Business Schools as Living Labs: Advancing Sustainability in Management Education

Abstract

The buildings in which we teach management and decision analysis are ideal labs for advancing sustainability in management education, experiential learning, and integrated performance measurement. Utilizing building-based learning and design competition, student teams can learn about aspects of sustainability while proposing investments into the spaces we spend over 90% of our time inside of buildings. Buildings on university campuses provide an opportunity to design and deliver hands-on assignments showing how the actions taken on an existing building can improve the overall health and performance of that building and its owners and occupants. Contributions of this study include a primer on how to develop and deliver building-based learning and demonstrating ways in which to integrate a social cost of carbon in investments with a proven approach to assess and measure the return on integration of financial, environmental, and human health and productivity in a return on integration, integrated rate of return, and integrated future value. Insights and the lessons learned provide linkages to learning outcomes and assessment so that learning objectives are aligned with and advance sustainability in management education and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals with outcomes generalizable to any building and business.