Corporate Social Responsibility in Business Education: A Review of Current Status of American Business Schools Curriculum

Abstract

This paper investigated the extent to which CSR was incorporated into MBA courses in business schools in the United States. MBA students are the managers and leaders of the future and their knowledge and skills will influence the extent to which business CSR and sustainability will be achieved. This paper makes an exploratory analysis of MBA curriculum at the top 50 business schools in the United States. Our findings show that a high percentage of business schools in the US includes CSR-related subjects on their curriculum. CSR content is taught as either specific CSR subjects (stand-alone CSR subjects) or as part of various subjects on the academic curriculum (embedded CSR subjects). While at first sight our findings may seem promising, a more detailed analysis shows that few MBA curricula include stand-alone CSR subjects and that although many MBA programs have embedded CSR subjects, the content of CSR at most MBA schools is by no means fully developed.