A Call for Sustainable Management Education

• Business schools should pay less attention to competing with each other and more attention to creating public value through the education they provide.
• To influence future leaders, business educators must expose today’s students to the latest research findings in fields focused on solving global problems, such as developmental economics, sociology, and ethical leadership. 
• At Woxsen University, we use a three-stage framework in our core curriculum to promote sustainable management, in which students debate global issues, discuss pertinent research, and hear insights from faculty and NGO leaders.

 

The Industrial Revolution and two world wars marked the beginning of formal management education. During these periods in history, business schools were formed largely to help organizations optimize their usage of available resources and craft diligent strategies to withstand increasing competition.

To a large extent, business schools have been successful in helping businesses achieve these objectives. But while our contemporary civilization has made significant progress since the dawn of the Industrial Age, we now are confronted with issues that threaten the sustenance of humanity, from climate change to rising global income inequality.

Moreover, the myopic, brutal philosophy of “crony capitalism,” coupled with the idea that businesses must aspire to reign supreme over others in their industries, has grown increasingly prominent. We have seen an unprecedented level of cutthroat competition not only in business markets, but, to some extent, among business schools. This outcome has serious ramifications for organizations and society at large.

To address these problems, our role as responsible management educators and thought leaders assumes great saliency. Business schools must pay less attention to beating the competition, and more attention to creating public value for society through management education.

This is our mindset at the Woxsen University School of Business in Hyderabad, India, where we have adopted a sustainable management education framework. We believe this framework will help us co-create public value for our stakeholders and for society as a whole. Our objective is to inspire our students to see more clearly the role they can and should play in bringing those solutions to fruition.

Our Three-Stage Framework

At Woxsen, our faculty create public value by integrating a three-stage framework in several core MBA courses, including those in organizational behavior, managerial economics, and marketing management. We plan to integrate it into other courses as time progresses. The three stages include the following: 

Debate—We ask students to discuss, debate, and reflect on pressing global issues, ranging from world poverty to the dangers of crony capitalism.

Research—We find compelling book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles across a range of disciplines, such as developmental economics, sociology, psychology, and cultural studies. We then integrate this scholarship into our course content. Additionally, we require students to publish at least one research article of their own before they pass the program—we encourage them to do this work under the mentorship of a faculty member.   

Pedagogy—Once students are equipped with the latest research findings, we deliver lectures, conduct seminars, and invite guest speakers to provide more insights on these topics. In addition, a small number of our students take part in exchange programs with institutions and organizations in developed, emerging, and underdeveloped economies. These experiences offer students real-world experience and exposure to the problems discussed in class.

We believe that our sustainable management education framework will help us co-create public value for our stakeholders and for society as a whole.

Each semester, we spend approximately 25 percent of our class content on this framework. By the end of each class, we hope that our students will become far more aware of—and interested in addressing—society’s largest problems.

Our framework can be used to integrate a range of topics relevant to public value into business curricula. On the topic of nuclear proliferation, for example, our students have debated and discussed whether politicians should take a pledge of nuclear nonproliferation before assuming office. Regarding climate change, we asked students to debate topics such as the efficacy of the sale of carbon credits; we presented research related to geopolitics, sustainable green business practices, and carbon footprint minimization.

Addressing Pressing Issues

Below, we share in more detail how we have integrated four specific topics relevant to public value into our courses, using our three-stage framework:

Global poverty and income equality. In its 2022 report, the Credit Suisse Research Institute estimates that 2.8 billion people in the world have a net worth of less than 10,000 USD. That means that more than half of the world’s adult population, 53 percent, represents just 2.4 percent of the world’s wealth. As of 2017, 9.2 percent of the world’s population, or about 689 million people, were living below the international poverty line, according to the World Bank.

Having so many people living in poverty contributes to the vicious cycle of income inequality. It also threatens the longevity of businesses that rely on a thriving global community to be able to sell their products and services. Our faculty worked to instill in students an understanding of the antecedents and long-lasting consequences of worsening global poverty and income inequality.

In the first stage of our framework, groups of students took part in a series of debates during their classes. These debates focused on what causes poverty and inequality and whether people can become trapped in a vicious cycle of hardship that’s difficult to escape. Organized with the help of the University Debating Club, these discussions provided students with a nuanced understanding of the nature of poverty.  

