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Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1700142
The End of a “Period”:
Sustainability and the
Questioning Attitude
SCOTT MARSHALL
Portland State University
VLAD VAIMAN
Reykjavik University, Iceland
NANCY NAPIER
Boise State University
SULLY TAYLOR
Portland State University
ARNO HASLBERGER
Webster University, Vienna
TORBEN ANDERSEN
University of Southern Denmark
“Children enter school as question marks
and leave as periods.”
—Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner,
Teaching as a Subversive Activity, 1969
The aphorism above suggests that students exit sec-
ondary school thinking they “know” what needs to be
known . . . period. Higher education may simply
serve to replace the period (.) with an exclamation (!).
Upon exit from college, students “know what is to be
known” even better, are more confident in stating it,
and think they are prepared for job placement. Can
universities help students recapture the thrill of be-
ing question marks (?), suggesting a joyful pursuit of
continual self-discovery? In addressing this ques-
tion, we submit that only with enduring questioning,
life-long pursuit of new insights, and continual
adaptive change, are college graduates able to
contribute to and partake in the paradigm shift of
sustainability. We seek to connect the mind-set of
questioning and adaptive change to the current
sustainability transformation within universities. In
doing so, we set forth a foundation for understanding
how universities, particularly schools and colleges
of business, can empower students to leave our halls
as question marks and effectively participate in the
sustainability transformation.
PARADIGMS, ANOMALIES, AND
INTERPRETATIONS
“Our schools of business administration at the
present time teach the skills whereby the
greatest possible amount of natural resources
is processed as quickly as possible, put
through the consumer economy, and then
passed on to the junk heap, where the remains
are useless at best and at worst toxic to every
living being.”
—Thomas Berry,
The Great Work–Our Way Into the Future, 1999
As an institution, the approach to education that
Berry describes above both reflects and pervades
the mental models of the predominant paradigm.
Berry’s description of the mental model of commer-
cial enterprise that is infused in much of our busi-
ness curricula is rooted in the Industrial Age par-
adigm of the 20th century. This paradigm accepted
as given that one need not worry about limited
natural resources or irreversibility of environmen-
tal decline; it employs economically derived dis-
count rates that are unable to capture the regener-
ative timescales of natural, human, and social
姝Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2010, Vol. 9, No. 3, 477–487.
........................................................................................................................................................................
477
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Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1700142
capital; and it overestimates the capacity for
anthropocentric-focused innovation to resolve
pressing environmental and social issues. As a
consequence of these limitations, the Industrial
Age paradigm and the mental model it imparts
gives little to no consideration to the ability of
future generations to meet their needs. A paradigm
shift is underway— one that necessitates the trans-
formation of the conduct of commercial enterprise
and the content of business curricula. The new
paradigm incorporates a sustainability mandate,
refuting clearly the old thinking of limitless re-
sources, unbounded growth, and technologically
derived solutions.
A paradigm shift is underway— one that
necessitates the transformation of the
conduct of commercial enterprise and the
content of business curricula. The new
paradigm incorporates a sustainability
mandate, refuting clearly the old
thinking of limitless resources,
unbounded growth, and technologically
derived solutions.
But paradigms shift at different paces in dif-
ferent communities, industries, and countries.
While some constituencies may be well aware of
the need to embrace sustainability and are es-
tablishing and even working under some version
of the new paradigm, others have yet to see a
need. Understanding how paradigms shift can
help business schools better serve these various
constituencies.
Thomas Kuhn (1970), in his seminal book, The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, describes the
process of paradigm shifts. Any established disci-
pline has a prevailing paradigm that defines
which questions to ask. Eventually, a paradigm
runs into anomalies that it cannot resolve. The
ensuing crisis leads to the emergence of new the-
ories and approaches that point to a new para-
digm. Ultimately, the new paradigm replaces the
old one entirely. In business education, it may be
useful to think of four interlinked phases:
1. Creating awareness of anomalies
2. Challenging the old paradigm with new theo-
ries and approaches
3. Shifting to and establishing the new paradigm
4. Working under the new paradigm
Business educators are participants in the para-
digm shift— our role is to establish governance,
research and curricular models that build aware-
ness of the anomalies of Industrial Age business
education and infuse inquiry into these models.
However, some may not perceive the anomalies,
while others see them clearly. Anomalies may also
be judged differently. For example, there were dra-
matically different perceptions among key constit-
uencies about the sweatshops of Western compa-
nies in economically lesser developed countries
(The Economist, 1999). From a Western perspective,
sweatshops are bad and need to be eradicated.
