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Transforming Business Education: 21st Century Sustainable MBA Programs
Abstract
Business education should give students the skills to solve complex global challenges. It should align management practices with goals for a sustainable future. Sadly, few management schools even discuss the real issues business leaders face today. This article challenges others to develop a curriculum that embeds sustainability in the core of their programs. The authors argue that faculty and business school leadership should move beyond "saddlebag" initiatives that bolt sustainability onto the traditional, shareholder primacy-driven core. This article profiles three programs as case studies transforming business education to prepare leaders to achieve a more sustainable world. Business schools are torn between competing paradigms. Given the existential challenges facing humanity, business schools will have to change or simply lose relevancy. Our stories of disruption give evidence of success and hope for the coming transformation of business education and of capitalism itself. The lessons learned and insights in this article provide guidance for business school leaders aspiring to redefine management for global sustainability and business school programs. It is an open invitation for others to disrupt and rethink business education before it is too late.
Full Citation [Sroufe, R., Hart, S., and Lovins, H., (2021). “The Future of Business Schools: 21st Century Sustainable MBA Programs, Journal of Management for Global Sustainability, Vol 9, Iss 1; pp 15-41]
... Partnerships facilitated by PRME can be unique and contextual, Partnering up has a strong linkage with addressing "Climate change and crisis management" and "Other wicked problems" categories, as evident from the clustering of these categories in Figure 1. typically added as peripheral components of the curriculum rather than integrated into the core management program (Sharma & Hart, 2014;Sroufe et al., 2021). This observation aligns with previous research, which found that students often gain interdisciplinary skills and experience through extracurricular activities rather than the formal curriculum (Høgdal et al., 2019). ...
Business schools are crucial to integrating sustainable development into management thought and practices, thereby promoting a paradigm shift toward responsible management education. Despite many business schools pledging to adopt the United Nations' Principles for Responsible Management Education, they have been criticized for failing to develop change agents toward sustainability. To fill this gap, this paper demonstrates how interdisciplinarity can be connected to responsible management education through critical and instrumental perspectives. To this end, we apply an interdisciplinarity model to 37 Principles for Responsible Management Education Schools' Reports, using content analysis, text-mining, and network theory tools. As a result, our findings suggest: (i) a taxonomy of critical and instrumental interdisciplinary studies and (ii) a framework of Principles for Responsible Management Education schools engaged in critical and instrumental interdisciplinarity. The framework we develop can serve as a diagnostic and prognostic tool for assessing how interdisciplinary can improve responsible management education in business schools. Our findings contribute to theory advancing research on the intersection of responsible management education and interdisciplinary approaches.
... Only Q and W gave spontaneous and clear definitions of "SSCM" or referenced specific theorists or theories in the field, thereby indicating that educators may not be disseminating enough knowledge about SSCM or may not be using the most practical definitions. Thus, the definitions classified as belonging to the PBV in Table 1 might be of help: Instead of teaching sustainability and business from the usual shareholder perspective, which is still the case in several business schools (Sroufe et al., 2021;Baudoin et al., 2023), this research shows the need to integrate sustainability in many business courses, including SCM, marketing and HR. For SC practitioners to have a holistic understanding of sustainability, they need to learn how to practise system thinking (Rimanoczy, 2021), and they need to understand interdisciplinary challenges (Baudoin et al., 2023) to develop their sustainability mindset (Fritz and Cordova, 2023). ...
Purpose
This study explores practitioners' perspectives on and definitions of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM), which are then compared to academic definitions to identify new implications for researchers, educators and practitioners.
Design/methodology/approach
An abductive, explorative and qualitative approach was followed in the form of a review and classification of 31 academic definitions of SSCM as well as 30 interviews with supply chain (SC) practitioners.
Findings
The practitioners' answers show a lack of awareness of upstream and downstream challenges as the practitioners' focus on practices within the practitioners' firms, where the economic and environmental dimensions prevail. However, the practitioners highlighted understudied topics in SSCM: human resources policies, leadership for sustainability and ethics.