After the debates, we moved on to the framework’s second stage, in which we presented students with literature exploring the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of poverty. For example, we introduced students to the human development index (HDI), which takes into account people’s life expectancy and level of education. We discussed how the HDI can be a better measure of a country’s economic development than the more widely used measure, gross domestic product (GDP). We also discussed research in experimental developmental economics that highlights ways to alleviate global poverty.

In the third stage, we invited practitioners from leading NGOs to our organizational behavior course. They provided students with insights on their organizations’ poverty alleviation programs.

To sensitize our students to the impact of such efforts, we developed a Rural Immersion Programme in which students visit villages to better understand the dynamics of rural life. At the other end of the spectrum, students visit developed parts of the world as part of our study exchanges with other institutions. This exposure helps them compare and contrast the dynamics of developed and developing economic contexts.

Radical religious fundamentalism. For this topic, students debated whether Muslim women have the right to wear the hijab in a workplace, with some students arguing for women’s right to choose their clothing and other students arguing for employers’ right to set dress codes. Participants discussed whether a person’s religious rights should take precedence over public norms, particularly in light of potential danger to or discrimination against religious minorities.

In the nearly three-hour debate, students’ discussions were passionate but orderly. At the end, the audience, made up primarily of 125 other first-year MBA students, voted that those arguing for the right for Muslim women to wear the hijab won the debate due to their more nuanced arguments. At the end of the session, the moderator stated that religious beliefs should not affect people’s professional lives and should be respected. Other attendees pointed out that more open-minded approaches can support a community’s collective well-being.

Capitalism and unsustainable competition. We addressed this topic in our organizational behavior course, as part of a first-year MBA capstone project. Here, in the first stage of our framework, students engaged in sometimes heated discussions on whether our current form of capitalism has endangered the planet to a point of no return. Although some students advocated for extreme solutions to reduce consumption, the consensus supported a slower adoption of a more sustainable consumption model.

Next, faculty shared literature pertaining to the pros and cons of crony capitalism and discussed the crony-capitalism index. We also integrated research presenting culture-specific indigenous management theories, as well as material related to ethical leadership and lectures on authentic leadership development. At this point, students agreed that crony capitalism intensifies when business and the political class join together with ulterior selfish motives.

During lectures and guest presentations in the pedagogical phase of the process, students ultimately decided that,  to compel businesses to adopt more ethical standards, the world needs stronger regulations, more transparency in corporate governance, better grievance redressal mechanisms, and wider awareness of the impact of crony capitalism.

Business schools have not done enough to formalize their approach to delivering education that creates public value.

Global job insecurity and poor mental well-being. Society is rapidly adopting new technologies, especially in the areas of automation and artificial intelligence. As a result of automation, many jobs—not just in manufacturing, but in industries such as healthcare and finance—are likely to become obsolete.

As the world transitions into a new technological age, many workers could face job insecurity and stress. Such widespread stress will, in turn, adversely affect entire populations. Our goal is always to give students all the tools they will need to successfully thrive in their work environments.

That’s why, in the first stage of our framework, we regularly conduct mental wellness surveys, which help students identify where they can most improve their mental well-being. In the second stage, we have integrated content into our courses related to prioritizing family, achieving work-life balance, and avoiding psychosomatic health problems that can arise from ongoing stress.

Finally, we help students learn to combat stress using tools such as mindfulness training, positive cognitive behavior therapy, and yoga. We deliver this training with the help of our on-campus counselor. We also conduct psychosocial capital (PsyCap) interventions. PsyCap refers to a set of psychological resources such as self-confidence, resilience, optimism, and hope. Research indicates that the people with high PsyCap are less likely to experience job insecurity.

Influencing Tomorrow’s Leaders

Research in developmental economics, sociology, and psychology has indeed led to substantial beneficial progress for society. However, business schools have not done enough to integrate such research into the core management curriculum, or to formalize their approach to delivering education that creates public value.

But we know that our students will become tomorrow’s leaders, and many will wield great influence over world activities. This makes it essential that we not only expose students to fundamental research focused on solving global challenges, but also provide them opportunities to discuss the future implications of the findings in depth.

If we agree that the importance of general management education goes far beyond imparting mere functional and domain-specific skills to our students, we must also agree that we need to broaden the horizon of our work in ways that prepare our students to address global challenges. By adopting a framework for sustainable management education, we can educate leaders who will solve tomorrow’s pressing problems—and create true public value for society.