The opposite may be true for those in developing
countries: “[I]t is sometimes said in poor countries
that the only thing worse than being exploited in a
sweatshop is not being exploited in a sweatshop”
(Kristof & Wudunn, 2009: 1). This is not an argument
for the desirability of sweatshops, but evidence
that one dominant version of the sustainability
paradigm is derived from Western ideals and so-
cioeconomic conditions. Anomalies in the Indus-
trial Age paradigm, such as poor working condi-
tions in a global supply chain, depleted stocks in
the world’s fisheries, or a lack of transparency in
corporate governance, are interpreted through the
cognitive and normative lenses of individuals and
communities. The relevance and salience of anom-
alies vary (Louis & Sutton, 1991), as do the lenses.
The variance in interpretations and perspectives
can best serve as a source of creative tension—
permitting us to set a vision and question the sta-
tus quo. It calls on educators to understand the
socioeconomic backgrounds, cultural origins, and
normative frames of our students and peers. It also
can help us provide tools and knowledge to be
agents of change, seekers of questions and anom-
alies, and creators of new models of business that
attend to the pressing social, environmental, and
economic issues of our times. Indeed, educators
can draw on the diversity of lenses of our students
and peers to form better questions and solutions.
To teach our students to be question marks in the
pursuit of a more sustainability-inspired future we,
as educators, will need to accept the anomalies in
the old system and find a new set of principles—
one that will serve as guideposts for a journey
toward a newly inspired sustainability-based
business education. We now turn to setting forth
these guideposts.
A SET OF PRINCIPLES FOR OUR SCHOOLS,
CURRICULA, AND STUDENTS
“So how do you change paradigms? You keep
pointing at the anomalies and failures in the
old paradigm. You keep speaking and acting,
loudly and with assurance, from the new one.
478 SeptemberAcademy of Management Learning & Education
You insert people with the new paradigm in
places of public visibility and power. You
don’t waste time with reactionaries; rather
you work with active change agents and with
the vast middle ground of people who are
open-minded.”
—Donella Meadows,
Thinking in Systems–A Primer, 2008
Our understanding of sustainability-inspired edu-
cation is one that meets the needs of current stu-
dents and faculty members without compromising
the ability of future generations of students and
faculty members to meet their own needs (United
Nations, 1987). This suggests a search for inter-
generational equity among faculty and students
and the pursuit of questions and knowledge in
teaching and scholarship that contribute to so-
cial equity, environmental health, and long-term
economic comfort and resilience. From this direction-
setting definition of sustainability-based business
education, we offer three relatively simple but pro-
foundly transformative principles. Such principles,
as Edwards (2005) notes, are like the Songlines of
the Aborigines: [T]hey “articulate a group’s values,
archive its history and indicate the future direction
of its actions” (26). These principles include (1) em-
bracing systems thinking, (2) pursuing scientific
inquiry, and (3) building human and social capital.
In elucidating these principles, we heed Donella
Meadows’ advice of “speaking and acting, loudly
and with assurance,” and urge business educators
and administrators to “work with change agents”
inside and outside of our academy.
Principle 1: Embrace Systems Thinking
All projects, activities, policies, and procedures—
large and small—are part of many interacting and
interdependent social, economic, and legal sys-
tems that form one complex system of business
education.
Acknowledgment of Principle 1 requires a fun-
damental change in the way most business
schools operate. It challenges the extant disciplin-
ary gestalt that determines our governance struc-
tures, reward and compensation systems, research
agendas, and curricular programming. This ge-
stalt leads to (1) research tracks pursued by busi-
ness scholars that seemingly provide single disci-
plinary answers when business managers need
greater abilities to ask and answer interdiscipli-
nary questions; (2) business curricula that trains
professionals for specific job tasks rather than
coaches inquisitors for complex applied problems;
and, (3) education governance systems that mea-
sure leadership success based on accumulation of
externally provisioned funding rather than cre-
ation of human and social capital in the commu-
nity of scholars, students and broader society.
To comply with the principle of systems think-
ing, business schools must ensure that research
conducted by their scholars is grounded in practi-
cal problems and good basic research. This not
only implies that business scholars have to take a
step toward “real-life” applicability of their re-
search, but also that practicing managers should
be made aware of the importance of basic theoret-
ical knowledge. Indeed, it is essential for business
practice to be shaped by “what we know” as well
as by “what we do not know”; from such business
practice managers can ask insightful questions
and make sense of the context and content of the
specific problems they face (Cheng, 2007). Recog-
nizing and accepting such interdependencies is an
essential part of adopting systems thinking. Simi-
larly our students need to be prepared to think of
the interconnections between different business
disciplines and, equally important, the intercon-
nections between business disciplines and other
disciplines.
