Teaching sustainable development in business sciences degrees: evidence from Portugal

Gomes, Sónia Ferreira; Jorge, Susana; Eugénio, Teresa

doi:10.1108/sampj-10-2019-0365

Cited by 17 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…One of these goals is to ensure that all students acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to promote sustainable development (UNESCO, 2017). According to this agenda, it is necessary to redesign education with the aim of integrating sustainable development principles and practices into all aspects of education and learning which lead to a development in knowledge, values and attitudes of the students and enabling them to promote the transition to sustainability and ensure a more sustainable and fair society for all (Gomes et al , 2021). Education, especially in accounting, is considered by many practitioners to be crucial in achieving sustainable development, and hence it is imperative that accounting education integrate sustainability issues (Hazelton and Haigh, 2010).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability and accounting education: perspectives of undergraduate accounting students in Saudi Arabia

Ebaid

2021

JARHE

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PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore undergraduate accounting students' perceptions and understanding of the concept of sustainable development. Moreover, this study aims to explore students' perceptions of the integration of sustainable development issues in accounting education in Saudi Arabia as an emerging country.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire survey was administered to a sample of accounting students from four Saudi universities. The questionnaire contained five groups of questions aimed at exploring the extent of students' awareness and understanding of the concept of sustainable development, their perceptions of the importance of sustainable development for society, their perceptions of the important role of accounting in sustainable development, their satisfaction with the level of integrating sustainable development issues in accounting education at the present time and their opinions about the appropriate approach to integrate sustainable development issues in accounting education.FindingsThe findings of the study revealed that although most of the students have heard about the concept of sustainable development from the media and perceive the importance of sustainable development for society, they have a low level of understanding of this concept due to the apparent weakness in integrating sustainable development issues in accounting education in Saudi universities. Students were unsatisfied with the sustainable development learning offered by Saudi universities. They also showed a positive attitude toward integrating sustainable development issues in their accounting education. They suggested that the appropriate approach to integrate sustainable development issues in accounting education is to treat these issues in the relevant courses included in their current accounting curricula.Practical implicationsThe results of this study provide indications to the administrators of Saudi universities to start developing accounting curriculum to integrate sustainable development issues into accounting education. This will result in an increase in the effectiveness of the role of these universities in achieving the goals of the Saudi Vision 2030.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the existing literature concerning how students perceive sustainable development education by focusing on the accounting students in Saudi Arabia as context that has not previously examined.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability and accounting education: perspectives of undergraduate accounting students in Saudi Arabia

Ebaid

2021

JARHE

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“…In Section 4.2, we identify the phases of the method, and in Section 4.3 we present a detailed development of the method. Previous studies have found that bringing sustainability issues to the higher education curricula may lead to several positive outcomes related to attitudes and behavior [55], but it has also been found that the inclusion of this topic in accounting education is still uncoordinated and sporadic [53,54]. Furthermore, it has been noted that there are some resistances from academic staff in changing the teaching focus such as the combination of qualitative and quantitative information, to thinking long-term instead of only short-term, to teach strategy instead of only transactional [19,56].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dumay and Adams [52] consider that one of the reasons why intellectual capital does not penetrate and proliferate in management practice is the discourse of academics. Also, the efforts to disseminate topics such as sustainability, sustainable development, social accounting, and environmental cost systems in accounting education seems to be uncoordinated and sporadic with space for improvement [53,54]. However, Lee, Birkey, and Patten [55] show that bringing sustainability issues to the accounting curriculum can lead to positive student outcomes in terms of attitude, perceived behavioral control, intentions, and behavior.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Challenge University Students to Work on Integrated Reporting and Integrated Reporting Assurance

