No. 60-2012 ICCSR Research Paper Series – ISSN 1479-5124

Embedding Sustainability in Business Schools: The State of the Art in Teaching & Learning, Research, and Operations

Stephen Brammer, Annie Powell and Andrew Millington

Research Paper Series International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility

ISSN 1479-5124

Editor: Rob Caruana

International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility

Nottingham University Business School

Nottingham University Jubilee Campus Wollaton Road

Nottingham NG8 1BB United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0) 115 84 66798

Fax: +44 (0) 115 84 68074 Email: robert.caruana@nottingham.ac.uk

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/business/ICCSR

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Embedding Sustainability in Business Schools: The State of the Art

in Teaching & Learning, Research, and Operations

INTRODUCTION

What ails the modern business school? A reading of recent literature, in many cases

written by very prominent business and management scholars, suggests that

business schools have, perhaps paradoxically given their growth, scale, and

prestige, lost their way in a number of key respects. In respect of their pedagogic

roles, Mintzberg (2004) has been a prominent and consistent critic of the MBA

degree, because of its tendency to emphasise facts, case knowledge, and technical

skills instead of experiential knowledge heavily informed by managerial practice.

Opinion is divided among commentators regarding the origins of this trend. Starkey

et al., (2004) see the problem as being to some extent driven by the wider contexts

within which universities, particularly those in the UK, operate, noting that “the

business school is the cash cow in a university system increasingly squeezed of cash

from the public purse. Overseas students flock to the UK to study for degrees in

business and management, to the extent that the financial health of many UK

universities is heavily dependent upon this activity, and, particularly, on the

premium-priced MBA” (Starkey et al., 2004, 1521). For others, “business schools

are too close to private corporations, with a consequent loss of critical distance.

Business schools have morphed into pale imitators of management consulting firms

working on short-term problems prescribed for them by their clients” (Ferlie et al.,

2010, 62). Regarding the knowledge creation role of business school research,

commentators are similarly critical. As Khurana and Spender (2012) note, the

”explosion of management research literature and PhDs … has produced little in the

way of insights about the real dilemmas facing business managers - indeed little that

practicing managers see as at all relevant to their problems” (Khurana and Spender,

2012, 5). The deficits of academic research are, according to some, a by-product of

a career system that privileges publications in mainstream journals such that

“esoteric research [is] more persuasive to the academic hierarchy than that with

practical relevance” (Ferlie et al., 2010, 62). Other commentators attribute the

failings of business school research to a sort of discipline envy whereby business

school academics “prefer to adorn their work with scholarly tables, statistics and

jargon because it makes them feel like real academics” (Skapinker, 2008).

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Notwithstanding these assessments of the failings of the contemporary business

school, recent critiques have emphasised the particular failings of business schools

in relation to developing an awareness and capacity among managers to

appropriately engage with ethical, environmental and social issues. For example,

Rakesh Khurana‟s recent book “From Higher Aims to Hired Hands” provides a

compelling historical analysis of the roles and purposes of business schools, arguing

that while they once aspired to educate morally and socially sensitised leaders, the

skill base of today‟s typical graduate is much narrower, more technically skilled, and

less socially embedded. Many critiques of the role of the business school emphasise

the role of the dominant neo-classical economics paradigm within many business

school curricula, with its clear establishment of the priority of increasing shareholder

value above that of creating value for other stakeholders. Empirical evidence for the

potential harm caused by the widespread adoption of the dominant paradigm is

increasingly available. As Etztioni (2002) notes, an “Aspen Institute study of about

2000 graduates of the top 13 business schools found that B-school education not

only fails to improve the moral character of the students, it actually weakens it. The

study examined student attitudes three times while they were working toward their

MBA's: on entering, at the end of the first year, and on graduating. Those who

believed that maximizing shareholder value was the prime responsibility of the

corporation increased from 68% upon entrance to 82% by the end of the first year”.

This has not gone unnoticed in light of recent crises and scandals. Enron, for

example, famously recruited the best MBAs from highly ranked and prestigious

business schools (Hamel, 2001). Accordingly, as Salbu observes, business schools

“too often turn out ambitious, intelligent, driven, skilled over-achievers with one

underdeveloped aptitude. Too many of the business leaders we graduate are hitting

the ground running, but we have forgotten to help them to build their moral

muscles” (Salbu, 2002, p. xiv). Hence, as Starkey et al., (2004) note, “the business

school ideal is increasingly seen as educationally, culturally and ethically bankrupt”

(Starkey et al., 2004).

These concerns have prompted much introspection into the roles and responsibilities

of business schools and a substantial amount of research charting business school‟s

responses to the criticisms they face. A number of recent studies have examined the

prominence of ethics, environment, sustainability and related concepts within

business school programmes, and the MBA in particular. Broadly, this research has

indicated that both business schools and their students are receptive to the

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introduction of units addressing the wider social role of business and management

and that the prevalence of modules that deal with these issues is growing (e.g.

Christensen et al., 2007). However, there remains relatively little comprehensive

and in-depth analysis of the extent and character of embedding of sustainability

within business schools and very little evidence of the underlying motivations,

processes, and rationales associated with doing do. In light of these gaps in our

knowledge, in this chapter we report the outcome of a major new piece of empirical

research into the embedding of sustainability into the pedagogic activities, research

agendas, and operations of business schools in the UK. We draw upon telephone

interview data with over 120 senior managers, generally Deans and Associate Deans

responsible for MBA programmes, in 80 UK business schools.

The chapter is structured as follows. The next section outlines our methods in more

detail, including a discussion of the sample, the approach taken to data collection

and analysis. Subsequently, we discuss the main findings of the research, beginning

with an overview of the penetration of sustainability within business schools and the

strategic perspective afforded by interviews with business school Deans, before

discussing what our evidence indicates regarding the extent and nature of

embedding of sustainability within teaching, research and operations. A final section

concludes.