The countless good intentions and failed efforts
to integrate and connect disciplines within gradu-
ate business education can be exhausting, yet can
also reap major benefits. At Boise State University,
the team designing a new executive MBA program
found early on that representatives from each dis-
cipline claimed their fields would demand so
many hours in the classroom that the program
would simply sink under its own weight. Instead,
the team shifted from silo thinking toward systems
thinking and focused on topics, not disciplines.
The topics, by their very nature, needed to be con-
sidered in the teaching and learning from a sys-
tems view. Further, the topics focus meant that
people from quite different fields had to design
and deliver a course. Costly, yes. A headache to
conduct and manage, to be sure. But the result has
been much more realistic for the participants in
terms of their current and future jobs. The courses
reflect systems-based approaches to managers’
work-a-day life—they have titles such as “Oppor-
tunity Assessment” and “Fostering Innovation”
and are taught by interdisciplinary teams. By forc-
ing professors to work closely together, the connec-
tions across disciplines have become striking and
have generated unexpected cooperation in other
ways that benefit the university.
The complexity of these interconnections calls
for the instillation of a “confidence in questioning”
rather than a “certainty in application.” Business
2010 479Marshall, Vaiman, Napier, Taylor, Haslberger, and Andersen
schools—with new and improved hiring, academic
advancement, and incentive systems—should play
a more active role in promoting research and
teaching that embrace systems thinking.
Principle 2: Pursue Scientific Inquiry Based on
Relevant Problems and Real Phenomena
Develop insightful questions and alternative solu-
tions to problems based on real-life phenomena,
and more generally, on the needs and values of
business and society.
This principle centers on the research rigor-and-
relevance debate and calls attention to the inabil-
ity of our current business scholarship to address
important issues and values of business and soci-
ety. Perhaps the most important impediment to
such an approach is the predominant method ex-
ercised by most business schools of training and
hiring of new PhDs. During their doctoral study
years, students are trained to do rigorous aca-
demic research, without consideration of the skills
and mind-sets required for conducting manageri-
ally relevant research (Markides, 2007). Business
schools exacerbate the problem by hiring and pro-
moting individuals who are incapable of conduct-
ing research relevant to practicing managers.
Moreover, if young researchers try to be both
rigorous and relevant, they risk being trampled
by more “rigorous” competition during tenure
decisions.
Business schools exacerbate the problem
by hiring and promoting individuals who
are incapable of conducting research
relevant to practicing managers.
Cheng (2007) argues that business schools pro-
mote a “theory-motivated, phenomenon-based” re-
search approach. Yet, the fundamental goals of
science are explanation and prediction, not ad-
vancing a particular theory or discipline. Cheng
also adds that while theory-driven research can be
valuable, most business schools neglect a critical
research aspect: creating new theory from real
phenomena. Stuart Hart (2009) argues, “[i]f we’re
going to make rapid headway in sustainability,
more business school faculty members need to get
out into the world, make things happen, and write
about their experiences, instead of staying in their
offices, spinning data tapes, and looking for sig-
nificant correlations” (28).
Business schools need to become centers for ad-
vancing ground-breaking teaching methods and
rigorous research based on real-life phenomena
aimed at practical problems. Gulati (2007) sug-
gests that business schools should promote the
spirit of open innovation in the areas of teaching,
research, and executive education, which in turn
implies connecting with consultants, managers,
business and civic leaders, as well as academics
from other disciplines in order to develop mean-
ingful research questions, learning outcomes, and
practical skills. This sort of commitment should
help business schools avoid becoming a “low-end
commodity producer” pressured to compete on
price (Seers, 2007). Simply put, such a commitment
is necessary to maintain focus on quality, not
quantity, of our outcomes; that is, it will not be how
many alumni a school has and what they are earn-
ing but about the types of alumni a school has and
what are they contributing to their organizations
and society.
Scientific inquiry can serve as a guidepost to
lead business schools back to the ultimate purpose
of serving society and the commercial enterprises
that serve that society. As a consequence, business
educators will be empowered to discover and lend
understanding to the anomalies of the Industrial Age
paradigm and engage students in action research
and learning directed to creating sustainability-
based systems and organizational models.
Principle 3: Build Human and Social Capital
Implement flexible and meaningful hiring and re-
tention policies and enhance opportunities for in-
tellectually stimulating, interdisciplinary scholar-
ship and teaching.
