Sustainability In Management Education Research Articles

Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) in Sri Lankan Business Schools: A Pathway to Sustainable Business Education: A Study of Curricular Integration, Stakeholder Engagement, and Sustainable Development Outcomes

This research study is an analysis of the introduction and application, PRME within Sri Lankan business schools to promote al sustainable management education. This study applies an integrated approach through analyzing diverse facets of PRME implementation issues comprising alignment curriculum component, stakeholder involvement and realization to sustainable development benefits.By using a mixed-methods research design, the study assesses systematically the problems and respond encounters in integration of PRME criteria to curriculums offered by Sri Lankan business schools identifying activities which impact this process. Furthermore, the research analyses stakeholder engagement in PRME implementation path with a focus on collaboration between businesses, government agencies and civil society organizations that promotes achievement of sustainable development outcomes.The outcomes of this study offer not only a profound picture of the current situation with regards to PRME adoption but also shed fantastic light on its development prospects and influence over Sri Lankan business schools. This study pinpoints successful strategies thus it helps in developing a sound sustainable business education pathway for Sri Lanka.

Status of Sustainability Management Education in African MBA Programmes: A Web-based Research Approach

Abstract Emerging evidence suggests that business schools in Africa are lagging behind in promoting sustainability education. Grand challenges that point to a limited focus on transformative sustainability education such as environmental pollution, conflicts, inequalities and unemployment still persist in African economies, with the profit motive remaining central to businesses’ operating philosophy. Informed by the clarion call for business schools to be key drivers of sustainability education, this study reviews the African master of business administration (MBA) curricula with the objective of assessing the status of sustainability management education. The content of the MBA curricula of 42 African business schools accredited with the Association of African Business Schools was analysed using a web-based research approach. The findings indicate that the concept of sustainability has not been sufficiently embedded into the African MBA curricula. The values and mission statements of the majority of business schools were found not to be aligned with the principles of sustainability education. It was also found that shareholder value oriented modules constitute the core curriculum of the majority of MBA programmes reviewed. An incremental elective approach was found to be the most dominant strategy used by African business schools to incorporate sustainability education in the MBA curricula. An integrative approach of embedding sustainability education focusing on re-orientation of the business schools’ values, mission, curriculum, systems, operations and governance is recommended. The increased use of experiential learning is also recommended as an effective teaching pedagogy for equipping MBA students with practical aspects of sustainability education.

More than morals: a simulation that supports sustainable management education

PurposeWe explore how sustainable management education (SME) can help prepare future leaders to manage crises effectively. Precisely, the intricacies of articulating moral and economic imperatives for businesses in a manner that engages students in sustainable behavior are a serious challenge for SME. We study how to integrate reminders of moral and economic imperatives in a socially responsible investment (SRI) stock-picking simulation created for SME.Design/methodology/approachAdopting an experimental design, we analyzed how the reminders affected the average environment social governance (ESG) integration in the portfolios of 127 graduate students in finance over a twelve-week period.FindingsOur results show how essential it is to balance the two imperatives. The highest level of sustainable investment is attained when utilizing both reminders.Practical implicationsOur findings have practical implications for implementing and organizing SME in business schools to educate responsible leaders who are able to effectively manage crises. Learning responsible management is most effective when students are exposed to the inherent tension between moral and economic imperatives. Hence, our findings corroborate the win-win conception of SME.Originality/valueNo management decision study has experimentally measured the effects of SME practices on students' actual behavior. Our research fills this gap by complementing previous studies on the effectiveness of teaching practices, first by drawing on behavioral sciences and measuring changes in students' actual sustainability behavior and second by introducing moral and economic imperatives into an innovative teaching resource (TR) dedicated to SME.

