The Deignan Award aims to encourage ethical business practices and engage enterprises in their drive to create sustainable business models guided by the principles of justice, solidarity and responsibility.

The award aims to provide significant encouragement to key decision makers, by recognising top business leaders who exhibit exemplary behaviour in business practices that positively contribute to the common good of the society.

In recent years, the attention of both the business world and business schools has focused increasingly on ethics, corporate accountability and responsibility, and the ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance factors). Courses on ethics and ESG are proliferating rapidly, driven in part by the demands of MBA students, and partly by the various challenges and crises facing the world today. Companies are beginning to genuinely encourage these initiatives, and it has become imperative for business schools to take significant steps to add courses and co-curricular work on ethics and corporate social responsibility.

The Deignan Award recognises Alfred Deignan’s mission and commitment to education and the promotion of values and ethical business practices, and strives to encourage and reward today’s business leaders for their efforts to operate according to principals of sustainability and an orientation towards the common good.

The focus of the Deignan Award is on SMEs operating within the cross-culturalcenters of Hong Kong and Macao. Its objective is to carefully select successful and qualified SMEs from Hong Kong and Macao, which show a credible track record of specific achievements in the field of sustainability and the implementation of ethical practices based on the most updated research on corporate social responsibility, ESG criteria and business ethics.

Enterprises which employ fewer than 100 persons are defined as SMEs for Deignan Award.