The evolution of sustainability on MBA programs

Business schools are continually revamping their curriculums in order to instill sustainable principles in their students. Ross Geraghty takes a closer look at how this issue has come to be so influential in the business school world.

 

The concept of sustainability in business education has changed considerably over the last 15 years, before which small-scale environmental concerns dominated. Alex Dalley, an Australian MBA student at Rotterdam School of Management and the Association of MBAs Student of the Year 2011, says that his program – in which sustainability is central – redefined his understanding.

 

“Prior to the course I saw this concept as 'being green'. I now see it much more broadly, as in asking what can we do as business people to make sure our businesses are strong for the next 100 years and beyond.”

There is still skepticism in some quarters that big business is concerned only with being ‘green to be seen’. However, now there are entire business schools and methodologies built around the issue of sustainability. Companies such as Innocent Smoothies have a business model dependant on it. There are even specialist MBAs, such as Norwich Business School’s MBA in strategic carbon management.

 

However, many programs are still falling behind in this respect. Today, being sustainable goes far beyond recycled paper and energy-efficient light bulbs. 

Sustainable business, Dalley explains, asks: “How will we need to change with society to ensure that our way of working, our business model, remains in step and up to date with what our customers and the communities in which we operate expect? It includes not breaking labor laws in countries that may have sweatshops, not ripping off customers and other stakeholders, and working within what we know are finite resources.”

 

Matthew Gitsham, director of the Centre for Business and Sustainability at Ashridge Business School, is surprised at how many business schools have not broadened to encompass sustainability issues. “There are lots of laggards who haven’t cottoned onto it. You’d have to question schools in general that aren’t teaching sustainability as an issue. Are they keeping up with modern trends enough?”

Nancy McGaw, deputy director of the Business and Society Program at The Aspen Institute in New York is ideally placed to comment, having worked with the influential Beyond Grey Pinstripes business school ranking from inception until its final issue in 2012. “Beyond Grey Pinstripes looked for evidence that the MBA course in a broad sense prepares students for sustainable and environmental stewardship. We look to see if the course touches on the purpose of business, the context of it and the metrics by which it’s judged.”

 

The end of the project reflects a positive evolution: “The landscape has changed so much in the last decade. Instead of [The Aspen Institute] going hunting for information, as we had to when the ranking was founded, now there are thousands of courses and research papers available. It’s become an overwhelming task to look at all of the content submitted by the schools.”

 

Ashridge Business School is one of only a handful of UK schools that participated in the voluntary ranking. It is notable for its progressive outlook and was among the first UK schools to introduce sustainability as a core subject rather than just an elective.

 

“To us it has a broader perspective, taking in sociopolitical trends,” reflects Gitsham. “The big issues in the world: climate change, population, demographic trends changing, the scale of number of people in the planet. So the sustainability and environmental thing comes from connecting with these larger processes.

 

“In the past, business leaders were oblivious to these issues; they generally had to be people leaders. In the last generation governments have become less influential and business has become more so. The most powerful institutions in the world used to be nation states, but now more than half of financial institutions are bigger than some countries. A lot of political issues now arrive on the desks of big companies and CEOs, and as a result, you have scope and responsibility to play a positive role.

 

“Learning about these issues is important in moral terms, for the sake of the planet, but it’s also important from a competitive advantage for the students who’ll be in a better position in career terms if they really understand these issues.”

 

For Dalley, these big issues are what make studying sustainability so compelling: “[The MBA] has enabled me to think more broadly about the role that businesses play in society. This is a core competency in most leadership skills frameworks developed by global companies today. Companies look for some sign that you can sit at a table with very senior business and political leaders and confidently contribute something novel.”

Perhaps the biggest recent evolution is the concept that sustainability has to be taught not just as a module, but as a holistic philosophy.

 

“Those schools doing well in our ranking,” McGaw says, “are those stepping back and talking to faculty across the curriculum and asking, ‘What are you teaching that will prepare students for that kind of leadership and contributes to all our collective wellbeing?’ At some schools there’s been a great process of uncovering what content really matters and seeing connections across the curriculum. If you’re introducing these issues in one part of the curriculum and another is teaching a very outdated, short-term model, there’s a conflict there.”

 

“We’re now in another redesign,” says Gitsham. “We’ve reevaluated the whole curriculum. We’ll keep sustainable business compulsory, but it also appears in some way in all the modules, such as in strategy. ‘How do you build stakeholder as well as shareholder value?’ And in finance or marketing: ‘How can we critique old patterns of consumption, and experiment with new ways of doing it?’”

 

“The work is not finished,” conludes McGaw. “But what’s important is that the conversation has started.”