In the United States there are predictions that a
sizeable portion of business school faculty mem-
bers may retire within the next decade (Damast,
2007). That change coupled with similar data from
other parts of the world suggests that a significant
lack of upcoming doctoral candidates in the next 5
years could yield a gap unprecedented in the
academy. From a basic scarcity perspective, there-
fore, business schools should ensure their hiring
and retention policies contribute to human and
social capital and build the knowledge, skills, and
quality of work experience necessary to engage in
the new pedagogy. This does not mean relaxing
hiring and promotion criteria; rather, it suggests
we need new, more engaged and enlightened pol-
icies and measures of faculty and school success.
Hamel and Breen (2007) argue that management
must undertake a revitalization of business, from
strategic to operational to individual levels. The
limitless growth and wealth consolidation at-
tributes of the Industrial Age paradigm are present
480 SeptemberAcademy of Management Learning & Education
not only in the world of commerce; they characterize
our world of academics as well. Frequent and some-
times unpredictable administrative changes make
one think that perhaps the established management
model for business schools also needs transforma-
tion. Moreover, for business schools to remain sensi-
tive to the ever-growing challenges that face them,
administrators should become more responsive to
revenue-generating opportunities while at the same
time inculcating traditions of faculty involvement in
the decision-making process (Seers, 2007).
To establish and support commitments to human
and social capital, business school administrators
should commit to a radical and systemic change in
almost every aspect of business education. This
transformation entails a commitment to and re-
wards for interdisciplinary approaches in teaching
and research; approaches that need to be “trans-
latable” to and ideally engage practicing manag-
ers. It also suggests a most difficult challenge—the
removal of departmental barriers to allow for more
interdisciplinary innovation in teaching, research,
executive education, and so forth. As Adler and
Harzing (2009: 72) have questioned, “[d]o today’s
universities . . . remember that their primary role is
to support scholarship that addresses the complex
questions that matter most to society?” A transfor-
mation of business education based on social
and human capital will enable, recognize, and re-
ward systems-oriented, interdisciplinary, multiple-
stakeholder research and teaching that addresses
such complex questions. Focus on human and so-
cial capital will enhance the trust among faculty,
between faculty and students, and between faculty
and administrators; encourage volunteerism and
participation of faculty and students in school and
community governance issues; and empower our
institutions to achieve our collective aspirations to
meet the needs of current and future generations of
scholars and students.
GOVERNANCE—CREATING A QUESTIONING
ATTITUDE STARTS AT THE TOP
“We will not go back to the days of reckless
behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of
this crisis, where too many were motivated
only by the appetite for quick kills and
bloated bonuses.”
—President Barack Obama,
Speech, September 14, 2009
Could the words of U.S. President Obama apply to
our behavior in business schools? Are too many of
us motivated by “quick kills” and “bloated bo-
nuses” that are measured perhaps in the quantity
of “high-level” publications and big donations?
The need for and commitment to good governance
is demanded of university and business school
administrators today. Prior to the financial crisis,
however, the debate about good governance fo-
cused only on commercial enterprises. The World
Business Council for Sustainable Development
(WBCS) was created in 1995 (and the first initia-
tives taken at the Rio conference in 1992) to provide
a platform for companies to explore sustainable
development. New models for corporate gover-
nance have since been present in national as well
as international debates. For many universities
and business schools, this has been considered
only as a field of scholarship, rather than serving
as a basis for critical self-reflection and new pos-
itive contributions to our own academic gover-
nance systems. There are probably more centers
for research in corporate governance outside of
academe and virtually no good initiatives focused
on academic governance. The academy does not
effectively examine governance in the corporate or
academic sectors. Could this then be the reason
why our universities—in particular our business
schools— have not been able (or willing) to see the
developments before the major financial crisis?
There are probably more centers for
research in corporate governance outside
of academe and virtually no good
initiatives focused on academic
governance.
Although most business schools plead inno-
cence over the financial crisis, they seem to ac-
knowledge the perception that their graduates,
and MBAs in particular, are seen as part of the
problem. In The Financial Times of January 26,
2009, several of the interviewed deans and direc-
tors admit the shared responsibility, and accord-
ing to The Economist, a recent development among
students is to distance themselves from earlier
generation of MBAs, whose skewed moral com-
passes are seen to have contributed to the turmoil,
especially on Wall Street. In an interview for the
article Nitin Nohria said that “[s]tudents are saying
they want business education to operate in a dif-
ferent way, and that they want higher expectations
from faculty” (The Economist, June 4, 2009). An in-
dication of the potential shifts in dominant values
among students is the decreasing number apply-
ing for entry to elite U.S. universities, which were
2010 481Marshall, Vaiman, Napier, Taylor, Haslberger, and Andersen
the main suppliers of talent to the financial indus-
try. Simply telling students to maximize share-
holder value and not attend to their own core val-
ues is an empty and dissatisfying calling.
