the leaders required to deliver a sustainable future for our communities. This also requires greater understanding of the responsible use of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies.

We will continue our commitment to undertaking and supporting the highest quality research whilst focusing our efforts towards signature areas and global challenges. This will include the advancement of a new Future of Work and the Economy strategic research centre and strong engagement in UCC Futures especially Sustainability; Food & Health; and AI & Data Analytics. Our research demonstrates momentum, but we have the ambition and drive to further enhance and strengthen our role as a business school delivering critical, impactful research and learning experiences that make a difference.

Our new mission commits to delivering an inclusive environment that enables our staff to undertake the impactful research and teaching required to develop the leaders who can transform organisations and businesses to deliver a more sustainable and responsible society. While some world leaders renounce EDI, we believe it is incumbent on us to continue to celebrate and draw on the strength that diversity offers.

We will enhance our inclusive working environment to better attract and retain an increasingly global workforce where everyone will be supported to realise their potential. We want our students to view their experiences with us as among the most satisfying, rewarding, challenging, and safe periods of their lives for learning, personal development, and intellectual growth.

We need to embrace the complexity that exists and move past oversimplification and short-termism. This will see us expanding and deepening our global engagement in our partnerships and our exchanges to foster greater connections, and cross-cultural understanding.

We will not rest on our laurels of the past decade but continue to focus on where we can positively reform how we operate so that our practices are efficient and sustainable. The need to improve our physical and digital infrastructure has never been so great to ensure we have the facilities that our staff and students deserve and need. We look forward to making this need a reality.

This strategic vision centres on ‘Making a Difference: Vision to Impact’ and we look forward to working with you all in enabling this. 

Professor Anthony McDonnell,
Dean, Cork University Business School