Placing sustainability at the heart of management education

The demands of the 21st century global economy have spurred the integration of new ideas into the education process at management schools. To this end, and against a backdrop of the Occupy Wall Street movement, a rapidly rising number of universities are walking the talk, adding responsible management to the core curriculum and offering undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in sustainability and sustainability management.

PRME – Principles for Responsible Management Education – set up to inspire and champion responsible management education, was launched at the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit in July 2007.

Developed in a collaboration between the United Nations Global Compact and representatives of business education, the transformation-themed initiative, which has six key principles at its core – purpose, values, method, research, partnership and dialogue – now has more than 400 signatories.

PRME signatories are using a variety of methods to create new generations of responsible leaders and managers, including an emphasis on active learning environments where the focus is on learners as participants rather than passive recipients.

An Inspirational Guide for the Implementation of PRME, featuring 63 case studies from 47 institutions representing 25 countries across Asia, Oceania, Latin America, North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, will be officially released by the PRME secretariat during the Third Global Forum for Responsible Management Education, in conjunction with Rio+20 and the UN Global Compact Corporate Sustainability Forum taking place in Rio de Janeiro from 20-22 June.

The guide details inspiring examples of how universities and management schools across the globe are aiding the transition to a sustainable future.

For example, the sustainability practicum at Albers School of Business and Economics at Seattle University in the US incorporates experiential learning through business partnerships “for the good of people, community and the planet”, to quote from Greg Magnan, the school’s MBA director.

Among other things, Fordham University Schools of Business in New York has an undergraduate International Service Learning (ISL) programme at the Gabelli School of Business that includes an experiential fair trade and micro-finance consulting component project (which counts for six academic credits).

Through the project, students gain experience in micro-finance by “doing business” with local people in a developing country such as Kenya, the PRME guide reports.

“Between the smell of sewage and the sight of a woman suffering from AIDS holding a sick baby, I was hit, all-out, by poverty [in Kenya]. When I entered college, my original intentions were to major in finance, get good grades, intern and graduate with a great salary. Now, not a week goes by when I don’t reflect on Kenya and on how I can build a career with some social impact,” to quote an ISL student participant.

Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana introduced its so-called Business on the Frontlines course in 2008 that, via cross-campus alliances, gives students the opportunity to directly examine the impact of business in war-torn countries.

For example, in the Philippines Mendoza students, working cooperatively with a humanitarian agency, designed a supply chain for the farming, producing and selling of the Arabica coffee bean; in Uganda students contributed to a water resource project; and in Bosnia students were involved in the creation of small business incubators.

The Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University in The Netherlands – one of PRME’s first signatories – has a focus on the support and empowerment of women entering senior management positions in business, to redress the gender discrepancy that still, to quote figures listed by the school, sees women making up only 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs and less that 15% of top corporate executives worldwide.

Aston Business School in Birmingham, England, integrated ethics, responsibility and sustainability into its MBA programme back in 2003. “At the time it was seen by many as quirky, not mainstream and even subversive!” according to Carole Parkes, the school’s co-director of social responsibility and sustainability.

“Times have changed and responsible management education is now accepted, but there has never been a more important time to ensure it is fully integrated into all we do.”

Overall, while each institution approaches the topic in its unique way, looking at what faculty at signatory schools are doing, what stands out is an emphasis on complex problem-solving capabilities, effective collaboration skills and the exploration of new teaching methods and courses that facilitate the development in students of not only hard skills and knowledge about issues but also the soft skills deemed necessary for successful leadership in an increasingly complex work environment.

The fact that issues around sustainability and responsible leadership are complex and constantly changing means that innovation, partnerships and service learning are increasingly being incorporated into management curricula around the world.

The requirements of the world we’re now living in has demanded a refocusing of priorities, buy-in by universities and institutions, and organisational change.

To quote from the PRME guide, the transformation of management schools and how they and their faculty are integrating sustainability content into their courses is just starting.

“The task to achieve a substantial change in content adaptation of traditional business disciplines – business environment, strategy, accounting, finance, management control, human resources, organizational behaviour, operations and logic or information systems – is still in its first stages.”

Management schools “walking the path” of sustainability are broadening the concept that is related to environment, social and governance concerns of the company to one that includes the concerns of global sustainable development and potential solutions from social innovation and entrepreneurship.

This has important implications regarding how to transform management education curricula both within the scope and content of existing disciplines and with the incorporation of new ones.

The challenge provides the opportunity for the PRME community, as a catalyst for change, to support the emergence of new platforms and projects that incentivise content transformation, for existing and new areas and disciplines alike.

Buy-in from and the conviction of school leadership are imperative, as there needs to be a top-down approach, for the necessary systemic approach that involves new structures, incentives and funding to incorporate sustainability into teaching, research, pedagogy and culture.

What we’re seeing now is, in effect, the start of an avalanche – one that promises to transform business management while unleashing to-date unexplored and unimagined levels of potential in students.

* To order a copy of the Inspirational Guide for the Implementation of PRME, contact sales@gseresearch.com.