The supposed changing values among stu-
dents—against short-termism and rapid personal
enrichment, toward a perception of managers as
having integrity and a desire to play a constructive
role in society—presents a tremendous and unique
opportunity to reform the governance model of the
universities and business schools. The mass-
production model has led to separation where
there ought to be more cross-functional collabora-
tion. As the 1998 Boyer Report acknowledged, “re-
search universities are often archipelagos of
intellectual pursuit rather than connected and
integrated communities. Fragmentation has in-
creased drastically during the last fifty years” (9).
Universities have been growing continuously dur-
ing the last many decades, and have developed
ever-increasing faculty specialization in subdisci-
plines. They have pursued what is now considered
“unsustainable” growth based on arguments such
as, “How can anybody be against more knowledge,
or against an increasing number of well-educated
graduates?” But this growth focus has had nega-
tive side effects; that is, the governance model has
created a highly specialized career structure, with
many inherent obstacles to change. The fact that
many universities have been self-regulating or, in
academic language, governed by peer review,
seems to be followed by limited openness and
willingness to acknowledge the changing de-
mands in some of the external stakeholder groups.
This is most critically addressed in The New York
Times, in which Mark Taylor talks about a “crisis
for decades” in the graduate system (April 27, 2009,
by Mark C. Taylor), where trustees and adminis-
trators theoretically have some oversight respon-
sibility, but departments operate independently in
practice. To complicate matters further, once fac-
ulty members are granted tenure, they are func-
tionally autonomous. Even though tenure was ini-
tially intended to protect academic freedom, it has
resulted in institutions with very little turnover and
even less change.
Surprisingly few new ideas in the governance
area have been followed by similarly few initia-
tives toward fully implementing the diverse aims
of different stakeholder groups. Growth, either
through volume or profit, is considered an end in
itself for many universities, and there have been
rather few considerations of “balance” as an end.
In this light the old governance system is not suit-
able for accomplishing balance, and to establish
and support a commitment to good governance,
business school administrators have—in our
view—to pledge to a radical and systemic change
in many aspects of business education. First of all,
university managers need to be seen as agents of
all stakeholders, and they have responsibility to
ensure that the ethical rights of no stakeholder are
violated and the responsibility to balance the le-
gitimate interests of the stakeholders when mak-
ing the decisions. Second, executive boards of uni-
versities and advisory council for schools of
business might reasonably ask themselves how
they could move toward maximizing value (and not
just profit) and perhaps moving even further to
maximize value to our socioeconomic system. In
other words, what is the contribution of the modern
university in a system where new core principles—
systems thinking, scientific inquiry, and human
and social capital— can be communicated across
disciplines and used to formulate the most impor-
tant questions and seek the most pressing solu-
tions? In this respect governance becomes a more
multifaceted subject.
When changing to new governance principles
we may not know exactly the models of modern
universities or business schools that we need. But
we should be willing to commit resources, intellec-
tual, financial, and otherwise, to initiatives that
depart from narrow skills and fragmented struc-
tures to broader integrated and sustainability-
based managerial approaches (Gabor, 2008). As a
first step, to unify the demands of internal and
external stakeholder groups, the universities and
business schools have to change their mission
statements. These are considered increasingly im-
portant components for accreditation of the insti-
tutions, and many are now devoting considerable
attention to them in their strategy work (see Palmer
& Short, 2008). Writing, or revising, mission state-
ments that reflect new principles of sustainability-
inspired education is a means to attract students,
motivate faculty, secure funding and gain (re)ac-
creditation. Could it also be the first major step
toward establishing a sustainability-inspired
business education? If so, it must be achieved by
balancing the interests of all stakeholders. The
paradigm shift includes a complex set of living
conditions, which demands far less all-or-nothing
thinking and far more inquisitive investments in
stakeholder-derived governance. Thus, a rewrite of
a business school mission should move beyond the
head-nodding assent of prominent alumni and
business leaders to also engage leaders in the
nonprofit and public sectors in this process. Uni-
versities and schools’ mission statements then can
be seen as more socioeconomic tools for institu-
tional and societal development, as guiding to-
482 SeptemberAcademy of Management Learning & Education
ward a more sustainable world. In this framing,
governance as a concept goes beyond rules and
regulations and encompasses trust building, eth-
ics, and integrity and sustainability of our ecolog-
ical, social, and economic systems.
CURRICULA—TEACHING SUSTAINABILITY AS IF
THE QUESTIONS MATTERED
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for
tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop
questioning.”