Research limitations/implications
This research stimulates discussion on how to teach an SSCM course and which directions to follow to ensure that research has an impact on practices. Practitioners' focus on the practitioners' everyday practices confirms that practice-based theories, amongst others, are relevant in the field and that more interdisciplinary research is needed to highlight the contributions of human resource management (HRM) and business ethics to SSCM.
Practical implications
The proposed framework clearly defines the scope of the practices and research (upstream or downstream of the SC or within the firm), which will allow practitioners to contribute to SSCM more holistically.
Social implications
Educators and researchers have a crucial role to play in clarifying the meaning of SSCM for students who are future practitioners and consumers. Interacting more with practitioners could help.
Originality/value
This research is targeted not only to researchers and practitioners but also educators.
... Further advances of this goal will require city policies, homes, offices, schools, universities, and the built environment, in general, to support sustainable building practices across urban areas. Universities and their buildings can be living labs for best practices, carbon neutrality, and the integration of sustainability into curriculum and business schools (Sroufe, 2020; and see Sroufe, Hart, & Lovins, 2021). Existing actions contributing to this goal can be seen in the development of smart cities and registered living communities within the International Living Future Institute's living community challenge (ILFI, 2022) and all of the world's 2030 Challenge cities, Resilient Cities, and cities with goals of carbon neutrality. ...
... Management education can initiate students to practices and processes that open them to personal transformation and participation in organizational and social processes that promote social justice and environmental sustainability. It can align management practices with goals for a sustainable future outlined by Sroufe, Hart, and Lovins (2021) in a study on transforming 21st century business education and MBA programs. Leading programs are the proving grounds for transformational experiences, live projects with corporate partners, and sustainability integrated across the curriculum and within core required courses, learning labs, capstone courses, and practicums. ...
In “The management for global sustainability opportunity: Integrating
responsibility, sustainability, and spirituality”, Robert Sroufe of Duquesne University
and Josep F. Mària, SJ, of ESADE, Ramon Llull University, explore how we can
incorporate spirituality into business management practices and education while
building on a foundation of responsibility and sustainability. They describe how
integrating these three practices, Spirituality, Responsibility, and Sustainability, is
necessary to respond to the three fundamental wounds our world is experiencing.
The frst wound is between people and society; the second between people and
nature; and the third is among people and the best version of themselves. They
show how we can address these complex problems through collaboration and action.
This conceptual research explores how responsibility, sustainability, and
spirituality can be understood and interconnected to address, from a management
perspective, the complex wounds the world is currently experiencing. In doing so,
they utilize a Jesuit Faith-Justice process and spirituality to continue to evolve the
feld of management.
We report three major and confronting environmental issues that have received little attention and require urgent action. First, we review the evidence that future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than currently believed. The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms — including humanity — is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts. Second, we ask what political or economic system, or leadership, is prepared to handle the predicted disasters, or even capable of such action. Third, this dire situation places an extraordinary responsibility on scientists to speak out candidly and accurately when engaging with government, business, and the public. We especially draw attention to the lack of appreciation of the enormous challenges to creating a sustainable future. The added stresses to human health, wealth, and well-being will perversely diminish our political capacity to mitigate the erosion of ecosystem services on which society depends. The science underlying these issues is strong, but awareness is weak. Without fully appreciating and broadcasting the scale of the problems and the enormity of the solutions required, society will fail to achieve even modest sustainability goals.
Business schools today are torn between two paradigms, with a resulting struggle about the nature and value of both teaching and research. Today’s dominant neoliberal paradigm pervades the vast majority of schools with its narrative of profit maximization, free markets, and limited government. Its proponents view competition, growth, and consumerism as the defining characteristics of society. By contrast, the emerging and inchoate
“economy in service to life” narrative aims at freedom and dignity for all achieved through shared well-being on a healthy planet. Business schools are increasingly caught between these narratives or paradigms. This results in confusion for students, tensions among faculty members, and discontinuity in institutional leadership when successive deans oscillate from one to the other. CITATION:
Laszlo, C., Waddock, S., & Sroufe, R. (2017). Torn Between Two Paradigms: A Struggle for the Soul of Business Schools. AI Practitioner, 19(2).
