Today’s business students are tomorrow’s leaders. Given the environmental and social challenges we face, it is crucial that students develop competencies in sustainable business practices. Increasingly, business schools are integrating sustainability into their curricula to educate future decision-makers. However, there are many assumptions about students’ existing knowledge and their attitudes towards responsibility and priorities going forward. To tailor the teaching to the students’ knowledge and attitude, we surveyed 112 students enrolled in the mandatory MSc course “Ethics and Sustainability in Organizations” at BI Norwegian Business School. We asked students to share their thoughts on the first day of the six-week sustainability module in the Spring semester 2024.
First, we asked students to define “sustainable development” in three words. About one-third of the responses were future-oriented, aligning with the Brundtland Commission’s definition from 1987 of meeting today’s needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The remaining students referred to renewable energy, ESG, and the environment, less so to social conditions.
The poster of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is displayed in both public and private spaces. These sustainability goals present Agenda 2030, a global consensus among 193 countries on how to achieve an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable future. Nearly all students recognized the SDG poster. However, less than one-quarter of the students could specifically name one of the goals in exact terms, and about half referred to terms related to the goals. Which SDGs did they think of first? The majority referred to SDG#4 Quality Education and #5 Gender Equality.
When we asked students what they thought was the biggest global sustainability challenge, climate change came out on top, followed by war and waste. In Norway, waste, oil, and overconsumption were perceived as the biggest challenges. When students were asked to rank six sustainability challenges in order of priority, climate change again came first, followed by pollution, food security, resource depletion, biodiversity, and finally social equality. So, here the students demonstrate interdisciplinary knowledge related to sustainable development.
After identifying and prioritizing sustainability challenges, we wanted to know more about students’ attitudes towards the future – to what extent they are optimistic or pessimistic about sustainable development. Students were evenly split between “optimistic” and “pessimistic.” This is also important to consider in relation to teaching – is it more realistic to be pessimistic, or how to get students to see solutions that are more positive.
As part of BI’s strategy, integrating sustainability across the curriculum is particularly interesting to see to what extent we succeed in this. Over 80 percent of first-year students strongly agreed, agreed, or somewhat agreed that sustainability was integrated into the courses, which is positive. This means that BI’s efforts have been successful. However, the world is changing rapidly and to ensure that students perceive sustainability as part of the teaching, the curriculum must also be continuously updated.
For the students, better integration across subjects, more case studies, and sustainability in real world practice , were central to the students’ advice to faculty for better integration of sustainability in teaching. This can be useful to consider when we revise and develop courses.
This survey provides insight into business students’ understanding of and attitudes towards sustainable development. For us as educators, it is a useful reference for approaching the students. At the same time, what the students want is not necessarily what they learn most from – or what they need to learn.
Given that business and economics education over the years has conveyed knowledge that has led to unsustainable development, it is necessary to reflect on the theories we adhere to. We can no longer teach “business as usual”; on the contrary, we must relate to a future we do not know – and to a lesser extent to more traditional teaching methods. It has been shown that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is not there to ensure that market competition leads to a harmonious society. John M Keynes’ predictions that once we have covered a basic level of economic needs, we will be satisfied, work less, and focus more on culture and leisure. The focus on economic growth and measuring national success through GDP, is not sustainable under the current conditions. These and many other economic theories on which today’s teachings are built, turn out to be wrong. There is a need to teach from a different basis, not just include words like “sustainability,” “environment,” and “social conditions” in course descriptions. Fresh thinking is necessary to provide today’s students with knowledge and new parameters that form the basis for developing a sustainable future.
If you are interested in replicating the survey at your school, please contact Anna.C.Czerwinska@bi.no.