Teaching Business Sustainability
From Theory to Practice
Edited by Chris Galea, Saint Francis Xavier University, Canada
50% discount on this titleAugust 2004 342 pp 234 x 151 mm
hardback ISBN 978-1-874719-54-0 £40.00
Today's managers and the MBAs that will follow them are in need of an education that grounds business ethics and the overarching concerns of sustainable development into the curriculum. So, what is the state of the art in teaching business sustainability worldwide?
"Each essay provides a wealth of information, models, and experiences to draw from."
Robert Rubinstein
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In a world where corporate governance scandals have become the everyday, the role of business schools in producing the managers of today — and tomorrow — has come into sharp focus. Today's managers and the MBAs that will follow them are in need of an education that grounds business ethics and the overarching concerns of sustainable development into the curriculum. As some, but by no means all, organisations are coming to realise, bad performance in environmental protection, labour practices and human rights is no longer a 'soft' issue but one that can hit the bottom line with a vengeance. So, what is the state of the art in teaching business sustainability worldwide, and what teaching practices and tools are achieving successful results? This book begins to answer these questions and more.
There are many challenges facing educators in the field of sustainability. It is an evolving field still in its infancy as a management discipline; and there is also the need to combat the unstated but often underlying assumption that many environmental and social issues represent non-valued-added effort. Teaching Business Sustainability acknowledges this problem, while helping students explore the various ways in which the theoretical value of business sustainability can result in valuable and value-added practical outcomes.
A wide mix of approaches is therefore indicated; while many of these are experimental and on the leading edge of management learning, they all share an experiential (and often a team-based) element, and attempt to bring together the theory in a way that makes it relevant to practitioners in the field. The implication is that, whenever possible, educators need to link the learning to the students' immediate and pressing 'real-world' realities. This applies equally to undergraduates or high-level executives. However, in the absence of immediate examples of such realities (as may often be the case in undergraduate settings) educators need to introduce experientially based approaches that recreate such settings in the classroom.
The book also argues the case for holistic and interdisciplinary learning. It is clear from much of the literature on sustainability that the concept does not easily lend itself to being pigeonholed and that it crosses many of the functional areas of business. Indeed, it goes beyond just business learning to encompass many fields such as ecology, engineering and biology. If students are to move beyond the narrow perspective that conventional business studies often entail, they need to be introduced to the wider vision that an interdisciplinary approach engenders.
The final point that emerges from this collection is that experiential learning of business sustainability often can, and should be, fun! Be it a heated exchange in a case-study discussion, a role-play exercise or a hands-on student consulting project, much experiential learning seems to excite the imagination of the students and to release their creative juices.
The 23 contributions to Teaching Business Sustainability have been divided into three thematic groups.
In the first section, 'Theory, Critique and Ideas', the authors explore and
critique some of the overarching ideas and thinking behind the teaching of
sustainability. The next section, 'Learning from Current Practice', contains the
experiences of a number of educators and the successful and leading-edge
approaches that they have used. The final section then outlines tools, methods
and approaches that can be used to teach business sustainability. This last
section also serves as an introduction to a second volume which provides educators of sustainability with a series of case studies, role plays and experiential exercises.
Teaching Business Sustainability is an invaluable resource both for educators working in a wide range of academic disciplines, looking for inspiration and guidance on how to teach business sustainability, as well as for organisations looking to reinvigorate internal management education programmes to factor in corporate responsibility and sustainability issues.
A 'must read' for anyone teaching SRI and CSR at the university or graduate level. Each essay provides a wealth of information, models, and experiences to draw from.
Robert Rubinstein, Triple Bottom Line Investing, Netherlands, in Brooklyn Bridge Newsletter,
October 2004
Relevant for anyone concerned with this specialist area.
Long Range Planning 38 (2005)
... a perfect design for a course on business sustainability
Business Strategy and the Environment Vol. 14 No. 3 (May-June 2005)
This book is a real eye-opener when it comes to the thorny question of teaching business sustainability ... This book is crucial for high level business trainers.
Eagle Bulletin, July 2005
... the book is a wonderful guide into the world of instruction in the field of business sustainability. In addition to an extensive bibliogrphy, the chapters provide a detailed map through the issues, approaches, challenges, successes and pitfalls of teaching sustainability in a business context.
Natural Resources Forum, 1 February 2005
.. within its pages are a number of novel, interesting ideas and approaches
that are well presented. Many of these ideas have stimulated a number of
educational experiments I will try out on students.
