Systematic Review of Sustainable-Development-Goal Deployment in Business Schools

Abstract

In 2015, more than 190 countries pledged to meet by 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) by 2030 that aim to ensure sustainable global social and economic development, and to strengthen universal peace. Public institutions, businesses, organizations and individuals are all called upon to contribute to this challenge. Focusing on business schools (BSs), and the potential impact they have on graduates, we ask what they are doing for the deployment of these objectives. To this end, we conducted a systematic review of the literature related to SDGs and business schools in the WOS, SCOPUS and ERIC databases. A multi-stage exclusion process resulted in 16 documents for review. The findings of this study provide key information on the role that business schools have to play in achieving SDGs and the ways in which they can be incorporated into their activity: from more in-depth actions linked to creating awareness, questioning current paradigms, fostering cooperation and interdisciplinarity with stakeholders, and working on coherence; to more specific interventions such as creating student associations, incorporating new teaching methodologies or increasing students’ participation in extracurricular activities. In addition, this study also allows us to identify gaps in the literature, giving ideas on necessary future lines of research.

The Role of Career Adaptability, the Tendency to Consider Systemic Challenges to Attain a Sustainable Development, and Hope to Improve Investments in Higher Education

“…Even if life design generally involves individual agency, the recent recognition of the current challenges that emerge from the intersection of various factors leads us to consider also the topics of social justice and sustainability, to promote and contribute to a fair and sustainable development (Guichard, 2018;García-Feijoo et al, 2020). These factors involve work scarcity, structural inequity/discrimination, and the consequent difficulties that people face during their career planning processes.…”

“…With this work, we would like to examine career adaptability, typically considered as an adaptability resource (Savickas and Porfeli, 2012;Hirschi et al, 2015;Rudolph et al, 2017). and the tendency to consider systemic challenges to attain sustainable development, as an adaptability resource to cope environmental tasks, focused on environmental and social future requests specifically related to the construction of inclusive and sustainable contexts (Nota et al, 2019, in press;García-Feijoo et al, 2020; see Figure 1).…”

Engineers Changing the World: Education for Sustainability in Romanian Technical Universities—An Empirical Web-Based Content Analysis

“…Education for sustainable development is a concept that has been debated upon by a lot of researchers [14,16,17,22,28,34] based on the fact that: "An empowering education is one that builds the human resources we need to be productive, to continue to learn, to solve problems, to be creative, and to live together and with nature in peace and harmony. When nations ensure that such an education is accessible to all throughout their lives, a quiet revolution is set in motion: education becomes the engine of sustainable development (economic, social, moral, intellectual, and cultural) and the key to a better world" [65].…”

“…This is also the reason why we focused our research on the topic of education for sustainability in higher engineering education. Although there are many studies targeting similar topics regarding the universities' role in developing and enhancing sustainability-oriented competencies [2,7,[14][15][16][17], few of them are solely focused on analyzing the approach that technical universities have towards integrating sustainability and sustainable development into their curricula [11,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24].…”

The “Smart Village” as a Way to Achieve Sustainable Development in Rural Areas of Poland

“…Rural sustainability and the smartness of rural development is inevitably an important part of this activity, aimed at supporting the abovementioned goals. Table 1 shows a list of 17 SDGs for solving the present complex social, political, economic and environmental challenges for citizens, businesses, institutions, and governments [18]. The issue of the sustainable development of rural areas was raised in many different programs and strategies announced in the European Union by the European Parliament, the European Commission and specialized study or experts' groups [13][14][15][16].…”