Help More Business Schools to Incorporate Sustainability Programs

Back in October, I wrote about why more business schools should include sustainability programs as a key part of their curricula. One of the leading international business school accreditation associations, the EFMD, based in Brussels, has been helping to do just that: encouraging business schools to integrate long-term thinking (sustainability) into their academic programs.  In 2008 it partnered with Kozminski University professor Jonathan T. Scott, an expert in this field, to pave a way ahead.

Working with legendary sustainability pioneer Walter R. Stahel of the Product-Life Institute, Scott put together a series of educational texts that teach the basics of sustainability from a business perspective. He and the EFMD are offering these materials for free in a bid to help spread the message that sustainability goes beyond 'green'.

In the most recent publication, Standards for Long-term Business Survival, Scott presents sustainability as a financial concept that focuses on the causes of resource depletion, environmental degradation, job loss, etc. (waste) rather then the symptoms (pollution, carbon emissions, lack of jobs, etc).

The 30-page text includes: a brief history of what contemporary sustainability and how it creates jobs; examples of the billions of dollars in cost savings, long-term profits, and competitive advantage that sustainability generates; a detailed description of formidable economic realities currently gathering strength across the globe; and a 10-page checklist to help businesses think in the long-term and prepare for the onslaught of growing market-force changes.

But while a number of major international business and environmental organizations -- more than 20 -- are helping in the distribution of this guide, are business academics taking this seriously?

There seems to be a lot of talk and reinventing of the wheel as an increasing number of business schools jump on the sustainability bandwagon (or try to appear as though they are doing so).  Of particular concern are the business professors who have suddenly become environmental experts (Scott thinks that business schools should be working in cooperation with trained environmentalists on this issue, not pretending to be environmental experts) or who are trying to pigeon-hole the vast breadth and depth of sustainability into a 'corporate social responsibility' agenda that ignores waste elimination and other basic, front-line application issues.

In order to stimulate real change, Polish business student Piotr Jedrzejuk, founder and webmaster of Sustainable Business Performance (which published New Standards), has created a campaign to encourage more business schools to treat sustainability as a whole-system endeavour and make each aspect of it a key part of every business school's business curricula. Piotr has worked closely with Scott and Stahel and is motivated by what he's learned and by how businesses could be so much more sustainable. Now, he is trying to get decision-makers from the two other leading worldwide accreditation associations—the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and the Association of MBAs—to sit down with Scott and discuss how they can advance sustainability in business education.

Because more than 90 percent of businesses in the world are small to medium-sized and employ most of the world's working population, he would like to see an emphasis placed on sustainability at this business scale that is equal to the amount of attention placed on corporations (Scott suggests that 'cooperative networking' among all businesses is one of the ways that small businesses can profitably enter the sustainability picture).  Such a move may help facilitate an increase in job creation while greatly reducing resource consumption and therefore minimizing environmental degradation.

I think Piotr's petition to two of the three leading business school associations (EFMD is the other) asking them to help make sustainability a core part of business school education is worth a signature and share.

Please help us in pushing for more sustainable businesses by signing the petition below. You can keep up with the latest news about our campaign on the Sustainable Business Performance Facebook page.

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