Revisiting the historical evolution of the corporation helps explain how the challenge of sustainability has been addressed in business education. Business schools emerged toward the end of the 19th century after U.S. Supreme Court judgments absolved corporate directors from the duty of adhering to social missions embodied in their limited liability charters. This coincided with the rise of neoclassical economics that placed shareholdersabove other stakeholders. As evolving societal demands have forced businesses to consider business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability in their performance, and as AACSB has added these learning objectives, business schools have reactively responded by adding new courses to their existing curricula. However, these "saddle-bag" approaches do not integrate the topics into the core functional areas of business. Only recently have a few business schools boldly overcome organizational inertia to develop curricula that lead practice by embedding sustainability into the core to educate managers who can rise to the demands of the global sustainability challenges facing the world in the 21(st) century.
Recent corporate scandals have directed public attention to the importance of business ethics and social responsibility. Although culpability can be assigned to a myriad of causes, there is no question that the business education process can ameliorate or exacerbate the problem. Terry Broderick, former president and chief executive officer of Royal & SunAlliance USA, was interviewed to gain insight on the state of business ethics today and what business educators can do to instill the importance of ethical decision making in current and future business leaders.
While the topics of business ethics and social responsibility education have received much attention in scholarly and pedagogical literature (although less in the pedagogical literature), the authors argue that the core teaching problem has not been discussed, that is, the worldview underpinning all of management education. The authors discuss this worldview, propose a more ethics-friendly worldview, and provide some considerations of its implication.
Higher and post-experience education in many parts of the world has unfortunately overlooked what practice can contribute to our knowledge base distinctly and additively from classroom education. Ultimately, we need a synthesis of theory and practice if we are to prepare thoughtful practitioners. Using conceptual and practical approaches from constructionist thought borrowing such tools as tacit knowledge, critical reflection, and mastery, this paper proposes a means to effect such a synthesis. Needed is a new epistemology of practice that adds praxis to classroom education in order to help learners deconstruct the structures and systems that embed their social environments. The paper also examines the outcomes and particular competencies that emanate from a practice-based learning. Implications for teaching by learning from this practice epistemology are discussed.
How does Creating Shared Value (CSV) differ from Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)? How can universities teach CSV to students? The aim of this study is to present the case of the Shared Value Living Lab (SVLL) recently carried out at the University of Torino (UniTo), a large Italian public university. Specifically, the paper analyzes CSV related arguments such as building ecosystems and collective impact, and by questioning the role of experiential learning in adult education. The transformative learning theory of Mezirow (2000) assists the discussion and interpretation of the results derived from this research from an intrinsic perspective, as the researchers “interacted” with the participants. The risks and opportunities of teaching CSV concepts are presented side by side with the strengths and weaknesses of innovative learning tools that have already been adopted by universities and business schools. The study contributes to the current literature by showing how students can reframe the problem of CSV, escaping from ordinary meaning schemes. The interaction between the researchers, the students, and the local actors is atypical of a generalist public university. It is also a good example of a triple helix collaboration that can be implemented in other areas of education research.
[Citation: Sroufe, R (2018) Integrated Management: How Sustainability Creates Value for any Business; Emerald Press, UK.]
Integration has been a key theme across the general management, organizational behavior, supply chain management, strategy, information systems and the environmental management literature for decades. Sustainability continues to be, at the' top of the agenda' in the C-suite. Despite this, specialists in academia and organizations lack the peripheral vision to understand the power of a more integrated approach that will empower functional groups to become best-in-class without forcing trade-offs that pull down other groups connected to overall operations. Integrated Management is the key driver of innovation and profitability in progressive companies. It reduces risks while pursuing new opportunities, and the checks and balances for prudent management are baked in the strategy for modern go-to-market synergy and growth.