METHODS

Sample

Our sampling universe was defined as all UK business schools. In this, we included

schools of management and schools that included business and management studies

alongside other disciplines (e.g. Schools of business and economics). This sampling

splits into two broad groups – the 32 signatories of the UN Principles for Responsible

Management Education (UNPRME) which we hereafter refer to as “Aspirational”

schools, and the around 80 non-signatories to UNPRME, which we hereafter refer to

as the “Non-Aspirational” schools. Within each school, we sought to interview both

the Dean (or school director, or equivalent) and the Associate Dean for the MBA

programme (or equivalent role title). Interviews with deans were intended to offer a

perspective on overall strategic commitments to embedding sustainability, while

interviews with MBA programme directors were intended to shed some more

detailed light on implementation within a core strategic programme. Overall, we

managed to secure interviews with at least one key officer in 30 of the 32

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aspirational schools, and 50 non-aspirational schools. The final sample included

interviews with 67 deans (including 27 of the 32 deans of aspirational schools), and

55 MBA programme directors. Hence our overall response rate is very encouraging,

and the breadth of the sample encompassed affords both a broad and a deep insight

into how schools are embedding sustainability.

Data Collection

Potential participants in the research were contacted initially by email and the

introductory message provided a brief description of the study. If and when an

organisation replied positively, we sent another letter describing the topics likely to

be addressed during the proposed telephone interview and a remainder of the

agreed date and time of the interview. Where our initial email messages failed to

bring a response, we followed up with a letter by post and telephone calls. It was

emphasised that all responses would be treated with the utmost confidence and that

the views of particular individuals and organisations would be anonymised unless

prior permission for attribution was sought.

The research was carried out using a telephone interviewing approach. Telephone

interviewing enables data to be collected from geographically scattered samples

more cheaply and quickly than by face-to-face interviewing. In addition, because

telephone interviews are administered this method helps to avoid some of the

limitations of postal surveys (Lavrakas, 1993). In particular, telephone surveying

tends to lead to a rise in response rates and a reduction in the incidence of

incompleteness, misunderstanding, and inappropriateness in responses when

compared to postal surveys (Lavrakas, 1993). Saunders et al (2007) offer possible

criticisms of telephone interviewing and to counter these consistency and

effectiveness in the interviewing approach were assisted by using a single

researcher, who is highly experienced in interviewing, to carry out all of the

telephone interviews. Issues of integrity and competence were assisted by the

reputation of the research team and the researcher. This was particularly important

in gaining useful responses since respondents could arguably have strong motives

for creating a positive impression of themselves and their schools‟ work. In fact,

many offered extremely candid responses.

On average, interviews lasted 35 minutes and ranged from 20 minutes to 1hr.

Respondents were asked if they were willing for interviews to be recorded so that

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complete records of the telephone interview could be obtained and in order to

relieve the interviewer of the responsibility of taking notes during the interview. All

respondents agreed to this proposed procedure. Transcribers then transcribed

interview tapes verbatim and the resulting transcripts were analysed.

Data Analysis

In order to impose a coherent structure on the analysis of this data, the data was

first organised into the constituent questions and then a form of conceptual content

analysis of the interview transcripts was employed whereby the existence and/or

incidence of particular predetermined concepts is recorded and analysed

(Krippendorf, 1980; Carley, 1990). The first step in such an analysis is the definition

of a set of relevant indicators, phrases, or terms that relate to the underlying

phenomenon being studied. Of particular importance in this context were statements

made about important drivers (e.g., accreditation, rankings, student pressures), and

comments concerning benefits encountered when embedding sustainability (e.g.

market attractiveness). The process of assigning particular respondent comments

into categories requires a detailed reading of a significant sub-sample of the data

and, since such processes are highly subjective, the interviews were repeatedly read

and coded. This process then allowed the systematic analysis of the themes present

within the 122 interviews and to comment coherently on the incidence of particular

opinions expressed by respondents.

FINDINGS

Overall Engagement with Sustainability

Before embarking on a detailed thematic analysis of the interview data, it is worth

briefly reflecting on the overall sense of interest in, and commitment to,

sustainability among the very broadly drawn participants in our research. Stepping

back from the detail, the overall level and variety of engagement is both striking and

encouraging. It is notable, something we return to below, that schools across

various spectra of UK business school life – teaching versus research intensive

schools, aspirational versus non-aspirational schools, big versus small schools – all

expressed a significant level of involvement with sustainability. The ubiquity of

engaging with sustainability was encapsulated by one respondent that, when

reflecting on sustainability said “It becomes more central everywhere. Imagine doing

a ten year discussion of the future strategy of whatever organisation it is and

ignoring issues of sustainability, are you mad?”

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The View from the Top: Sustainability in Business School Mission,

Vision, and Strategy

The early stages of our interviews with deans explored their perceptions of the

strategic positioning of their school in broad terms and in relation to sustainability in

particular. Many schools shared a significant set of strategic aims – for example, the

aim to achieve high rates of student satisfaction and employability through

excellence in education, and the aim to produce internationally esteemed research

outputs. It was also striking for how many schools strategic thinking was currently

being revised or developed, often in light of new senior appointments. Notably,

sustainability was relatively seldom explicitly articulated as a core part of a school‟s

high level strategic goals. However, there were some significant exceptions, one

dean stated that “we summarise it with the strap line responsible leadership for a

complex world. So that is our strap line. In a sense that is at the heart of what we

do. It is about educating students for those kinds of roles”, while another related his

school‟s mission to the wider university mission as follows: “our mission as a

university is centred around social justice, our mission as a business school is to

inspire a more responsible sustainable future, so what I always say to parents and

as the new students come in and other people is I know that a lot of universities talk

about the world of work, preparing their students for the world of work, we look at it

more for the work of the world, so we want to develop students with a knowledge of

business and economics but also environment and social”. In one case, a specific

leadership role had been created for sustainability, with a dean highlighting that “we

are probably one of the only business schools in the UK that have an associate dean

for sustainability. And we have using our top management group, you can probably

correct me on that but I am not aware of similar high level appointments at other

business schools”.

Embedding sustainability at the heart of a school‟s strategy was seen by some as

being somewhat risky. One dean noted that sustainability “is not a major part of the

strategy. We are certainly not an eco-versity or an eco-business school. We are

developing it as an emerging part of our strategy”, while another went further

observing that “I think it is a bit like the university fee issue, is that no one would

want to come out necessarily on their own first of all and say we are a school of

sustainable business management although that has so many different connotations

because actually we are all schools of sustainable business management because

you want businesses to sustain, we all know what we mean about sustainability

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agenda and I think there has always been that danger that to hang your hat too

firmly on this agenda pushes you into a different domain, because it is not quite yet

mainstream. One of the very interesting things that we have seen through the

recession in the last few years is some companies kind of said it is hard economic

times, we can’t focus on the sustainability agenda at the same time”.

