Sustainability In Business Schools Research Articles

The beautiful risk of participatory education: An empirical example of teaching strong sustainability

The grand challenges of our times are seriously interlinked: ecological crises cannot be tackled separately from social problems. In the strong sustainability approach, a good life for all must be achieved within ecological boundaries. To respect the planetary boundaries, it is required to provide critiques for the current economic, social and political order and suggest concrete actions that may lead to strong sustainability transformation. Business schools must address these challenges and provide solutions through educational content and innovative teaching methods. In this article, we argue that participatory education is the appropriate tool to teach strong sustainability in business schools. Building on Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy and Gert Biesta’s participatory education theories, we developed a theoretical framework to understand how these theories can strengthen strong sustainability education. Using the analytical framework, we explore the risks of participatory education in our Degrowth course and bring empirical examples of its impacts on students by analysing the reflection articles of 37 students. According to our findings, this particular type of education creates both positive emotions, like enjoyment and enthusiasm, and negative ones, like anxiety and helplessness.

Business schools’ transformation towards sustainability: empirical insights from UN PRME signatories

PurposeThis paper aims to present the progress of the implementation of sustainability in business schools in line with the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) and its principles of responsible management education.Design/methodology/approachBy analyzing the content of the Sharing of Information on Progress reports from PRME signatories, this study identified significant developments in the strategies business school use to implement sustainability. However, it seems that a framework that business schools can apply to accomplish that goal is still lacking. This paper proposes a framework that addresses four components of the integration process and stresses the important role of stakeholders. The authors discuss the results from 2021 in comparison to the results of a previous analysis of the first 100 signatories from 2010 and analyze the findings in relation to the developed framework.FindingsThis study shows that business schools have improved their sustainability engagement in many areas (e.g. education offerings and teaching methods, campus practices and engaging stakeholders). However, less attention has been paid to other aspects, such as reviewing and assessing, capability development or communication, which could slow the transformation process. The authors discuss further implications of the findings for enhancing the PRME signatories’ ability to implement the underrecognized aspects.Originality/valueWhile the analysis focuses on the status and progress of the integration of PRME within business schools during the past decade, the framework may enable higher education institutions to analyze their potential to implement change and plan future transformation strategies.

Blended learning sustainability in business schools: Role of quality of online teaching and immersive learning experience

This study examined how and when the initial use of blended learning induces future intention for blended learning among students of business and management education in Pakistan. We used the mechanism of cognitive flexibility for change and two boundary conditions: the perceived quality of online teaching and the immersive learning experience, to understand the relationship between students' initial use of blended learning in a mandatory setting and their intention for future use of blended learning. The data was obtained from 589 students enrolled in different degree programs at 22 leading business schools in Pakistan. The results unveiled that the initial use of mandatory blended learning positively predicted students' future intention to use blended learning and that cognitive flexibility for change mediated this relationship. The perceived quality of online teaching moderated the direct relationships between students' initial use of blended learning and their cognitive flexibility change and future intention to use it. The students’ immersive experience of the online component of blended learning further moderated the relationship between their cognitive flexibility for change and future intention to use blended learning. The findings offer valuable insights for successfully implementing blended learning in management education to meet future challenges and remain competitive amongst business schools in the emerging virtual world.

Imagining a Place for Sustainability Management: An Early Career Call for Action

Imagining a Place for Sustainability Management: An Early Career Call for Action

How They Walk the Talk? Sustainability Education in Finnish Business Schools

There has recently emerged a growing requirement for embedding sustainability in the field of business school education. However, in literature the assessment of such developments tends to take place in single university context, placing less weight on examining sustainability in business school education in the context of one country. We examine sustainability in Finnish business schools and its vertical and horizontal embeddedness in educational curricula using extensive qualitative materials from school representatives and schools’ curricula. Our findings acknowledge conditions and drivers that have influenced the chosen approach to sustainability among schools. Our study then discusses the weaknesses and strengths of both vertical and horizontal orientation for the development of sustainability education in business schools.

Quality of Teaching, Immersive Experience, and Blended Learning Sustainability in Business Schools

This study examined how and when initial use of blended learning induces future intention for blended learning among management science students from the activity theory perspective on the use of technology in higher education. We used the mechanism of cognitive flexibility and two boundary conditions: perceived quality of teaching and the immersive experience to understand the relationship between students’ initial use of blended learning in a mandatory setting and their intention for future use of blended learning. The data was obtained from 589 students enrolled in different degree programs at 22 leading business schools in Pakistan. The results unveiled that the initial use of mandatory blended learning positively predicted students’ future intention to use blended learning and that cognitive flexibility mediated this relationship. The perceived quality of online teaching moderated the direct relationship between students’ initial use of blended learning and their cognitive flexibility and future intention to use it. The students’ immersive experience of the online component of blended learning further moderated the relationship between their cognitive flexibility and future intention to use blended learning. The findings offer valuable insights for successfully implementing blended learning in management education to meet future challenges and remain competitive amongst business schools in the emerging virtual world.

Framework for Embedding Sustainability in Business Schools: A Review

Over a period of time, sustainable development (SD) gaining momentum as international declarations is binding the whole globe through a single cord. Stockholm Conference in 1972 (UNEP, 1972, Declaration of the United Nations conference on the human environment.) witnessed the recognition of education for environmental protection and conservation. Since then more and more higher education institutions have been engaged in embedding sustainability throughout the academic cycle. This cycle starting from input (institutional frameworks, such as vision, mission and policies), processes such as (curriculum, research, outreach and collaboration, on campus experience, campus operations, assessment and reporting), output (impact on social, environmental and economic perspective). The closing of the loop ends with feedback mechanism to rectify the system at process level or input level. This review article observes the complete SD cycle for management education.