Social
and Environmental Accounting Journal Volume 26 Issue 1
his book provides examples of the teaching practices and tools that are achieving successful results.
Management of Environmental Quality Vol. 16 Issue 1 (2005)
This book will be an invaluable resource both for educators and organisations looking to reinvigorate internal management education programmes to factor in corporate responsibility and sustainability issues.
Sustain Magazine Vol. 5 Issue 6
The World Resources Institute's program, 'Beyond Grey Pinstripes', provides regular reports on performance of business schools in preparing students for a comprehensive approach to social and environmental stewardship. Over 100 MBA programs 1,000 courses and 800 extracurricular activities are featured. What has been lacking, however, is an analysis of the academic bases of these activities. This edited collection of 23 essays, Teaching Business Sustainability: From Theory to Practice, fills this gap with a strong emphasis on business, educational and moral rationales, curriculum development and approaches.
Recognising that education for sustainability is an emerging field, and one that addresses a vision that is not wholly accepted within the business community as yet, this book seeks to provide business educators with an advanced introduction to sustainability as well as providing educational tools. Thus, the five chapters in Part 1, 'Theory, Critique and Ideas', explore the unstated but often underlying assumption that many environmental and social issues represent non-value-added effort for business. John Adams' account in Chapter 1 of the role of mental models of society, nature and the economy is an effective introduction to the reasoning behind such assumptions and the need to 'learn our way out' of unsustainable mental models. Chapter 2, by Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee, follows on as a more rigorous account of the role of business sustainability within sustainable development policy and processes. He outlines three key themes that need to underlie all teaching about and for business sustainability: theoretical analysis and critique; interdisciplinarity; and local-global perspectives. Most importantly, he challenges readers to consider how the sustainability of society can be integrated within the goals of both corporate sustainability and teaching in universities. Two further chapters in this section explore the place of sustainability in public companies (Tom Abeles) and international development assistance (Pepukaye Bardouille). Both provide convincing cases and excellent material for case studies. Using data from surveys of Australian and US MBA programs, Suzanne Benn and David Bubna-Litic develop the extremely important thesis of ethically reflective practice as the foundation of business sustainability. This insight is not taken up elsewhere in the book, unfortunately, although the important social theory that underlines reflective practice and reflexive modernity are crucial to both the rationale for business sustainability and the education of the type of managers that are needed for business to become more sustainable. The next two chapters, by Homer Erekson et al., and David Foot and Susan Ross, focus on the need for interdisciplinary practice - a characteristic of the knowledge needed in addressing the problems businesses face in this era of reflexive modernity. Part 1 concludes with an examination of implications for business educators of a survey of the level of environmental concern of business studies students in several countries. Examples of proactive responses to the high levels of concern are reported in Part 2 of this fine book.
Titled 'Learning from Current Practice', Part 2 contains several case studies from the UK, USA and Canada. All are inspirational and worthy of reading as mirrors to reflect upon the objectives, content, pedagogy and industry links of our own work. Particularly exciting are the programs that have strong ethical foundations (Chapter 11 by Diane Holt and Chapter 15 by Judi Marshall) and emphasise partnerships and placements with firms (Chapter 9 by Polly Courtice and Jonathan Porritt, Chapter 13 by Gillian Rice and Amy Sprague, and Chapter 14 by Thomas Eggert et al.) - but singling these out for special mention is in no way meant to discourage readers from reading all seven case studies.
Part 3, titled 'Tools, Methods and Approaches', is perhaps the least consistent in the book - not in terms of the quality and value of the eight chapters but in terms of the disparate nature of the themes addressed. It is almost as if they are brought together because they could not fit anywhere else - and perhaps some chapters might realistically be seen to belong to a different book. Chapter 16, by Sacha Courville, might be one of these. Yet her simple diagrammatic representation of the relationship between various corporate sustainability tools (p. 213) will prove extremely helpful to course designers. It is a pity that there was no opportunity in this chapter for the implications for course design to be explored, although, perhaps unintentionally, this challenge is taken up in Chapters 20 and 21 by Kathleen Wood and her colleagues and by Bob Willard on teaching sustainability in business courses. However, there are virtually no educational implications for Chapter 22 on demographic issues and sustainability. A different book for sure! Other chapters in this section focus on appropriate pedagogy - systems thinking (Chapter 17 by Molly Brown and Joanna Macy) and neo-Socratic dialogue (chapter 19 by Beate Littig). The final chapter, Chapter 23 by Darcy Hitchcock and Marsha Willard, is clearly a case of leaving the best to last. This is the chapter that addresses important core educational issues:
• Helping students understand the science and principles behind sustainability and getting past 'science phobia' and technical jargon';
• Building confidence in students and addressing the negative perceptions associated with environmentalism;
• Motivating reluctant or uninterested students; and
• Showing students how to integrate sustainability into business practices and how to make a 'sustainability' pitch to future employers.