Corporate management, green finance, and sustainability

This study aimed to assess the impact of green finance and corporate management on China’s sustainable development index from 1990 to 2020 using time series analysis. The findings reveal that a 1% increase in the green financial market corresponds to a 0.31% and 0.69% enhancement in China’s sustainable development index in the short and long-term, respectively. Similarly, a 1% improvement in the corporate governance index is associated with a 0.16% and 0.29% increase in the short- and long-term. Interestingly, the green tax policy, acting as a proxy for green fiscal policy, negatively influences the sustainable development index. Additionally, the poverty rate emerges as a concerning factor hindering sustainable development in China. The policy implications include advocating for the digitalization of green finance, expanding poverty alleviation efforts, reforming the green taxation system, and implementing corporate sustainable management education programs.

Is sustainable management education contributing to gender equality?

One of the imperatives of the Sustainable Development Goals is the pursuit of attaining gender equality. However, the extent to which the sustainable management education project contributes to the equality of genders is rather underexplored in the academic literature. To address this gap, this article analyzes how an Executive Master's in Business Administration (EMBA) delivered by a Latin American school shapes the female and male students' thinking and decision-making styles and how these affect their preparedness to perform in top-management positions. After discussing how the topic has been addressed, we map the curricular design of the program against its capacity to potentiate participants' learning styles according to specific top management position skills. Then the progression of the students is reviewed by examining the evolution of their thinking styles from the beginning to the end of the program. The measurement instrument used to assess participants' thinking styles is the Neethling Brain Instrument (NBI), which is based on neuroscience discoveries related to the integrative use of the brain in decision-making processes. The study finds that the program does not fully potentiate men's and women's capabilities needed to perform in top-management positions. However, it also shows that the training tends to reinforce women's orientation to execution and personal relationships and men's preferences for analytical, risk-taking, and strategic thinking. Finally, it concludes by making recommendations at the level of curriculum design, including personalized support for students during and after the program, as well as broader considerations to advance the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME).

Conscientisation and Communities of Compost: Rethinking management pedagogy in an age of climate crises

The unprecedented scale of the climate crisis has led to a questioning of conventional approaches to sustainability in management education, centred around business case for sustainability narratives. Such critique gives rise to serious questions around how we approach teaching the universality of the climate crisis, species extinction and biodiversity loss differently. Working with Freire’s stress on the political role of the educator, action rooted in the concrete and the interconnections he establishes between pedagogy and political organisation, our contribution is to connect these interventions with Haraway’s call to stay ‘with the trouble’ and generate Communities of Compost – that is, collective more than human communities of multi-species flourishing. In doing so, we propose threading together ecocentric and political economy approaches in management education, to present an alternative to corporate sustainability solutionism and to politically rethink scalar mismatches – that is when problems and proposed ‘solutions’ to the climate crisis apply to different sets of relations. As a way of addressing this, we develop pedagogical practices around Haraway’s multi-species Communities of Compost and combine this with the political movement of La Via Campesina – focusing on its campaigns for agroecology and food sovereignty.

Narrating future(s) with others: teaching strategic sustainability management in a relational key

A substantial part of sustainability management education is teaching students how to deal with increasingly uncertain futures. Increasingly, academics concerned with sustainability challenges claim that a sustainable way of being with the world needs a transformational shift in how humans relate to one another and the natural world. This paper takes this as a starting point to show the potentials of a relational approach to future scenario planning for developing an ecopedagogy of strategic sustainability management education. For this, it describes a course design that uses narratives to sensitise students to the contingent and composed nature of reality and enable them to take part in negotiating and shaping current and future realities together with others. The paper then highlights the importance of aesthetics for developing transformational capacities. It closes with a reflection on the limits of relational course designs in cultural settings dominated by individuality, nature/culture divide and anthropocentrism.

Digital Experiential Learning for Sustainable Horticulture and Landscape Management Education

During the COVID-19 pandemic, horticulture and landscape management programmes in higher education experienced a huge drawback because of the impossibility of organising field studies and conducting site research. To pursue a more sustainable method of teaching, immersive technology such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) has been increasingly adopted as an effective approach for multimodal experiential learning. This study examines student perceptions on the use of digital technology in team-based hybrid learning to achieve sustainability in tree management using data collected from students of horticulture and landscape management in a higher education institute in Hong Kong. Key theoretical principles on Kolb’s experiential learning cycle as an interactive process are discussed, followed by an empirical analysis of student survey results. This research deepens the understanding of how immersive technology enhances both environmental sustainability and learning innovation. The results demonstrate that innovative ideas in instructional methods such as ARVR simulation can enhance the environmental sustainability of how tree management can be conducted, promoting a more environmentally conscious, experiential, collaborative and digital learning experience in higher education.