—Albert Einstein (undated)
The Age of Sustainability calls not only for a trans-
formation of our academy’s governance models, it
also requires us to examine and transform how
and what we teach. The task, as directed by the
title of this essay, is to create a questioning atti-
tude. This, however, matches poorly with the pos-
itivist approach to knowledge so often demanded
by students (and pursued by our scholars). To
achieve the stated task, business educators are
provided the opportunity to design curricula that
foster comfort with ambiguity as well as the con-
verse—a lack of comfort with certainty. Given the
rise of international study trips and exchanges in
business education, we examine them in terms of
their role in teaching sustainability as if the ques-
tions mattered.
Consider the energy footprint of an international
business trip and its relationship to an equivalent
international field study (see Exhibit).
EXHIBIT
Energy Footprint of a Business Trip
“Taking one intercontinental trip per year uses about 30
kWh per day” (35) for the entire 365 days in that year.
Renewable energy maximum production: 180 kWh per day
per person (103).
Realistically feasible in UK: 18 kWh/d per person (109).
Conclusion: Taking an MBA class on an intercontinental
study trip makes each participant consume twice the
energy that can be realistically produced from
renewable sources in a year per person.
Question: Are our teaching methods sustainable?
(Source: David J.C. MacKay, 2009. Sustainable energy—
Without the hot air. Cambridge, England)
The immediate questions that come from these
data are “Are we truly teaching sustainability
through an international study trip that brings
such impacts?” and “Are international study trips,
even those that focus on poverty and social enter-
prise, incompatible with a sustainability para-
digm?” It is not that such trips should not take
place; rather, it is that faculty and students need to
question the learning outcomes and the associated
environmental, social, and economic impacts— be-
fore, while and after traveling. Navigating the jour-
ney in the paradigm shift requires educators to
move away from positivist reasoning such as “our
students should know what’s going on in China so
let’s take them there” and, more crassly, “our re-
cruitment efforts will be better if we have a China
trip . . . or China program . . . or China campus.“
Instead, we should move to more critical reason-
ing, such as “our students need to ask questions
about what China is and represents,” and we
should determine what is the most effective way
for them to pursue this inquiry. Raising such ques-
tions is critical for our future in teaching sustain-
ability— both at home and abroad.
Two examples help to illustrate a more critical
perspective on international field studies as a
component of business curricula. If students are
relatively naı¨ve regarding global sustainability is-
sues and their relevance in local and regional con-
texts, then an international trip may make sense.
For example, to understand and create awareness
of the threat to the fresh water supply in many
parts of the world and its impacts on local and
global stakeholders, a trip to the coffee-growing
regions of East Africa combined with classroom
discussions of the global coffee supply chain and
the regional coffee-roasting industry, may enable
systems-thinking perspectives to emerge. It may
be more so if this trip includes graduate students
from business, environmental sciences, interna-
tional development, and other relevant disciplines.
Study trips, and other components of a business
curriculum, that cut across functional and some-
times disciplinary silos, offer evidence-based ex-
periences, and instill tolerance for ambiguity, may
have a positive sustainability balance and build
the questioning attitude. A number of schools are
beginning to introduce innovative international
trips. One example is the field study to Nicaragua
focused on endemic poverty, water and energy
scarcity, and the roles of technology, which is or-
ganized at Portland State University. Portland
State’s School of Business partners with a U.S.-
based nonprofit, Green Empowerment, as well as a
Nicaraguan nonprofit, AsaFenix, to deliver a
2-week immersion in Nicaragua for graduate stu-
1
The authors gratefully acknowledge the inputs from partici-
pants at the All-Academy Professional Development Workshop
“Making Business Education Sustainable for Future Scholars
and Managers: In Search of Answers” at the 69th Academy of
Management Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, August 9, 2009.
2010 483Marshall, Vaiman, Napier, Taylor, Haslberger, and Andersen
dents. Business and nonbusiness students take
courses in microfinance and microenterprise, con-
duct site visits to villages outside of Managua, and
design recommendations for funding and installa-
tion of microrenewable energy technologies to im-
prove the socioeconomic conditions in certain
village contexts. Students come away with a
profound life experience, a set of applied, systems-
thinking skills, and greatly enhanced abilities to
ask better questions. It is likely that once the new
paradigm takes hold in the institution and in its
student–faculty mind-set, it will be harder to favor
such trips from an ecologically sustainability per-
spective and other means, for continuing to instill
the questioning attitude will need to be utilized.
In another example, a class of executive MBA
students who, as part of their jobs regularly spend
time on international business trips, may gain
fewer insights than students who have little or no
international experience. The former group may
still derive a sustainability benefit, however, if the
trip exposes them to radically new experiences.