How is “Sustainability” Conceptualised and Operationalised in

Business Schools?

Academic research in the fields of business ethics, corporate social responsibility,

sustainability, and related concepts has long been frustrated by continuing,

occasionally fervent, debates regarding the meaning of “sustainability” and related

concepts. Many definitions of sustainability emphasise the reduction of

environmental impacts at the macro level, particularly so as to preserve inter-

generational equity. For instance, sustainability has been used to capture the notion

of "an economy [...] in equilibrium with basic ecological support systems [...]"

(Stivers, 1976:187), and the idea that sustainable activities are those that “the

needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet

their own needs” (Brundtland, 1987). At the same time, a wide range of issues and

units of analysis have been thought of within the broad concept of sustainability.

Thus, as Gladwin notes, “the notion of sustainable development will remain fuzzy,

elusive, contestable, and/or ideologically controversial for some time to come"

(Gladwin et al., 1995). Methodologically, our approach was to allow respondents to

offer their own interpretations of the term “sustainability” as far as was possible, in

order to solicit as broad a variety of perspectives on current activities and practices.

While the debate about the meaning of sustainability continues to be had within the

context of academic research, it appears that this also remains a live issue within

current business school practice. One dean noted that defining sustainability “is

actually problematical issue, we [were] approached us with the view to producing a

course on corporate social responsibility and corporate sustainability and all the rest

of it, the problem we had was we couldn’t get to grips with what it was meant to be

about”, while another noted that “every time somebody tries to define what

sustainability is it just collapses, but I think there are principles of sustainability so

what I would like to see is business schools and everybody else move away from

trying to define what sustainability is because you end up with simplistic nonsense”.

While a number of schools continued to wrestle with the meaning of sustainability,

most schools had managed to define what sustainability meant for them, and had

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sought to embed this definition into their activities. What is most striking, as

demonstrated in table 1, below, is the breadth of issues and phenomena captured

within respondents‟ understanding of what sustainability meant. Most prominent

among respondents observations regarding sustainability were observations

regarding the relationship between sustainability and “environmental” or “green”

issues on one hand, and between sustainability and “ethics” or “values” on the

other. To some extent, schools tended to adopt one or other approach within their

curricula. However, some schools, while recognising the multi-faceted nature of

sustainability tried to achieve integration between them. As one dean notes, “when

we are talking about it here, we couple together the areas of social responsibility

and sustainability because we don’t see a real separation between those. If you like,

the scientific issues and the ethical issues cross over into each other so it doesn’t

make sense to look at them separately”. Beyond the main thrust of sustainability as

ethics or in relation to environmental issues, a very broad set of notions of

sustainability were articulated, many of which reflected particular disciplinary or

subject orientations. For example, some economists tended to emphasise

externalities in relation to sustainability, those involved in entrepreneurship and

regional development emphasised the economic development elements to

sustainability, while strategic and development perspectives tended to emphasise

long run survival and security respectively.

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Table 1: The variety of conceptions of “sustainability” adopted in

business schools

Do you mean the green? When you are talking about sustainability do you mean green and climate or do you

mean things like professional sustainability of stuff which we do which is nothing to do with green, do you

mean green?

We teach sustainability of business, nothing to do with climate, environment, ecology, nothing. It is about

things like is your cash flow sustainable. I am trying to get at what you mean. I don’t want to confuse the

agenda. You are talking about the green agenda when you are talking about sustainability?

Ethics is taught primarily through, well it is embedded in business, in that sense we don’t teach, we are not

the Arthur Daley school of management really, so we believe that you have got to have a certain trust to

develop relationships in business which is based upon ethical behaviour if you like.

Oh probably, well I suppose sustainability for us has come out of business ethics, what we would call business

ethics, which I guess we probably first started teaching 16 or 17 years ago. And ethics has evolved into

corporate social responsibility into sustainability.

Sustainability as legal

compliance

I am interested in the economic development rather than sustainable economic development because that is

not my interest but I am interested in developing the economy, and hopefully by doing it legally which is

what I call sustainable.

Sustainability as business

continuity

We have for example if you were doing strategic management sustainability will be a key issue that you look

into in terms of how do organisations plan for the future, that would be a key theme because even if you are

talking about competitive advantage you are talking about sustainability and sustainability of competitive

advantage and the challenges of that

Sustainability as regional

economic development

Well to some extent I would say, we have a centre for local and regional enterprise and that does a lot of work

on small businesses, their impact on localities and regions and also looks at policies, national policies and

how they might affect regions and there has been some work done in that area by one or two people on

sustainability issues

Sustainability as relating to

externalities

Now what we have […] in the business school is any current sort of trendy notion which follows the market

like ethical behaviour, in the wake of Enron and so on there was this great drive towards teaching ethics, and

of course nobody can define what that is either, what we take as the hard nosed economists viewpoint,

people have got to understand about externalities and how governments try to deal with them. One

externality is the depletion of natural resources and that is a kind of sustainability issue. But we don’t actually

separate out sustainability in any of the courses as a subject in its own right.

Sustainability as security

I have for example applied research centre around sustainable agriculture, I have a sustainable regeneration

research centre which is very into low carbon, location independent working, regeneration within urban

developments, all of those sorts of things. So in that sense it is represented in all sorts of different parts of

the, we are also very into human security and I have people who do work around areas such as precarious

workers, illegal trafficking of people, sustainability of things like food chains, water supplies, faith and its

relationship to human security and sustainability.

Sustainability and "green

business"

Sustainabiilty as "ethics"

What is unclear when analysing the data is whether the variety of perspectives being

articulated reflects a strategic interpretation of sustainability that is designed to

emphasise the extent to which schools are engaging with these issues, or whether

the breadth of the conceptions of sustainability seen in the data reflects “genuine”

engagement with a complex and multi-faceted concept.

