Beyond “Saddle Bag” Sustainability for Business Education

Abstract

Revisiting the historical evolution of the corporation helps explain how the challenge of sustainability has been addressed in business education. Business schools emerged toward the end of the 19th century after U.S. Supreme Court judgments absolved corporate directors from the duty of adhering to social missions embodied in their limited liability charters. This coincided with the rise of neoclassical economics that placed shareholdersabove other stakeholders. As evolving societal demands have forced businesses to consider business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability in their performance, and as AACSB has added these learning objectives, business schools have reactively responded by adding new courses to their existing curricula. However, these “saddle-bag” approaches do not integrate the topics into the core functional areas of business. Only recently have a few business schools boldly overcome organizational inertia to develop curricula that lead practice by embedding sustainability into the core to educate managers who can rise to the demands of the global sustainability challenges facing the world in the 21^st century.