Perceptions of a Triple Bottom Line Approach to Doing Business among Canadian Youth

China’s Triple Bottom-line (TBL) Challenge: Exploring How Demographics and Values Shape Preferences of Future Managers and Engineers toward Profit, People and Planet

“…In the same way, prior work indicates that business students assign greater importance to instrumental possessions, money, material success that often increase with each year of educational experience. Bergman et al [49] found that student enrolled in business-related major show higher materialism and narcissism than students from non-business study majors, a view consistent with other studies [20], [21]. Robak et al's [50] also offer (and found support for) business education as a proximal predictors of desire for money-making, profit and self-enchantment.…”

“…The t-value of difference between male and female (-3.471, p value = 0.001) and religion (3.721, p-value = 0.000 < 0.005) supported prior assertions that religion and gender are proximal predictors of materialism and ethical attitudes among students. As seen in Table 4, the t-value of difference for study major (0.073, p = 0.942 > 0.05) reflected insignificant differences among students from business and engineering majors, which contradicts prior findings about money-orientation among business students only [20], [21], [38], [39]. So, it was concluded that study major has insignificant effects on materialism, which rejected H4.…”

“…The results from the mean value of various groups indicated that students without religion exhibited more materialism and low environmental and people-centered values, and TBL (planet and people) than students with religion (H6), consistent with earlier studies [51]. Also, materialism increased with each year of education (1 st yr. -final yr. = 3.520 -4.467), as well as family income (lowest to highest: 3.379 -3.974), confirming that each passing year adds to materialism and negatively influence pro-social attitudes and behaviors (H5) [21], [60]- [62]. For corroboration, the two-sample t-test was conducted to assess the links between demographics, materialism, environmental and people-centered values and TBL.…”

“…Previously, a number of scholars in different countries such as, India, Canada, Finland and USA (Arlow [17]; Aspen Institute [22]; Wong et al [23]; Lamsa et al [24]) have studied attitudes and behaviors of business students towards CSR, however, the authors could locate only two studies, as of this writing, on student perception of TBL, both conducted by Piper and her colleagues at a Canadian university [20], [21]. Consistent with findings of Lamsa et al [24], Borkowski and Ugras [18] and Keith et al [25], Piper et al [20] found that female students show stronger preference for ethical business conduct (TBL: planet and people) than male students, but Yamamura and Stedham [26] and some others researchers find such differences to be insignificant, coincidental or context-driven [27], [28].…”

“…Despite that, the complex interaction between demographics, values, and specifically TBL has not been examined to this date. This paper builds on earlier works, in particular that of Piper et al [20] and Meng et al [21], to address the knowledge gap in Asian environmental research by examining relationships of selected demographic factors, student values (e.g., materialism) and TBL preferences in the context of China. If social, economic and environmental sustainability of businesses in China is contingent on successful integration of TBL into organizational norms and operational codes [1], [5], [6], [20], then examining etiology of TBL proves to be logical and theoretically significant [20], [21].…”