Moreover, the breadth and lack of clarity of the concept of sustainability was felt by

some respondents to generate significant challenges regarding its becoming more

widely embedded within business schools, especially where it was seen as being

contradictory with the main thrust of school‟s mission. One dean noted that “it

seems to me there is a strict tension between virtually any kind of sustainability

including my social enterprise version of sustainability, [and] making a profit. And I

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don’t’ expect to resolve the tension but it does mean that we have got to be careful

what we do”, while another observed that “there is the kind of essential difficulty of

certain versions of sustainability being utterly incompatible with [….] capitalism and

that is a fairly difficult one for a management and business school to deal with”.

Other respondents echoed another strong theme in academic research on

sustainability – that the breadth of its definition provided necessary scope and

flexibility that facilitates engagement with sustainability and the development of the

concept itself. As Gladwin points out “rather than lament or withdraw from this

embryonic state of affairs, we hope that management scholars will proactively

embrace the unfolding process of paradigmatic debate, for the advance of all

sciences requires conflict between competing schools of thought" (Gladwin, 1995).

Top-Down or Bottom-Up?

A significant element of our analysis focused on exploring the processes by which

business schools become engaged with sustainability, and the underlying

motivations associated with doing so. Most discussions exposed two central

processes by which sustainability has been, and was being, embedded in business

schools. On one hand, it was very widely recognised that the interest, commitment,

and engagement of individual faculty members was critical in bringing sustainability

into business school life. It was recognised, particularly in research intensive

institutions, that staff freedom to pursue arenas of their own interest in research and

teaching was central to the sort of academic environment being created. This

manifested itself in the data in several ways, most positive, but some potentially

concerning. Firstly, in a number of schools embedding of sustainability had

originated in the personal commitment and conviction of a core group of staff that

have led successful initiatives. On dean attributed the progress that had been made

in respect of embedding sustainability to “the fact that we have got these people in

the school with specialist knowledge and interests and passion for social projects”.

Many deans and MBA directors spoke of specific individuals and groups within their

schools that had lead particular projects, modules, partnerships or initiatives that

had incorporated sustainability in their schools. Consistent with these findings, one

dean summarised the secret of successful embedding of sustainability as follows: “It

is very simple; I think it works best when we have got passionate members of staff

involved in doing it”. Staff ownership was recognised explicitly as an important

precursor to deeply embedding sustainability in a number of cases, with one dean

highlighting that “I think it is very easy to have strategy at university level and also

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faculty level, school level. But if your staff don’t buy into that, if your staff don’t own

that then it becomes very difficult to realise that” and another dean arguing that “I

think you can force change if you really want to, but if you want it to be successful I

think you need people that actually buy into it as important and actually have a

commitment to it as a principle, and then help to drive it through”.

Table 2: Processes of engagement with sustainability

That is exactly right; if it weren’t for the fact that we have people who are enthusiastic about this

topic from a research point of view then it wouldn’t be feeding in to our engagement and our

teaching.

I think mostly it is the personal values of the academics who research in this area, they have a very

strong normative commitment to sustainability in addition to wanting to do good science, they are

driven to study this by a commitment to sustainability itself.

We don’t tell people what to teach. I have got 90 odd professional faculty and essentially they choose

what they teach and how they teach it. All I do is look at the outcomes at the other end of it, so I don’t

know how many people incorporate anything, there is no requirement for them to do so, well there is

no requirement to incorporate anything very much apart from some kind of relevant managerial

applications.

Originally it was a university wide initiative, so the school would have been reporting back to learning

and teaching via its own learning and teaching committee to the university central learning and

teaching committee. And as you know in universities we have all kinds of processes for monitoring

what is going on. So for example any new programme that we are putting forward for approval would

have to specify how sustainability is covered within it. Our annual monitoring review of the

programmes would also be reviewing how we are dealing with sustainability within those

programmes.

We had a vice chancellor who brought the agenda with her basically, so it was led from the top and it

was I will say an agenda that would have naturally had a lot of sympathy from within the institution

anyway and that may have been a smart move on her part to pick on it because of that and then there

were pockets of people all over the institution who were already doing work on this sort of stuff and

supportive.

I think it would be true to say the initiative got real traction when the new deputy vice chancellor was

appointed about 18 months ago and he has really championed the sustainability initiatives through

the university.

University Policy

Encouragement

Staff-Led "Bottom-

Up" Process

The observation that in many cases sustainability had been embraced through a

bottom-up process that began with the interest and involvement of staff clearly

brings both positive and potentially negative things to embedding sustainability in

business schools. On one hand, it suggests many schools have found it relatively

easy to make strong progress in respect of embedding sustainability because of its

resonance with staff interests. On the other hand, academic cultures that reflect a

commitment to being staff-led as far as possible may threaten the ability of the

sector to more fully embrace sustainability where such commitment and expertise

doesn‟t currently exist, and the loss of key staff may also undermine successful

initiatives. As one dean noted, “I want our strategy of sustainability to itself be

sustainable. And let me give you an example, we had a research centre within the

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school that looked at sustainability but bizarrely they became unsustainable because

there was a lack of succession, a lack of planning and a lack of commitment”.

A second prominent theme in the evidence related to the strong levels of support for

sustainability present at the highest levels in universities, which, in a number of

cases, had strengthened in the wake of recent senior appointments. In virtually

every case, respondents expressed the view that wider university processes were

seeking a fuller embedding of sustainability, especially in relation to the university‟s

own estate and procurement.

Embedding sustainability: problem solving or opportunity

seeking?

A significant theme in many discussions regarding how schools were approaching

sustainability related to the underlying motivations associated with seeking to more

broadly embed it. One prominent theme in respect of motivation relates to recent

events in the business environment and the impact that these have inevitably had

on the issues that inform business education. From this comes a sense of needing to

remain “contemporary” in the nature of the offerings that a school provides. As one

dean noted “I think part of the driver is around some of the current debates about

management and leadership and how some of that agenda I think has shifted. And

part of the driver for us is ensuring that our programmes are contemporary and fit

for purpose”. Another dean argued that “there is a wider issue, which is that I think

the nature of the discourse around management and the role of business is being

set in a different political social context and issues of sustainability are much more

the currency of contemporary debate more widely. I think it is the role of the

management school to be responsive to those trends and to engage with them, not

just as a follower but in some sort of sense of leadership and that I think for us is

the next big challenge”.