Accounting for Plural Cognitive Framings of Growth and Sustainability: Rethinking Management Education in Latin America.

This paper surveys future managers’ cognitive framings of interconnected concerns for economic growth, social prosperity, and the natural environment across six countries in Latin America, and elaborates on implications for sustainability management education. Our cluster analysis unveils three cognitive types. Our findings show that whereas some future managers exhibit a ‘business case’ cognitive frame, prioritizing economic growth over the environment, the other two clusters of participants show signs of cognitive dissonance with some of the tenets of the current growth paradigm while still not neatly fitting the definition of a paradoxical cognitive frame. In particular, individuals within the latter two groups do not visualize links among economic, social, and environmental dimensions that make up sustainable development. Following calls to enhance our understanding of sustainability micro-foundations, our study offers a more nuanced picture of the cognitive plurality beyond dichotomous characterizations of managerial cognitive frames as either business case or paradoxical. Moreover, results elucidate the cultural mediation that operates in the reproduction of business stances vis-à-vis nature, opening up possibilities for management education programs to engage with cognitive plurality to effect paradigmatic change.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10551-022-05180-4.

Navigating hope and despair in sustainability education: A reflexive roadmap for being with eco-anxiety in the classroom

In this article, we reflect on our experiences of teaching sustainability in management education in an emergent context of increasing and pervasive eco-anxiety. Our collaborative autoethnographic enquiry stemmed from the tensions we experienced in our desire to present a realistic view of the future to students, while still maintaining their (and our) sense of hope and agency. While sustainability in management education has long acknowledged the need to engage learners’ hearts and hands as well as their heads, the challenges of effectively integrating the emotional (heart) dimension in the classroom have remained under-explored in the literature. We develop the findings of our collaborative autoethnography into a framework that provides insights for educators navigating the range of emotional responses evoked in the sustainability in management education classroom. This framework acts as a roadmap, based around five spheres of practice, that will aid sustainability in management education educators in making more conscious and deliberate choices about their teaching practice within the complex context of eco-anxiety.

E-Development and Sustainable Management Education for Effective Leadership and Sustainable Society

Electronic development is the process of systematic evolution for mankind and society at large that ensures the overall progress of the electronic mode of learning, education, healthcare, society, and corporate governance. The main objective of the chapter was to address the impacts of e-development and sustainable management education for effective leadership that leads to constructing a sustainable society. The required data were collected both from primary and secondary sources. Primary data were collected from 120 respondents. The secondary data sources included Official Websites. The study is empirical and various statistical tools like Mean, Standard Deviation, and t-test were executed for data analysis. The results of the research study were indicated the high degree and low degree of contribution from E-development and Sustainable Management Education are not significant between Effective Leadership and Sustainable Society. E-development can be effective for creating a Sustainable Society with the goal-setting of improving Effective Leadership Skills.

Sustainable management education and an empirical five-pillar model of sustainability

Management academics, as the primary researchers of business practices and the educators of future managers, play critical roles shaping corporate behaviour and industry response to global sustainability challenges. However, the competencies required to optimise sustainable management education are often lacking and further research is required. Addressing recognised gaps in the literature, this study measured student perceptions of global sustainability to better inform sustainable management education. 59 in-depth interviews with students from an Australian business and law school identified their sustainability concerns. The perceived importance of such concerns was then quantified via a survey with 383 responses. Factor analysis generated five core sustainability dimensions, comprised of 31 items, which inform a new empirically derived five-pillar model of sustainability. This model includes pillars from traditional three- and four-pillar conceptual models of sustainable development, as well as a new fifth pillar of corporate sustainability. The five pillars in order of perceived importance are social, political, environmental, corporate and economic – importance varied between student types. Aligned with the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals, these five pillars and associated items provide a useful planning tool to assist sustainable management educators in structuring their curricula, as well as businesses considering their sustainable corporate impacts.