These important considerations are grouped under the three categories of 'Getting or Understanding it', 'Selling it' and 'Applying it' — a perfect design for a course on business sustainability.
John Fien, Innovation Professor of Sustainability, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
Introduction
Chris Galea, Saint Francis Xavier University, Canada
This item available in PDF format for free download 
This item available in PDF format for free download 1. Mental models @ work: implications for teaching sustainability
John Adams, Saybrook Graduate School, USA
2. Teaching sustainability: a critical perspective
Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee, University of South Australia
3. Can publicly traded companies achieve environmentally and socially sustainable operation?
Tom P. Abeles, Sagacity Inc., USA
4. The business of development: linking profits and principles to address global development challenges
Pepukaye Bardouille, McKinsey & Company, Denmark
5. Is the MBA sustainable? Degrees of change
Suzanne Benn and David Bubna-Litic, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
6. Integrating business and environmental education
Steven R. Elliott, Raymond F. Gorman, Timothy C. Krehbiel and Orie L. Loucks, Miami University, USA, O. Homer Erekson, University of Missouri–Kansas City, USA, and H. Gregory Hume, TECHSOLVE, USA
7. Social sustainability
David K. Foot, University of Toronto, Canada, and Susan Ross, Golder Associates Ltd, Canada
8. An international comparison of environmental concern among business students
Michael Schaper, University of Newcastle, Australia
9. Sustainability education: the experience of HRH the Prince of Wales’s Business and the Environment Programme
Polly Courtice and Jonathon Porritt, Business and the Environment Programme, UK
10. Approaching sustainability through a business–science synthesis
Steven R. Elliott, Raymond F. Gorman, Timothy C. Krehbiel, Orie L. Loucks and Allan M. Springer, Miami University, USA, and O. Homer Erekson, University of Missouri–Kansas City, USA
11. Environmental actions, attitudes and knowledge: making a difference through university education? The case of Middlesex University Business School
Diane Holt, Middlesex University Business School, UK
12. Mainstreaming sustainability issues in core undergraduate management education: the ‘Social Context of Business’ course at McGill University
Kariann Aarup, McGill University, Canada
13. The Environmental Enterprise Corps: educating MBA students about sustainability
Gillian Rice, Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management, USA, and Amy Sprague, World Resources Institute, USA
14. Partners in learning: how a business school and a company worked together to advance sustainability
Thomas L. Eggert and Dan Anderson, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, and Ronald Meissen and Verie Sandborg, Baxter International Inc., USA
15. Matching form to content in educating for sustainability: the Master’s course in Responsibility and Business Practice
Judi Marshall, University of Bath, UK
16. Making sense of corporate responsibility tools
Sasha Courville, Regulatory Institutions Network, Australian National University
17. Teaching sustainability: whole-systems learning
Molly Brown, Intermountain Synthesis Center, USA, and Joanna Macy
18. Corporate education programmes for sustainable business: communicating beyond the green wall
Trudy Heller, Executive Education for the Environment, USA
19. The neo-Socratic dialogue: a method of teaching the ethics of sustainable development
Beate Littig, Institute for Advanced Studies, Austria
20. Sustainability in a business context
Kathleen Wood, Maria Bobenrieth and Faye M. Yoshihara
21. Teaching sustainability in business schools: why, what and how
Bob Willard, University of Toronto, Canada
This item available in PDF format for free download
This item available in PDF format for free download 22. Population, business and sustainability
David K. Foot, University of Toronto, Canada
23. Teaching sustainability: challenges, methods and tools
Darcy Hitchcock and Marsha Willard, AXIS Performance Advisors Inc., USA
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Chris Galea is a father, educator, outdoor enthusiast, builder, sailor and entrepreneur. He currently teaches at the Gerald Schwartz School of Business at St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He was also part of the founding faculty of the Sustainable Enterprise Academy at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. Much of his doctoral and current research is in the area of management learning as it relates to sustainability. Chris lives by the ocean surrounded by land he cherishes and people he cares about. |