Corporate scandals of the 1990s and 2000s, the recent financial crisis, and the

prominence of global warming all occurred frequently in discussions of the way in

which embedding of sustainability was increasingly necessary. One dean highlighted

that “no business is an island and you have to think in broader issues and that is

where things like the recent international financial crisis for example has been a very

significant topic for those modules but so has corporate social responsibility because

it is all about things going on outside your business that can impact on your

business, whether or not you necessarily think about it in those terms”, while

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another pointed out that “part of producing world leading research that does have

an impact, post Enron, post BP spill, in the wake of the financial crisis and various

environmental issues that have occurred in recent years, business schools have to

think hard about these issues”.

For some schools, addressing sustainability prominently is part of a strategy of

differentiation in the market place. One dean noted that “we will I think use it as

part of our differentiation in the marketplace. When we started out we felt it would

influence student choice, but of course for me the danger was we don’t want it to be

just rhetoric, so we had to be sure that we were also demonstrating that on the

ground in terms of actions. And we are doing that now so I think we are ready if you

like now to start to use it as a factor in our branding” while another highlighted that

their commitment to embedding sustainability stemmed from “the high demand for

these kind of programmes with explicit references to sustainability and so on in

them I think is not fully there yet but obviously by offering these programmes you

hope to stimulate demand.”

At the same time, other perspectives were sceptical regarding the likelihood of

achieving meaningful differentiation on the basis of embedding sustainability. One

dean observed that “On the sustainability stakes I am sorry I don’t’ know enough

about which are the leading schools in that area to be honest. I know there are quite

a few that have it writ large. It is funny because we saw it as a differentiator for us

and then when you look around you see it is a differentiator for everybody. So it is

not really a differentiator anymore because it is kind of a hygiene factor”, while

another went further, suggesting that “The university, many people think that

sustainability is a key differentiator and something that is going to attract

undergraduate students in the future. I personally am a bit sceptical about that.

Obviously there are students that are really keen and interested but I would say the

vast majority would not be selecting their university on the basis of whether it is

focussing on sustainable development or not. That is my view; maybe I am a bit

cynical”.

Related to the discussion above regarding the desire to embed sustainability within

programmes in order to reflect contemporary features of the commercial landscape

is a parallel discussion of the demand for sustainability in light of the career needs of

students. One director of an MBA programme observed that “we have actually done

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some research ourselves on the changing level of demand from the business

community around skills for sustainability so we did a survey of companies signed

up to the global compact. The finding that came back from that was that 76% of the

companies thought that it was important for their senior leaders to have these kinds

of skills. And fewer than 8% thought either their own organisation or business

schools were doing a good job of developing them at the moment”, while another

noted that “the full-time MBA is designed to develop knowledge and skills relevant to

changing global environment, we are particularly keen that students learn not just

the theoretical knowledge and concepts but also look at the development of the

managerial skills, confidence, creativity, globally aware citizens”. Consistent with

these views, a dean articulated his school‟s commitment to sustainability in the

following terms - “there is an expectation on them as employers that our students

will be familiar with those sorts of issues so there is a proposition around

employability and the attractiveness of the topics to students which is a pragmatic

drive for being interested in it”.

A final prominent theme in relation to motivations for embedding sustainability

related to the pressures and opportunities afforded by accreditations, at school (e.g.

EQUIS, AACSB) and programme (e.g. AMBA) levels. For most schools, rankings and

accreditations were seen as encouraging engagement with sustainability. For

example, one dean stated that “we worry about the beyond grey pinstripes rankings

and we do very well in that so that tipped me towards that we should take it more

seriously because as soon as someone has a ranking in it I want to be in it.”, while

another suggested that “The other key thing, the school is going for AACSB

accreditation. The whole principle of that is about continuous improvement so we

are constantly striving to show developments and moving along pathways. So for

examples the directorship of the sustainable enterprise centre will be a significant

step forward for us […] sustainability agenda.” Similarly, a director of an MBA

programme noted that “it is really a kite mark saying that this is what we are doing.

And we are going for AACSB accreditation, we have AMBA accreditation and they are

all heavily involved with PRME so we felt that is important as well”. Equally,

perspectives on rankings in particular were not universally supportive, with one dean

noting “if you want to move up the league tables it is not going to be sustainability

that gets you […] points”.

16

The Role and importance of the Principles for Responsible

Management Education

Lastly in relation to the view from the top, we explored dean‟s perceptions among

aspirational schools of the importance and impact of being a signatory to the PRME.

In general, they seem to view PRME as a means of communicating existing practice

(externally) and a legitimising framework for internal acceptance of sustainability

related activity, rather than a driver for sustainability aspirations or a source of

guidance. Several deans noted that they felt that their commitments to

sustainability would not have been substantially been changed by their PRME

membership status. One dean observed that “I think more of what we do comes

from the driver of what the school wants to do [rather than] whether it is PRME. If

one is just doing it because of outside influences I think one comes at it with a

compliance perspective”, while another stated that “I think we were doing it anyway

and we would have done it whether PRME was there or not, so PRME helps but it is

not the driver. It is nice to have the badge and to be able to do things and show we

have done things but PRME has not been the driver. If PRME hadn’t existed we

would still be doing it”.

Other deans had seen a range of benefits flow from being a PRME signatory. On

said, “if one comes at it because one wants to them one can also use PRME and

other external bodies to learn more and to network and to understand what others

are doing and to try and influence more, so PRME and the […] for us are also

opportunities to talk to other schools and say come on guys we really have to

collectively get our acts together”, while a second argued that “it is helpful in that

you get newsletters on good practice and it acts as a focus for discussion in the

school I suppose and if we need help and support to justify the case then we can

turn to PRME well I have to say that hadn’t really happened”.