For instance, a trip to Shanghai or Johannesburg
that involves cursory visits to cultural landmarks
and short lectures from business leaders inside
conference rooms may impart a few new bits of
knowledge, but such a trip is unlikely to induce
any degree of cognitive dissonance (Festinger,
1957) and instill any new sources and methods of
inquiry. On the other hand, a trip to India that calls
on the participants to engage in colearning with
local social entrepreneurs to build viable business
models or in which the executive MBAs spend time
consulting with small businesses on site can pro-
vide opportunities for students to immerse them-
selves in complex and challenging environments
and has the potential to inculcate questioning
attitudes.
As teachers, we possess a large tool-kit of face-
to-face instruction methods, and advances in com-
puter and communications technologies have ex-
panded our kit to include many distance-learning
tools as well, leaving us blurry-eyed by the myriad
possibilities. But we must focus on using methods
for clear purposes that advocate questioning. This
will force us to consider the real needs, now and in
the future, of our communities and students, and
not rely upon what is comfortable. One approach
could be inviting CEOs of profit and not-for-profit
organizations to present to students progressively
messier problems over a 3-month period. Within
each month, the students would need to discover
and define the true problem, come up with some
possible solutions, and present them before mov-
ing onto a more complex problem. Such purposeful
practice could help build skills of becoming faster
at posing questions, generating and evaluating
potential approaches, choosing a direction, receiv-
ing feedback, analyzing intended and unintended
consequences, posing another set of questions,
and so forth.
We need to question the dominance of positive
knowledge, benign case methodologies, oversim-
plified business simulations, and the umpteenth
edition of incrementally updated textbooks; we
need to question the paucity of negative knowl-
edge (Taleb, 2004), applied seminars and work-
shops, colearning activities involving both faculty
and students, and problem-solving engagements
with community members. A questioning attitude
regarding teaching methods thus lies at the heart
of sustainability as proposed here: If we want to
turn our students into question marks again, as
teachers we need to demonstrate the same ques-
tioning mind-set about the tools we use.
We need to question the dominance of
positive knowledge, benign case
methodologies, oversimplified business
simulations, and the umpteenth edition
of incrementally updated textbooks ...
Finally, we need to consider the fundamental,
often culturally biased, content of our teaching and
how sustainable it may be in the long run. For
example, under the existing teaching paradigm,
which is influenced by countries of Western Eu-
rope and North America (Hofstede, 2001; House,
Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004), we fo-
cus on development of the individual at the ex-
pense of the group. For instance, in leadership and
strategy, we emphasize heroic figures and exem-
plary performers. While this may succeed in the
mostly individualist countries that have driven
the paradigm, it likely has a limited future, given
the rapid rise of emerging economies from collec-
tivist cultural backgrounds, as evidenced by criti-
cism from several Western scholars (Howell, Bo-
wen, Dorfman, Kerr, & Podsakoff, 1990; Schriesheim,
1997). But if we were to shift our focus to systems
thinking, scientific inquiry, and human and social
capital, what does this mean exactly? Moreover,
the complex interdependencies make it as neces-
sary for leaders to be able to “see” as well as to
“do,” which goes against the action (“doing”) ori-
entation in Western cultures (Hall, 1959). The abil-
ity of a leader to ask “why should I do something”
is, in a sustainability-based world, more important
than asking “what should I be doing” because it
acknowledges the future rather than just the
484 SeptemberAcademy of Management Learning & Education
present (Posner, 2008). We can look to programs
such as San Jose State’s Global Leadership Pass-
port Program, which is open to students across the
university and sets students on paths to life-long
development and, NYU Stern’s Student Social Ven-
ture Fund, which seeks to broaden students’ per-
spectives of life opportunities and empower them
to ask the “why” questions about and engage in
solutions to social injustice. These examples raise
more questions, such as, “How can we instill a
sense of global and local interdependencies that is
welcomed by our students and peers rather than
rejected?” Finally, there are many other content
areas that need re-examination because they have
been so shaped by the dominant paradigm such
as, what constitutes an organization’s boundary
where social, for-profit and non-profit organiza-
tions become increasingly enmeshed in the other
(Waddock, 2007; London & Rondinelli, 2003; Tracey
& Phillips, 2007); or what constitutes a “sound fi-
nancial decision” (Giacalone & Thompson, 2006).
At base in our discussion, then, is the need for each
of us—teacher and student—to become question
marks again, recognizing that we have many chal-
lenging questions with no single “best” or right
answer concerning our teaching content and
approaches.