COVID-19 Impact: Blended Learning in Sustainable Management Education - The New Normal

COVID-19 has changed the way of management education. Blended Learning (BL) has become an integral part of management education and the way ahead in our new normal. Sustainable management education is coalescing around 2030 agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as introduced in new mission statement UN PRME's (2016). As the pandemic developed, academia needs to be trained in new forms of operation to meet SDGs (Goal 4) of quality education, which can be done through sustainable management education in the context of MBA programs. The study employs Community of Inquiry (CoI) paradigm to ascertain the effectiveness of BL. The study also brings about the co-dependency of the elements of CoI framework. Numerous research propositions are addressed during the study. The study also reflects on the perception of MBA educators and their behavioral intention towards BL. This research provides a comprehensive review of the best practices for designing academic programs in management education using of BL.

Factors influencing sustainable development integration in management education: An Empirical Assessment of management education institutions in India

The popularity of the notion of sustainable development has increased immensely in today's fast-paced business environment. The public's awareness of various sustainability challenges around the world has also increased, and also most people are well-versed in them. We also require qualified managers who can contribute to the overall growth and development of society. In response to the worldwide call for action, management education institutions should maintain their curriculum up to date to meet industrial requirements as well as the changing environmental and social needs of people all over the world. The integration of the concept of sustainable development in management education will help in the creation of a sustainable culture in our society, encouraging every individual to start behaving responsibly and contribute to positive social change. The purpose of this study is to identify the major factors that influence the integration of the concept of sustainable development and sustainability in management education in India.

A posthumanist research agenda on sustainable and responsible management education after the pandemic

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how posthumanism can contribute towards reframing responsible management education (RME) after the pandemic. Ethics has been a growing concern in management education for some time now, but the need to acknowledge the limitations and side effects of the global economy and the interdependences between biological and societal systems has come to the forefront in dramatic fashion during the pandemic.Design/methodology/approachPosthumanism proposes moving beyond traditional dichotomies such as nature-culture and social-material to introduce a relational epistemology in which attention is focused on local sociomaterial entanglements. This also introduces a new moral posture that is not based on formal principles but on a strong commitment to assembling the world and a capacity to cultivate response-abilities. As far as responsible management is concerned, it means moving the focus from managers to managing practices.FindingsThe contribution casts an original and critical eye on the reframing of RME and encourages a movement towards a “decolonisation” of educational methodologies. Posthumanist research acknowledges that pedagogical practices are the loci power relations and inclusion or exclusion come into play and are inscribed in the materiality of education, in the sense of objects as well as human bodies. Then, by applying on the author's experience as teacher, the paper provides inputs for developing a posthumanist research agenda for RME after the pandemic.Originality/valueThe contribution uses posthuman lens to explore RME and develops an original research agenda starting from the author’s teaching practices.

Development of a New Framework Based on Sustainability and Responsible Management Education

The paper discusses the prevailing situation regarding management education and advocates adoption of a framework that sheds light on how principles of responsible management education along with a sustainability agenda can be incorporated into the content and process of higher education. The study undertakes an analysis of the higher education discipline through reviews of research papers, trends and developments in the field. It also advances a new framework that incorporates the various dimensions of sustainability and responsible management education. This entire context is woven intricately into the fabric of the principles of responsible management education set forth by the United Nations. For industry practitioners, the study exhorts them to partner closely with academia in developing better management graduates who have imbibed a sense of purpose and strong values; for academicians, the study advocates the need for subtly changing the content and process of education, thereby instilling in students, a deeper sense of purpose and values.

