Weaving sustainability into business education

The imperative for addressing complex sustainability challenges through education underpins the UN declaration of the 2005 to 2014 Decade of education for sustainable development. Sustainability has been burgeoning as a theme for business schools worldwide with increasing numbers of courses and specialisations on sustainability in degrees such as the Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs. However, in the current 2007-08 Beyond Grey Pinstripes Global 100 ranking of social and environmental issues in MBA programs, only one Australian university is listed (Aspen CBE 2007). The aim of this preliminary empirical research is to explore the essential linkage between the sustainability requirements of business and curriculum offerings. The findings in this paper support the call for holistic embedding of sustainability in business education to develop current and future business leaders’ capacities and competencies in shifting towards corporate sustainable development.

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