Sustainability in Teaching and Learning: Programmes, Prominence

and Prospects

Having explored broad commitments to sustainability and their origins within

schools, we turn now to exploring how and where sustainability features in business

school pedagogy. An initial observation in this arena is that engagement with

sustainability in its broadest sense is almost ubiquitous in the organisations we

researched, which is a very promising finding indeed. At the same time, and as

some respondents noted, the overall pattern of penetration of sustainability across

17

educational activities is somewhat patchy. One dean put this bluntly as follows “I

suspect the practice varies wildly. We have a large contingent in fact the largest

group of teachers in the school are in Accounting and Finance, and I would be

damned if I expect them to even mention the words in any of their teaching. I might

be wrong but I doubt it. I can think of four people, whose interest either in research

or teaching or both cross over into it, which means we are less than 10% of the

faculty, but getting nearer” while another said “to be honest with you it is pretty

patchy, we haven’t got a coherent overarching strategy for how we might embed

this in all of our programmes, we are a long way from that, and even from some of

our programmes”.

Undergraduate versus postgraduate coverage

Within the overall patchiness of inclusion of sustainability within programmes, the

data strongly suggest that there is a significant difference in the level of

engagement with sustainability between undergraduate and postgraduate

programmes. Quite a number of respondents, perhaps even an overall majority,

stated that sustainability issues were a core (i.e. mandatory) part of their

undergraduate offerings, but that incorporation of sustainability was less prevalent

among their postgraduate offerings. One dean echoed this by stating that “we

looked at and re-validated all our undergraduate courses last year but we set out

some principles upon which we wanted to construct those courses and bedding

sustainability into them was one of the key drivers” and another dean highlighted

that “we are incorporating sustainability into all of our undergraduate awards, we

have a module on our third year undergraduate, all our undergraduate courses”.

What is striking about the difference in perceptions about the challenges associated

with introducing sustainability within undergraduate and postgraduate programmes,

provided in table 2, overleaf, is that there appears to be a strong sense that it is

legitimate, indeed almost a core responsibility, to expose undergraduates to issues

relating to sustainability, but that no such imperative exists (indeed there are strong

countervailing pressures) at the postgraduate level. In that sense, sustainability is

seen as palatable and desirable for undergraduate audiences but much more

problematic for postgraduate audiences. One dean commented that “our first

responsibility is to make sure that everyone gets exposed at some level to whatever

we decide is an appropriate minimum for our stage of development” while another

explicitly linked the tendency to offer sustainability content to undergraduates to

their fee regime stating that “it is all very well to offer these things to

18

undergraduates, who have wide interests and at the moment don’t really pay for

their degree”.

At the same time, a small number of respondents saw widespread incorporation of

sustainability into their undergraduate programmes as potentially detracting from

the mission of providing “core” business skills necessary to promote employability.

As one dean of a post-1992 institution put it, “if you have got a degree in that from

Oxbridge or one of the Russell groups or whatever you will either get one of the few

specialist jobs in that area or be a shoo-in for another job, but probably for our

students at undergraduate level it might be just a little bit too specialised, to really

enhance their chances in the job market. And for us it is about my main aim is

enhancing the professionalism of our students and really it is around employability

for our undergraduates”

Incorporating sustainability within MBA programmes is seen as being particularly

controversial in light both of potential student reactions to the topic, and the fit

between sustainability and the generalist goals of most MBA programmes. At the

same time, there is a notable increase in the provision of sustainability-related

electives on most MBA programmes, perhaps reflecting the perception that including

sustainability as an optional component of programmes is less risky than “forcing”

students to engage with the subject via inclusion in the core of their programmes.

Partnership and collaboration: potential and pitfalls

The data reveal that engagement beyond the walls of the business school is often

seen as an important corollary of addressing sustainability issues in the round.

Numerous respondents stated that they perceived there to be considerable value in

partnerships and collaborations across faculties within their university and between

business and academia. What is particularly striking is the range of collaborations

that are actively discussed by participants and the breadth of the intellectual

spectrum incorporated into collaborative efforts. As one dean put it, “one can find

huge value from working with very strong engineering school and a very strong

design school”, while another dean highlighted that they “rather than doing it as a

standalone business school thing, we do a lot where we partner with our engineering

faculty and they have got the energy centre which is all focussed on sustainability

and sustainable energy and so as a holistic thing, it is absolutely critical and it is one

of the main areas of focus at the university level of sustainability which we all then

19

participate in, engineering obviously has the biggest input in terms of research into

that area”.

Table 2: Perceptions of the validity of including sustainability

within undergraduate and postgraduate programmes

At 18 they have probably not identified exactly what their career structure is and how

they want tod develop, so they are more open toe experimenting with a wider range of

modules in our experience.

Dean, 1994

Group

University

We are now undertaking a complete review of our undergraduate provision, and we

will have a completely new portfolio. As part of the design rules for that...our starting

point is what do we want our undergraduate student to look like, what are the key

characteristics? There are five and globally aware citizens is one of them. And a core

module that all 2000 students will do and study is a module on business impacting

environment and developing globally aware citizens.

Dean, Post 1992

University

Now of course 18 years olds tend to get more excited about free trade and environment

and polar bears and that is fine, we leverage that enthusiasm to try and give them what

is more a business and management training or education.

Dean, Post 1992

University

The people who run the MBA say there is no demand for it, which doesn’t surprise me.

It is all very well to offer these things to undergraduates, who have wide interests and

at the moment don’t really pay for their degree.

Dean, 1994

Group

University

A lot of our postgraduate deliver is part time and I think by the time you have worked in

industry or public services or wherever it is you have worked you are much of a realist

in terms of what can and cannot be achieved and sometimes that colours the way you

approach a topic.

Dean, Post 1992

University

If they want to do an MBA then we may have one or two electives in that carbon area

but we wouldn’t make it a core component of the general MBA because that is not what

is expected of a general MBA. So they are aware of those issues but I think more than

that we are not a religion or a church practising some religion that says look this is this is

the way it is, everything you get will be on this, I think if we did that it would very much

turn students off.

Dean, 1994

Group

University

I think MBAers are quite hardnosed and pragmatic, so I think they want to see real

businesses saying this is a real issue for us, I think there is a danger with

academics of come along and say isn’t it terrible this global warming etc. etc.

MBA Director,

Russel Group

University

My feeling is that MBAs are pretty generic, when you ask about what is distinctive

there shouldn't be too much that is distinctive about any MBA in my view because

in terms of what people learn or the skills that they develop as a result of doing it

because it is all about what I said when we were discussing mission, helping

people to become more effective managers.

