This study assesses the significance of the degree of senior management commitment in determining the adoption and implementation of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME). A case study of a Scottish PRME signatory institution confirms the suggestion in the literature that top-down commitment is a key driver of the implementation of PRME, but also suggests that the nature and shape of this commitment is likely to vary from Institution to Institution. It is concluded that attention to the local context and prevailing organisational circumstances is required to explain the timing of institutional commitment to PRME, the specific challenges that business school leaders face as they strive to institutionalise PRME, and the types of strategy employed.

PurposeSustainability is one of the leading challenges of our age, and higher education plays a vital role in supporting the implementation of sustainability initiatives. There has been substantial progress in business schools introducing sustainability into courses with extant literature detailing case studies of sustainability education and student perceptions of their learning. The purpose of this paper is to address the gap in literature from educators' perspectives on their experiences of introducing sustainability teaching using specific teaching tools for sustainability.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents a case study on a sustainability teaching tool, WikiRate, that was embedded into business and management courses at seven higher education institutions from across the globe. Interviews were conducted after course delivery to gain insights into the practical challenges of designing and implementing a sustainability education activity.FindingsThe findings show that educators perceive sustainability as a complex issue, presenting a challenge to teaching in university systems whose normative curricula are rooted in instrumental problem-solving. Furthermore, educators described challenges to their own learning in order to implement sustainability into curricula including the need for compromises and adaptions.Originality/valueThis empirical study reports on educators' experiences embedding sustainability into their courses through an innovative teaching tool, WikiRate. This paper has implications for reframing how we can approach sustainability education and presents discussion ways to teach complexity without reduction or simplification.

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This paper uses student perspectives on learning to highlight the potential contribution of the WikiRate platform to develop knowledge, skills, attitudes and sustainability mindsets of future business leaders. WikiRate originates from a project with a mission of "crowdsourcing better companies" throughanalysis of their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance. The project identified a need for an open public repository of data tracking companies' ESG performance, on the grounds that while corporate social responsibility reporting is conducted in public, there are barriers to accessing information in a standardised format. WikiRate provides an open repository for data along with tools for analysis, allowing business students to participate in its interpretation. Seeing potential for this pedagogical innovation to help develop the next generation of responsible managers and leaders, educators in business schools in five countries carried out a survey of 1575 student users of WikiRate to explore what they had learned. Analysis of responses from 549 students using a grounded theory approach found that WikiRate extended students' knowledge, skills and attitudes on several dimensions. The findings suggest that use of WikiRate is a valuable addition to a growing number of open source platforms designed to contribute to the development of competences for sustainability.

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The authors explore the potential relevance of the United Nations initiative Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) in 50 years' time, including whether, and how, the six Principles on which it is based will change in any way.More than 10 years' after the launch of PRME, the need to address sustainability in management education is perhaps becoming even more acute, in part due to indirect and contextual issues, including those relating to the environment and geopolitics, and in part due to more direct factors, such as the trends in artificial intelligence. In this context, the authors consider whether PRME might still exist in 2068 and, if so, what it might look like. The research is based on semi-structured discussions, based on the seven questions approach, involving the authors and participants who were senior managers, academics and students based in PRME signatory higher education institutions in China and/or had academic expertise in the area of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The principal results are the imagined institutional, educational, and occupational changes that may have an impact on the future of PRME. The main conclusions are an ongoing investigation of the 'wicked problems' as identified in the findings.

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To support the development of a society that is attuned to the challenges presented by sustainable development, it is vital that higher education business students understand the value of sustainability, and act in a way that is consistent with these values. This paper explores a sustainability-focused experiential learning activity through investigating the utility of an emerging form of service learning in the digital space for developing global citizens. The paper presents an international case study of educators who employed digital service learning in various business education contexts. The research reports on the perceptions of higher education students in relation to their awareness, critical thinking and action for sustainability. The paper has practical contributions in identifying an opportunity for implementing sustainability curriculum into higher education for business.