Rodrigues

Morais

2021

Sustainability

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Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, society has become more sensitive to sustainability and to the consequences of companies’ activities. Furthermore, the demands for change in corporate reporting have led to the emergence of integrated reporting (IR) and an increase in the disclosure of nonfinancial information assurance to ensure the compliance of integrated information. Universities need to embrace this challenge and be part of this change. This research’s goal is to enhance the diffusion of IR and integrated reporting assurance (IRA) in the curricula of universities by presenting a tool for professors and universities to help introduce the subjects in higher education institutions. The methodological approach develops a theoretical analysis of published IR and IRA articles related to education, to create a presentation of the challenge learning method (CLM) for professors and high education institutions to develop the subject of IRA to challenge students. Considering teaching experience as a value-added component to research the proposed method comes from the teaching experience of the authors. The result consists of a method that can increase accounting academics knowledge of IR and IRA and motivate students to study these emerging accounting practices. This study contributes to the extant literature on IR, IRA and Education that is scarce, the use of appropriate teaching methods to IR and IRA, and the dissemination of IR and IRA in education by providing a better connection between the universities and the best practices of corporate reporting and auditing. This study leads to an increase in the connection among higher education institutions, professors, students, practitioners, auditors, regulators, standard setters, and society in general.

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“…Hence, the last paper in this special issue explores teaching sustainable development in business sciences degrees. Based on evidence from Portugal, Gomes et al (2020) analyzed the current state of integration of sustainable development in the academic curricula of business sciences degrees, including matters about ethics, CSR and sustainability. In this way, the paper explored how Portuguese public higher education institutions contribute to teaching on sustainable development.…”

Section: Content Of the Special Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

Guest editorial

Simões

Duarte

Tanimoto

et al. 2021

SAMPJ

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Guest editorial IntroductionThis editorial presents an introduction to the special issue on the "Linkages and Complementarities between Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability -Challenges for Science and Practice." This special issue originated at the fifth Symposium on Ethics and Social Responsibility Research 2019. The aim is to bring together a collection of original research papers that cover these three topics, promoting whenever possible a dialog to explore linkages and complementarities between them.Research related to topics of ethics, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability has gained increasing attention from both scholars and practitioners (Aguinis and Glavas, 2012;Carroll and Shabana, 2010;Treviño and Nelson, 2017) and motivated multiple special issues in various mainstream and specialist journals (Kudłak and Low, 2015). In practice, there is also an increasing expectation that organizations should be accountable for ensuring ethical internal and external processes, for the way they manage their relationship with the stakeholders, asking for a higher level of transparency in decision processes affecting society at large (Burchell and Cook, 2006;Carroll and Shabana, 2010;Treviño et al., 2014;Welsh et al., 2015). The same is true for environmental and social sustainability problems, which are increasingly important topics in public debates and concerns among individuals and communities (Murray et al., 2010;Stubblefield Loucks et al., 2010). Media pressure, for instance, may influence company disclosure in sectors such as fashion that is often under the spotlight (Auke and Simaens, 2019).Although the constructs of CSR and corporate sustainability have emerged from different streams in the literature, there are conceptual similarities and differences among them. Some argue that CSR is grounded in ethics and normative arguments, whereas corporate sustainability originated in a systems approach (Bansal and Song, 2017). In addition, although scholars in the 1970s focused mostly on CSR as opposed to the economic realities of profit maximization, in more recent decades, attention has also been devoted to corporate sustainability, often with a focus on its environmental dimension. Still, although CSR and corporate sustainability are clearly distinct constructs (Bansal and Song, 2017), the literature reveals a growing trend toward a more integrated approach to both topics that incorporates social, environmental and economic concerns into the equation. This trend seems quite compelling because, as Montiel (2008, p. 260) argues, "contemporary businesses must address economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental integrity before they can lay claim to socially responsible behaviour or sustainable practices." Hence, despite the separate pasts (Bansal and Song, 2017;Montiel, 2008), the constructs of CSR and corporate sustainability could share a common future (Montiel, 2008), and organizational ethics may well be the "magnetic force" behind this rapprochement.For instance, ...

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Teaching sustainable development in business sciences degrees: evidence from Portugal

Cited by 17 publications

References 77 publications

Sustainability and accounting education: perspectives of undergraduate accounting students in Saudi Arabia

Sustainability and accounting education: perspectives of undergraduate accounting students in Saudi Arabia

How to Challenge University Students to Work on Integrated Reporting and Integrated Reporting Assurance

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