Teaching Business Sustainability - From Theory to Practice

Citation

(2005), "Teaching Business Sustainability - From Theory to Practice", International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Vol. 6 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijshe.2005.24906aae.007

Teaching Business Sustainability - From Theory to Practice

Teaching Business Sustainability – From Theory to Practice

Edited by Chris GaleaGreenleaf PublishingLondon2004396 pp.ISBN: 1 874719 54 3£40.00 US$75.00

There are many challenges facing educators in the field of sustainability. It is an evolving field still in its infancy as a management discipline; and there is also the need to combat the unstated but often underlying assumption that many environmental and social issues represent non-valued-added effort. Teaching Business Sustainability acknowledges this problem, while helping students explore the various ways in which the theoretical value of business sustainability can result in valuable and value-added practical outcomes. This book provides examples of the state of the art in teaching business sustainability worldwide, and describes the teaching practices and tools that are achieving successful results.

A wide mix of approaches is therefore indicated; while many of these are experimental and on the leading edge of management learning, they all share an experiential (and often a team-based) element, and attempt to bring together the theory in a way that makes it relevant to practitioners in the field. The implication is that, whenever possible, educators need to link the learning to the students’ immediate and pressing “real-world” realities. This applies equally to undergraduates or high-level executives. However, in the absence of immediate examples of such realities (as may often be the case in undergraduate settings) educators need to introduce experientially based approaches that recreate such settings in the classroom.

The book also argues the case for holistic and interdisciplinary learning. It is clear from much of the literature on sustainability that the concept does not easily lend itself to being pigeonholed and that it crosses many of the functional areas of business. Indeed, it goes beyond just business learning to encompass many fields such as ecology, engineering and biology. If students are to move beyond the narrow perspective that conventional business studies often entail, they need to be introduced to the wider vision that an interdisciplinary approach engenders.