MANAGEMENT EDUCATION IN REFLECTION OF SUSTAINABILITY & CLIMATE

CHANGE: STUDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

INTRODUCTION

Environmental preservation, economic growth and related topics that have an impact on Earth
are becoming more and more important today. Worldwide there is a call for a deep involvement
in favour of sustainable development. Pursuing sustainable development objectives needs day-
by-day commitment from all individuals. They play a crucial role in making sustainable
development effective: day-by-day choices have a straight influence on the future evolution of
our societies.

An empirical research conducted in Italy (kuhtz S, 2007) concludes that a continuing educational
process in addition to the efforts of the school system will make people aware of sustainable
development needs and improve their willingness to actively participate. It is envisioned that
future managers pursuing management courses can be effective change agents pursuing
sustainable corporate policies. For this reason, this research was undertaken to analyse the
current level of awareness amongst the management students, their curriculum and necessity of
introducing environmental education at this level and its impact on creating environmentally
sustainable future.

The main objectives of this empirical survey are to answer the following questions:

1. What does sustainable development mean for management students?

2. What is the awareness level of these students?
3. Highlight the ignorance of B-Schools towards sustainability programs.
4. Justify the need to incorporate climate change and sustainability as a core subject for
management students.

LITERATURE REVIEW

THE United States in the “Our common future” asked for the development that meets the need of
the present without compromising the ability of future genrations to meet their own needs. This
is one of the most quoted definitions of “sustainable development”.

Money and climate go hand in hand. Lord Nicholas Stern, the former chief economist of the
World Bank, explained the economics of climate change nearly three years ago: the benefits of
strong, early action far outweigh the high costs that will be incurred if we do nothing.
Sustainable development requires social, economic and environmental necessities to be
sufficiently balanced (Sorc JC, 2001). To achieve sustainable development goals, science makes
efforts to provide cutting edge technology that have the lowest impact on the environment. In
coming future we can foresee advanced sensors, new bio-tech techniques, clean car technologies,
more efficient product recycling, new water and waste treatments, improved micro
manufacturing, renewable and photovoltaic energy sources able to satisfy the demand. These are
the nine key technologies that can be considered among the technocal available solutions to
contribute to sustainable development (Catenazzo G, 2007).

Climate change is one of the environmental issues that hasincreasingly attracted business
attention since 1990’s. The main driver for corporate strategic change was the adoption of Kyoto
Protocol in1997. It spurred the development of regulation and increased the pressure from
nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s) on governments to ensure ratification of Protocol, and
on companies which were urged to address global warming.

From a social point of view, making sustainable development principles effective is still a hard
challenge as it is actually difficult to put into practice its theories (Kuhtz S, 2007). Nevertheless,
Dearing (Dearing A, 1999) supports the idea that people must make efforts in order to make
sustainable development happen.

A survey (Kuhtz S,2007) show that all economic actors are supposed to play a strategic role in
pursuing sustainable development oblectives. It brought to light the pivotal role of economic
advisers and managers. It envisioned that future managers will be effective change agents
pursuing sustainable corporate policies. Business executives understand this. In July 2008, CEOs
of 100 global companies, together with the World Economic Forum and the World Business
Council on Sustainable Development, presented a statement to Group of Eight leaders describing
climate change as "a serious social and economic challenge" that demands urgent and immediate
action.

Today, banks, financial service providers, investors are all putting more pressure on companies
in relation to climate change. These reflect the changes in the policy, societal and competitive
landscape, where besides governments and NGO’s other stakeholders such as investors and
consumers have started to pay attention to the issue.

Business and industry need to take part in this process. The engender economic progress and are
a source of innovation. They create sustainable business, social entrepreneurship to provide
answer based on creation of social vcalue through innovation business models. The corporate are
bearing a strong pressure to respond and contribute to finding solutions and contribute to this
urgent problem. Many corporate like FORD MOTOR COMPANY, SHELL COMPANY
BRITISH PETROLEUM have already shown interesting developments in this field, GE has
already launched the Eco imagination campaign in 2005 to show its commitment towards
sustainable environment
Sadly, most business schools, despite all their talk about sustainability programs and green
buildings, are not paying enough attention. Only 1.3% of articles published in top-tier
management research journals are focused on environmental issues and an even smaller subset
tackle climate change. The vast majority of business professors are not using their brain power to
help companies transition to a carbon-challenged world. They are not teaching their students
about climate change as a core subject, nor are they including climate as an integral part of their
research agendas.

It is keeping the above facts in mind that the management students pursuing their masters were
chosen for the study. These young students are the future managers of various business
organizations and will thus take major decisions. Knowledge has been shown to to be a key
factor in influencing a high level of environmental concern (Fransson & Garling, 1999). It has
been widely suggested that individuals with a higher level of environmental concern are more
likely to engage in ecologically conscious behavior (Roberts, 1991). Believing this we seek to
create a more conscious, more innovative and more eco friendly next generation managers.

METHODOLOGY

A survey will be administered to a convenience sample of management students in

various business schools of NCR region of Delhi. The questionnaire will be designed to analyze
the following:

 The awareness levels of management students in B-Schools, about sustainable

environment.
 The knowledge about trends prevalent to check climate change.
 Study the potential to include environmental education as a core subject.
 To develop an interface between social concerns, consumer concern, corporate
concern and management education.

The appropriate statistical techniques will be used for data analysis with Statistical
Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) .The main areas of emphasis would be the present awareness
levels of the managers about the environment and the latest steps and techniques followed by the
industries towards sustainable environment.
Reference