Using contemplative photography in transformative sustainability management education: Pedagogical applications in the United States, Russia, and Germany

Developing a sustainability mindset requires a transdisciplinary approach to business education that integrates a rational-analytic mode of thinking and an emotive-holistic understanding of the human mind. In order to cultivate the sustainability mindset of business students, we have designed a contemplative art-based project involving the creation of an electronic portfolio which consists of a student's digital photographs. We have integrated it into our teaching of management courses in the United States, Russia, and Germany, respectively. The project aims to enable business students to become more visually attentive and environmentally conscious, so that they will pay close attention to the process of building more sustainable relationships within their natural and social environments. From the interpretative phenomenological perspective, we have analyzed the students' e-portfolios in order to understand how business students make sense of environmental and human sustainability. While envisioning more transformative sustainability management education, we have also discussed the pedagogical implications of making the e-portfolios for enhancing the students' understanding of the sustainability mindset.

Digital Storytelling as a Pedagogical Tool for Global Sustainability

Recent developments from the natural sciences have provided extremely relevant approaches to conceive and address global sustainability. Among those developments, the Planetary Boundaries (PBs) concept (Rockström et al, 2009; Steffen et al, 2015) has brought an urge to understand and address the biophysical limits of the planet, issues on the complex links between the economy, society and the environment, on time and place scales, on complex governance, and on environmental values. In this instructional innovation paper, we argue that sustainability in management education (SiME) needs to address those tenets, through hands-on approaches that foster deep learning and transform knowledge, skills and emotions. Here we explore the value of digital storytelling (the merger between traditional storytelling and multimedia technology) for that quest. Based on our three-year experience across three continents (in the cities of Perth, Singapore, Dubai and Munich, where we involved almost three hundred students), we offer a detailed instructional practice to foster learning on the PBs, and we elaborate on the deep learning “mechanisms” behind it. In so doing, our paper introduces a pedagogical (experiential) approach to the PBs in business schools, and advances the use of digital storytelling for SiME.

Sustainability in Management Education: Exploring the Role of Cultural Context

Sustainability has become a popular teaching topic in business schools around the world. Yet, there has been very little mention of the role of culture in relation to embedding sustainability in business education. This lacuna is surprising given that researchers have noted the crucial role that culture plays in variation in sustainability adoption across contexts. In response, this 2021 symposium is designed to begin to explore the role that culture plays in sustainability-focused management pedagogies by bringing together academics that teach sustainability in a variety of different contexts. Rather than trying to determine universal or aggregate dimensions of culture that can be generalized without significant regard for differentiated contexts, we take the view that culture can best be understood in respect to specific settings, and, therefore, a high level of contextualization is imperative. Thus, our desire is to begin a conversation to understand sustainability-focused pedagogical practices in a grounded manner and how they may vary across differentiated contexts.

Game-Based Learning in Project Sustainability Management Education

Projects and project-based activities account for over 30% of the global GPD and act as significant vehicles in the transition towards a more sustainable future. Sustainability strategies are typically enacted and implemented through projects in project-based organisations and firms. Incorporating sustainability principles into the project, product, and service management processes with successful project decision making is a challenging task and requires new personnel competencies and skills. Project sustainability management education requires the embedding of sustainability principles into project management education in a purposeful, integrative, innovative, and seamless manner. One way to facilitate this process is educational games. Active and experiential teaching methods will enable learning and practising complex project management activities in a simulative environment and are challenging at the same time. To extend knowledge of designing and using educational games for project sustainability management education, we explore the development and use of a novel educational game solution called the Project Business Game. It provides students and teachers with a computer game environment and game-based learning solution in which project planning, stakeholder management, cost management, decision making, and risk management skills can be enhanced by means of experiential, situational, and problem-based learning. The use of the game was explored in the context of educating European students of ‘Junior Expert in Circular Economy’ on a blended learning course in spring 2021. Action design research was applied as a research method. The results describe the requirements and goals for the instruction and the game design process based on these needs and experiences of the implementation. The findings indicate the strong suitability of using game-based learning methods to teach project sustainability management and create positive student experiences of achieving learning goals and improving engagement.