CONCLUDING QUESTIONS
“Education provides the knowledge with
which to overcome the cognitive and norma-
tive—and hence emotional— obstacles to un-
derstanding the global sustainability issues.
Through education, sustainability can be-
come firmly established within the existing
value structure of societies while simulta-
neously helping that value structure evolve
toward a more viable long-term approach to
systemic global problems.”
—Andrew Edwards,
The Sustainability Revolution–Portrait of a
Paradigm Shift, 2006
We have argued here that business education has
a key role to play in the fundamental paradigm
shift toward sustainability occurring today. Yet, it
is sad that many business schools worldwide have
little apparent motivation to change. Typical busi-
ness schools are content with the status quo: De-
mand for business degrees continues to grow, lar-
gesse by wealthy alumni helps attract top
researchers and build grand facilities, and the
number of business programs offered around the
globe is rising unabated. Even in the face of a long
history of criticism (see recent scathing articles by
Mintzberg & Gosling, 2002, and Pfeffer & Fong,
2002), there is seemingly little incentive to change
business schools and redesign the curricula they
represent and deliver. Growth of MBA programs
over the past 50 years led to significant mimicry of
the “maximize shareholder wealth” orthodoxy;
now in its maturity as an industry, it is only
through radical innovations in governance struc-
tures and curricula that business schools will find
an enduring raison d’eˆtre. Yet most business
schools may be simply unprepared to recognize,
let alone to meet, the extraordinary challenges our
world presents. At the risk of sounding overly dra-
matic or pessimistic, there is a great danger that
reform-aversive business schools may lose their
competitive edge and become outdated.
One could, with a philosophical shrug, accept
the death of institutions that do not respond to
changes in the underlying paradigms of their field,
and point to the emergence of their replacements
that are embracing the changes outlined here. But
unlike other radical shifts in paradigms in the
past, we need all present hands to be quickly re-
trained and to be on board and working the sails to
shift the direction of the ship. Given the rapid
changes in climate and their resulting effects on
the world’s ecosystems, combined with the speed
with which environmental and social damage is
occurring (Human Impact Report on Climate
Change, 2009; IPCC, 2007), business school admin-
istrators and educators do not have the luxury of a
leisurely progression through the four stages of
paradigm shift. Perhaps our most important ques-
tion is not what needs to be different, but rather
how can we, as a community of business educa-
tors, dramatically increase the speed at which we
recreate our mission, scholarship, and curricula to
reflect the new paradigm of sustainability?
But unlike other radical shifts in
paradigms in the past, we need all
present hands to be quickly retrained
and to be on board and working the sails
to shift the direction of the ship.
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486 SeptemberAcademy of Management Learning & Education
R. Scott Marshall is associate
dean, Graduate Programs, and
executive director, Center for
Global Leadership in Sustain-
ability, School of Business, Port-
land State University. His re-
search is published in a number
of journals, including Accounting
Forum,California Management
Review,Journal of Business Eth-
ics,Journal of World Business and
Organization & Environment.
Vlad Vaiman (PhD, University of
St. Gallen, Switzerland) is asso-
ciate professor of international
management at Reykjavik Uni-
versity School of Business in Ice-
land and is a visiting professor in
several top universities around
the world. He is a cofounder and
an executive editor of the criti-
cally acknowledged European
Journal of International Manage-
ment (EJIM).
Nancy K. Napier (PhD, The Ohio
State University) is professor of
international business at Boise
State University. Her most recent
book is Insight: Encouraging
Aha! Moments for Organizational
Success (2010). Research interests
include finding and solving
“messy” problems. Napier hosts
a weekday program on Boise
State University’s local NPR
affiliate.
Sully Taylor (PhD, University of
Washington) is professor of inter-
national management and hu-
man resource management at
Portland State University, School
of Business Administration, and
the director of International Pro-
grams. Her research interests in-
clude the design of global HRM
systems in multinational firms,
the management of global em-
ployees, and sustainable HRM.
Arno Haslberger is professor of
management at Webster Univer-
sity Vienna, Austria. He holds a
doctorate in sociology from Jo-
hannes Kepler Universita¨ t, Linz,
Austria. His research focuses on
cross-cultural adjustment and
the management of expatriates.
Torben Andersen (PhD), is a head
of Department of Leadership and
Corporate Strategy, University of
Southern Denmark, Campus Sla-
gelse. His research concentrates
on structural and strategic as-
pects of HRM and International
HRM. Anderson is a coeditor of
the Danish HRM-handbook and
the regional editor of European
Journal of International Manage-
ment (EJIM).
2010 487Marshall, Vaiman, Napier, Taylor, Haslberger, and Andersen
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