Sustainability doesn’t come naturally in business schools

April 7, 2010

“Business schools are making little headway in imbuing finance courses with ethics to promote sustainable business.” (FT April 5th: “Class is not always greener”). While many schools offer broad courses on corporate responsibility and social entrepreneurship, only few business schools offer finance courses that cover social, environmental as well as financial returns. Little is done on integrating sustainability into more technical areas such as accounting or finance.
This is partly explained by a dearth of academic research in the area. Moreover introducing this type of courses in the core programmes would be time consuming. Time that a professor may prefer to invest in a journal article instead.
Even at universities that do offer integrated courses these remain electives, which means that students that go into mainstream financial institutions may remain unaware. As a result, most students taking sustainable finance courses are a self-selecting group, not part of the mainstream MBA cohort.
Apparently the students are not convinced that thinking about how to put a financial price on natural resources is a sensible investment. Moreover most universities apparently do not recognise the opportunity of developing better programmes; a good publication offers a better incentive for a professor than designing an integrated finance course.
I must admit that I was a bit surprised by the conclusion in this article; I thought integrated courses were becoming increasingly mainstream. Haven’t universities given that impression? A bit of “green wash”? How does this relate to the UN principles for responsible management education? More ambition of universities, professors and students wouldn’t hurt!

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