A model for sustainability education in support of the PRME

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present innovative strategies to promote sustainability‐focused education, in a case study of a multi‐institutional program designed to prepare students for management positions in global apparel and footwear companies. The program is unique in focusing upon management education occurring outside the business school, extension of faculty resources through inter‐institutional collaborations, and use of the internet for course delivery.Design/methodology/approachFaculty from three institutions collaborated to develop ten 1‐credit web‐based graduate courses and delivered them inter‐institutionally. Through collaboration with global companies and other stakeholders and through field research, the faculty built a shared vision of sustainability education, identified learning outcomes, developed practical and applied learning experiences and created tools to assess learning.FindingsIndustry experts agreed that the courses and learning outcomes were important and addressed industry needs. The internet‐based platform and learning activities engaged students and encouraged development of creative strategies for addressing sustainability issues.Practical implicationsStudents and institutions benefitted from the award‐winning program. Specific outcomes are discussed.Originality/valueThe strategies used in development of the program provide examples for other educational institutions for how to negotiate institutional factors in pursuit of the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education.

Business cases for sustainability-integrated management education

“…Where integration of SiME has been conceptualized, models were generated according to the embedding in the curriculum within the specific management discipline (Rusinko, 2010) or in a business school (Walck, 2009). In particular, many have examined integration of the specific principles such as PRME (Blasco, 2012;Forray and Leigh, 2012;Solitander et al, 2012;Dickson et al, 2013;Young and Nagpal, 2013), and the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education regularly publishes case study examples of specific course and program level integration. However, many of these can be considered as either interpretative or functionalist level integration.…”

Building an Industry-Oriented Business Sustainability Curriculum in Higher Education

“…According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) [4], sustainability education comprises three major dimensions: economic, social, and environmental. The United Nations' (UN) Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) provide a framework for sustainability-focused education by encompassing the issues of human rights, labor standards, environmental stewardship, and anti-corruption to provide thought leadership that can benefit society through responsible management [5]. It has been attempted to use higher education to create awareness and to try to find solutions to the challenges of sustainability over the past three decades [6].…”

“…The few studies that have examined the course design perspective are restricted by having needed to conduct surveys with academic professionals [7,11] rather than extracting industrial needs to business sustainability course design [12,13]. Given that committing to sustainability requires revising existing courses and creating new courses [5], higher education must act jointly with businesses to develop courses in accordance with their needs [12].…”

Influência do Conhecimento sobre Sustentabilidade nas Atitudes, Comportamentos e Consumo de Estudantes de Administração

“…De um lado, há o envolvimento da fome e pobreza e, por outro, o consumo excessivo de recursos muitas vezes finitos, bem como as mudanças climáticas que estão assolando a Terra. Tudo isso requer que sejam realizadas práticas ambientais adequadas e de responsabilidade social que envolvam também o equilíbrio em termos econômicos (Milani Filho, 2008;Dickson, Eckman, Loker, & Jirousek, 2013).…”

“…No intuito de responder a esta questão de pesquisa, tem--se como objetivo avaliar o conhecimento sobre Sustentabilidade dos alunos do curso de Administração de Empresas de uma universidade privada paulista e a influência deste em suas atitudes, comportamentos e consumo sustentáveis. Dickson et al (2013) consideram que escolas de negócios podem comprometer-se com uma "ética pró-ativa", que envolveo ensino, a pesquisa e o alcance comunitário à responsabilidade social. Para que isso ocorra, deve haver planejamento rigoroso e comunicação direta entre os parceiros no desenvolvimento do projeto pedagógico, com a criação de uma visão compartilhada entre os docentes e discentes, bem como uma cultura colaborativa de aprendizagem.…”