MBA Director,

Post 1992

University

Sustainability

within

Postgraduate

Programmes

Sustainability

within

Undergraduate

Programmes

In several cases, engagement with sustainability was encouraged and supported by

its thematic integration across faculties and departments via the establishment of

research centres, institutes, and prioritised areas. For example, on respondent state

that “one of the institution’s key thematic priorities has been the establishment of an

institute for sustainable world which links our research centres in green chemistry,

environmental management and alternative energy engineering with some of what

has been done in the areas of environmental law, social and political studies with a

focus on environmental regulation and looking at that”, while another noted that “we

have a [research] centre that is very closely connected with the school; it is a

partnership between city and regional planning, the school of city and regional

planning, the law school and ourselves”.

20

One of the benefits of partnerships across faculties that arose in responses was the

facilitation of experimentation at the programme level, albeit with mixed results.

One dean noted that “we decided to launch a couple of Master’s degree

programmes, one in sustainable management and CSR and a second in

environmental management, which is jointly taught by our school of civil

engineering planning and architecture. We also introduced as part of that portfolio a

new degree pathway in sustainable management and technology which the first

offering of which was with environmental chemistry or green chemistry, which didn’t

prove to be terribly successful in terms of numbers”.

For some institutions, partnership lies directly at the heart of the design of their

educational initiatives. As one dean made clear, “when a course is designed we do it

in combination with the organisations we work with and we are getting the latest

readings on what are the important elements that are facing them as an industry or

as a sector and we then on that basis design the courses, so where sustainability is

a key theme and one that the industry is addressing and identifies as a key theme,

we incorporate that so it is not just up to the lecturers to design it because they

happen to be doing research on it, or because they are interested in it and we do

have staff whose interest is around that theme, it is much more about if it is

relevant for the industry and it is and it goes into the design of the curriculum”.

SUSTAINABILITY RESEARCH

Knowledge creation is a second core arena within which we sought to explore how

practices in respect of sustainability were developing. While an intense focus on

research activity is a feature of perhaps only half of the business schools in our

sample, we nonetheless sought to evaluate the extent and nature of sustainability-

related research activities.

Sustainability research: individuals versus centres

Overwhelmingly, research is seen among our participant organisations as an activity

that is fundamentally and appropriately driven by individual researchers that are

pursuing their own research agendas. However, whereas sustainability research may

have historically been a relatively unstructured, individualised, activity, there is a

growing recognition of the need to institutionalise sustainability research,

21

particularly so as to facilitate cross-faculty collaboration and external recognition for

research in this domain. The individual origins of research on sustainability are

reflected in a number of comments. For instance, one dean noted that “academics

can be best if they are encouraged rather than [forced], you can’t tell people what

to do”, and another pointed out that “most of the developments of research will be

based on staff interests”. One dean noted related the relatively ad hoc origins of

research into sustainability in his school, stating that “historically we were probably

like everybody else where you set up a little centre […] the centre of business and

society I think it was originally called, because [we had] a couple of people with

woolly socks and Birkenstocks”.

More recently, however, schools have sought to organise their sustainability

research activities more formally, often reflecting initiatives within their wider

universities. For example, one dean highlighted that “the university has recently

established three institutes, three flagships institutes across the whole university

and one of those is the sustainable places institute, so this is work which is growing

initially from the three schools but now having a pan-university presence and

impact. The business school is one of the key contributors to the university institute

and we invest money in it and many of our staff have part-time appointments in it”.

Similarly, an MBA director observed that “one of the institution’s key thematic

priorities has been the establishment of an institute for sustainable world which links

our research centres in green chemistry, environmental management and

alternative energy engineering with some of what has been done in the areas of

environmental law, social and political studies with a focus on environmental

regulation and looking at that. So we do have this virtual interdisciplinary research

centre which we are integral to”.

Sustainability Research and Education: Mutually Reinforcing or

Undermining?

The relationship between research and teaching is one of the most fiercely debated

subjects in contemporary academia. Broadly, there is a wish or desire that the two

are mutually reinforcing, consistent with Ramsden and Moses‟s (1992:273)

observation that “few beliefs in the academic world command more passionate

allegiance than the opinion that teaching and research are harmonious and mutually

beneficial.” Indeed, a belief in the connection between research and teaching is a

cornerstone of most professional schools of education (Simon, 1976; Khurana,

22

Nohria, & Penrice, 2005). At the same time, considerable concerns have been raised

regarding the relevance of most contemporary business school research to

professional practice (Pfeffer & Fong, 2002; Pettigrew, 2001). As Don Hambrick, has

recently noted “We read each others‟ papers in our journals and write our own

papers so that we may, in turn, have an audience . . . an incestuous, closed loop”.

Against this backdrop, our evidence concerning the relationship between teaching

and research in the realm of sustainability is similarly equivocal. A number of

respondents strongly suggested that teaching and research were strongly related to

each other. In the case of research-led schools, this largely stemmed from a laissez

faire culture whereby a strongly articulated belief in academic freedom led schools to

facilitate the leverage of the expertise embodied in their core staff in their teaching

wherever possible. In other cases, the relationship worked the other way around.

The need to address sustainability as a core part of teaching programmes sensitised

staff to a range of issues and equipped them with a knowledge of a range of

literatures which then enabled them to engage with the scholarly conversations

emerging in those fields.

Beyond these relatively positive commentaries lay a more worrying tension between

research, particularly research performance in the context of the research excellence

framework, and sustainability. A number of deans in research intensive schools

expressed the concern that investing in staff with a strong orientation to

sustainability might be problematic viewed from the perspective of their school‟s

likely REF outcome. To some degree this reflected the relative lack of supply of

sufficiently well-published staff actively researching sustainability and to some

degree it was perceived to be something of a broader problem stemming from the

conservative nature of research assessment frameworks that, it was argued, might

be less open to innovative work than might be desired. Notably, one dean from a

non-research intensive school celebrated the fact that his school could invest in

sustainability without the worry of having to be concerned about REF performance.