Education for sustainability in business schools by practicing social learning

The insertion of sustainability in business schools has been more relevant in the last decades. One of the purposes of education for sustainability (EfS) is to develop individuals with knowledge and skills to make decisions based on their environmental, social and economic context, through reflection and critical thinking, so that students are oriented toward action and change. Therefore, this paper emphasizes the need of collaboration between different actors on the teaching and learning process through Social Learning, as a theoretical perspective that considers socializing and learning as inseparable processes. Thus, the question that has oriented this research is “how can Social Learning, focusing on collaboration between different actors, contribute to effective EfS in business schools?” To answer this question, action research was conducted with a social project developed in a public high school, with children in high social vulnerability conditions, considering their interactions with two business schools in southern Brazil, in undergraduate and MBA courses. Through the integration of different socioeconomic realities, it was possible to analyze the construction of knowledge on issues related to sustainability and the transformation of those involved in the process of teaching and learning.

Strategic decoupling and sustainability in business schools: a review and conceptual model

The last decade has seen a noted rise in work seeking to better understand decoupling, and concomitant with this rise has been a change in the way decoupling is perceived. The popularized notion of decoupling and related constructs originated in the education sector yet despite its centrality in defining much of the early work on decoupling, comparatively little attention has been paid to the role of decoupling in higher education today. The higher education sector has also been largely overlooked as a site for systematic review into sustainable and responsible operating practices, despite the fact that business education has been challenged on its role in the crisis of confidence facing corporates. Herein we address these gaps in extant literature and provide the first systematic survey of scholarship on sustainability in business schools, before building on this review to present a conceptual model framed in decoupling as articulated in institutional theory.

Pathways of Influence for Sustainability in Business Schools

While faculty members are champions and implementers of change in business schools, deans play a critical role in generating support and resources for fostering sustainable curriculums. The pathways of change can be outside-in by connecting the agendas and visions of external stakeholders to support internal change or inside-out by selling the faculty’s vision to external stakeholders to generate resources. This essay draws lessons from the outside-in and inside-in pathways for developing sustainable curriculums and programs in two very different business schools in Canada and the United States.

The technological community as a framework for educating for sustainability in business schools

The technological community as a framework for educating for sustainability in business schools

The technological community as a framework for educating for sustainability in business schools

AbstractThis paper adapts and extends the technological community perspective (e.g., Van de Ven, 1993), to review and analyze the outcomes of a series of three research projects funded by the Australian Government as reported in a number of publicly available documents. The projects were designed to support education for sustainability within Australian business schools and to promote knowledge sharing between the business schools and industry around sustainability. Project participants included seven business schools and their industry collaborators.The technological community perspective, which is particularly well-suited to examining this innovative education for sustainability project, is a theoretical framework that examines evolution of innovation at the community level; this includes multiple internal and external stakeholders, and is beyond the more traditional uni-dimensional focus on organization or industry levels. This approach provides lessons with respect to complex and dynamic interactions between and among multiple stakeholders responsible for successful development and dissemination of sustainability in business schools, corporations, and beyond.Hence, this paper addresses issues raised in the call for papers for the special issue of Journal of Management and Organization, ‘Educating for Sustainability and CSR: What is the role of business schools?’ The paper addresses the questions: (1) What are the barriers for business schools with respect to integrating sustainability in the curricula; (2) What role do partnerships with other stakeholders play in such initiatives?

The technological community as a framework for educating for sustainability in business schools

AbstractThis paper adapts and extends the technological community perspective (e.g., Van de Ven, 1993), to review and analyze the outcomes of a series of three research projects funded by the Australian Government as reported in a number of publicly available documents. The projects were designed to support education for sustainability within Australian business schools and to promote knowledge sharing between the business schools and industry around sustainability. Project participants included seven business schools and their industry collaborators.The technological community perspective, which is particularly well-suited to examining this innovative education for sustainability project, is a theoretical framework that examines evolution of innovation at the community level; this includes multiple internal and external stakeholders, and is beyond the more traditional uni-dimensional focus on organization or industry levels. This approach provides lessons with respect to complex and dynamic interactions between and among multiple stakeholders responsible for successful development and dissemination of sustainability in business schools, corporations, and beyond.Hence, this paper addresses issues raised in the call for papers for the special issue of Journal of Management and Organization, ‘Educating for Sustainability and CSR: What is the role of business schools?’ The paper addresses the questions: (1) What are the barriers for business schools with respect to integrating sustainability in the curricula; (2) What role do partnerships with other stakeholders play in such initiatives?

Educating For Sustainability: Developing Critical Skills

This article explores the contribution a pedagogical approach based in critical theory can make to education for sustainability in business schools. In addition to the regular business and environmental management curriculum that provides tools for incremental improvement, we advocate introducing a radical change perspective aligned more with the “strong” sustainability paradigm. Concepts from critical theory can be usefully employed to bridge weak and strong sustainability paradigms. A critical skillset incorporating reflexivity, critique, and social action/engagement is elaborated and illustrated through the incorporation of these skills in the framing of an environmental management/sustainability elective and through exercises.