What can be done, then, by individuals, functions, organizations, value chains, and even whole cities to integrate and align sustainability? To answer this and other questions, the information in this book finds enterprises already on the path toward integrated management and strategic sustainable development. It considers the opportunity we have to enable an enterprise value proposition that includes environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. Integrated management applies a proven strategic planning approach to uncover the tools and actions available for change management and performance measured with an Integrated Bottom Line (IBL). Using evidence based examples from best-in-practice enterprises, proven management tenets, models and tools alongside emerging technologies, we can develop integrated solutions aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
It? s easy to say sustainability is important, yet not so easy to understand how it is part of the decisions that are made every day and how it cuts across business functions, systems, and supply chains. The information within this book, the application of systems thinking to complex problems, the development of a vision and action plan, your own research, and action learning activities are all designed to accelerate management action, value creation, and the goal of a sustainable future.
THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM is under siege. In recent years business increasingly has been viewed as a major cause of social, environmental, and economic problems. Companies are widely perceived to be prospering at the expense of the broader community.
In this paper, we review efforts by business school academics to integrate corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and sustainable development in their teaching and coursework. We draw from recent research to describe the challenges and constraints to such integration, as well as the opportunities and potential of such efforts. We then report on the results of a survey of academics in business schools which underscore these challenges and constraints. We conclude with suggestions regarding how individual faculty members, business schools, and the broader field and its institutions can respond to the relative absence of these subjects and their integration in business school curricula. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
This article describes learning and teaching activities in large group settings that are informed by a theory of action perspective and examines the epistemological and pedagogical implications for effective management education. The author lays out the underlying tenants of a theory of action perspective most relevant to learning and teaching, explores the implications for action and implementation in the management classroom, and illustrates a case writing process and teaching method that meets the criteria for good theory in action-based education.
396 p., graph., ref. bib. : 28 p.1/2 In this groundbreaking paradigm for the economy, three leading business visionaries explain how the world is on the verge of a new industrial revolution, one that promises to transform our fundamental notions about commerce and its role in shaping our future. Over the past decade many farsighted companies have begun to discover remarkable opportunities for saving both money and resources through the ingenious application of novel technologies and business practices. Consider the following. The automobile industry is undergoing a transformation that will spell the end of the petroleum industry and a shift away from traditional car models to Hypercars"―fuel cell-powered vehicles that would be both lighter and safer, produce negligible pollution, cost both the producer and consumer less, and have fuel efficiencies as high as 200 miles per gallon. : New houses designed with heat-trapping "super-windows" can remain cool in temperatures as high as 115° F with no air conditioner and warm at - 47° F with no furnace, and cost less to build. Atlanta-based Interface Corporation is shifting from selling carpeting to leasing floor-covering services, using a new material that's more attractive, requires 97 percent less material, is cheaper to produce, and is completely recyclable. Today's best techniques for using wood fiber more productively could supply all the paper and wood the world currently requires from an area about the size of Iowa. In the long-anticipated new book by Paul Hawken and Amory and Hunter Lovins, these durable, practical, and stunningly profitable principles are synthesized for the first time into the foundations for a system called natural capitalism. With hundreds of thousands of copies of their works in print worldwide, the authors are leaders in set-ting the agenda for rational, ecologically sound industrial development, and in Natural Capitalism they have written their most significant and genuinely inspiring work. Traditional capitalism, they argue, has always neglected to assign monetary value to its largest stock of capital―namely, the natural resources and ecosystem services that make possible all economic activity, and all life. Natural capitalism, in contrast, takes a proper accounting of these costs. As the first step toward a solution to environmental loss, it advocates resource productivity-doing more with less, wringing up to a hundred times as much benefit from each unit of energy or material consumed. Natural capitalism also redesigns industry on biological models that result in zero waste, shifts the economy from the episodic acquisition of goods to the continual flow of value and service, and prudently invests in sustaining and expanding existing stores of natural capital. Drawing upon sound economic logic, intelligent technologies, and the best of contemporary design, Natural, Capitalism presents a business strategy that is both profitable and necessary. The companies that practice it will not only take a leading position in addressing some of our most profound economic and social problems, but will gain a decisive competitive advantage through the worthy employment of resources, money, and people.
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