23

Table 3: The relationship between sustainability research and

teaching

Teaching supporting Research

But that said what happens then is the fact what you are teaching then becomes a focus

of the research because you then tend to focus on, you start writing, I have done several

conference papers in the last couple of years on using the destination management

handbook and sustainability as a teaching aid and all this external stuff we do.

Dean, Post 1992

University

The faculty are mostly autonomous in a school like this, so if it weren’t for the fact that

we have people who are enthusiastic about this topic from a research point of view

then it wouldn’t be feeding in to our engagement and our teaching.

Dean, Russell Group

University

One of our research professors, because we do have research professors, one of our

research professors is a world expert in environmental aspects and maritime areas. And

she is regularly taken off around the world and is particularly interested in the Gulf

situation at the moment. When you have got an expert like that of course we try and

suck as much out of them as possible so all the students can benefit.

Dean, Post 1992

University

I mean to be honest research is about getting research into top journals and I don’t

actually care what it is about to be honest. I don’t see research driving the sustainability

agenda, I see teaching driving it, researchers do what they do.

Dean, Russell Group

University

I think we could get disciplined by the rest by which I mean you hire people from

outside of the traditional business school they may not publish in traditional business

journals and that then becomes a problem at the REF. And that is about perception, it is

about universities perception of REF panels which is pretty narrow and universities

always play safe. I think that what you have is a tension between what the university

now recognises as a very interesting and distinctive teaching programme delivered by a

very interesting and distinctive bunch of business and management academics and a

REF that they see as conservative which may or may not be the case.

Dean, Russell Group

University

We recognise it as an area of research that we want to achieve a reputation in. Now the

slight difficulty there is there are not yet that many world-class people with a

reputation in sustainability so that is the difficulty. If you actually look in the UK at the

moment there is probably only about one real star academic in sustainability. When we

have got an eye on our REF submission, we have got to hold to that and keep this as a

developing area and assume that the sustainability agenda will also get into the mind of

the REF panel.

Dean, Russell Group

University

I want to do more there and we have got some people who are working with

organisations, but it is most action research, so it is probably never going to be the stuff

that is going to feature in a grade 4 journal. That is one of the things I have been free to

do, because I am not constrained by REF. I can do what I want.

Dean, Post 1992

University

Tensions between Research

Ambitions and Sustainability

Research supporting Teaching

Sustainability in Business School Operations: Practicing what we

Preach?

The last area we explored with respondents concerned the state of development of

practical actions and strategies that relate to their school‟s sustainability. There was

a widespread recognition that engaging in a practical way with sustainability within

school‟s operations was necessary because it brought credibility to the messages

that were being developed in many school‟s educational programmes. There was

also considerable enthusiasm and engagement across the board with a variety of

programmes and initiatives. Strikingly, almost all the initiatives related to reducing

school‟s environmental footprint, and many involved win-wins that led to cost

reductions. One dean stated that “we are doing a very interesting audit at the

moment on the number of computer printers we have got. We actually have more

24

printers than we have staff. More than one each. So clearly there is not just

sustainability improvements to be made, there ought to be financial savings to be

made there as well”, another pointed out that “in the annual planning cycle last year

we took the step that students wouldn’t get any hand-outs, printouts, particularly at

enrolment, everything has gone electronic and that was really about saving paper

and trees” and a third noted that “we do all of the things with the recycle bins and

fair-trade, our café is a fair-trade cafe for example, everything that we use we try

and recycle”.

The operational arena is a key domain in which wider university strategy and

initiatives have significant impacts in the context of business schools. This was

particularly evident in our findings in relation to investments in university‟s estates,

many of which were designed to deliver significant environmental benefits. For

example, one dean said that “we have got a huge investment programme in our

campus and all of the new build will meet the toughest environmental standards for

both the construction and the operation in terms of energy efficiency for example.

So the guidelines coming out of the building research establishment are all very

much embedded and were a part of the whole process of letting the contract”, and

another noted that “we have a big construction programme at the university and

sustainability is at the heart of that. There is a huge energy efficiency push at the

university which is both around economic criteria to reduce our dependency on fossil

fuel and also bring down the bills and also there is a kind of being a good citizen”.

The revitalisation and investment in estates was tied by several respondents

explicitly to the need to meet wider targets for carbon emissions. As one dean put it,

“as I am sure you know the university is required by HEFCE to reduce its carbon

footprint and that is a straightforward financial thing and we are and the paper has

just been approved by council, a great big paper about how we are going to reduce

the carbon footprint of the campus”.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

In this chapter we have outlined the main findings of our large-scale enquiry into the

extent and character of engagement with sustainability within UK business schools.

Based on 122 in-depth semi-structured interviews with business school deans and

MBA directors, we have explored the ways in which sustainability has been

25

embraced within business school research, teaching and operations. At the broadest

level, our findings suggest that almost every business school is addressing

sustainability in some part of its activities. In most schools, sustainability, or related

concepts such as corporate responsibility, ethics, or citizenship form part of the core

knowledge creation and dissemination activities. This provides the foundation for

future developments.

At the same time, it is clear that current engagement with sustainability is, taken as

a whole, somewhat patchy and seldom strategically central in most schools. To some

degree, this reflects a period of broad strategic change and uncertainty that many

schools are facing. Uncertainty around funding arrangements and considerable

turnover in senior positions continue to shape engagement with sustainability. So,

engagement with sustainability is currently implicit rather than explicit in most

schools, but there are strong signs of vibrant and active engagement with

sustainability within pedagogic activities, and in particular within undergraduate

programmes.

Examination of research activities underlines that academic cultures that facilitate

and encourage staff to define their own arenas of focus have contributed to a

relatively individualised, but nonetheless committed and active, form of engagement

with sustainability in research and teaching. The energy, passion, and commitment

of individual faculty members have, in most schools, been the main driver of

embedding sustainability within teaching and research. While this has led to

substantial progress, it also means that sustainability is somewhat vulnerable to the

loss of those key staff. In response, universities are increasingly seeking to

institutionalise commitments to sustainability, particularly via the creation of cross-

departmental institutes and centres that foster collaboration and continued

commitment.

Finally, it is clear that universities are more often seeking to embody their espoused

values of sustainability within their day-to-day activities. This is especially evident in

the ways in which universities are investing in modern estates that have reduced

environmental footprints.

26

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