Interdisciplinarity-Based Sustainability Framework for Management Education

Flavio Pinheiro Martins, Luciana Oranges Cezarino (), Lara Bartocci Liboni, Amilton Barbosa Botelho Junior and Trevor Hunter
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Flavio Pinheiro Martins: School of Economics, Business Administration and Accountability, University of Sao Paulo—FEA-RP-USP, Ribeirão Preto 14049-900, SP, Brazil
Luciana Oranges Cezarino: BLISS Digital Impact, Venice Business School, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, 30123 Venice, Italy
Lara Bartocci Liboni: School of Economics, Business Administration and Accountability, University of Sao Paulo—FEA-RP-USP, Ribeirão Preto 14049-900, SP, Brazil
Amilton Barbosa Botelho Junior: Department of Chemical Engineering, Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo, São Paulo 05508-900, SP, Brazil
Trevor Hunter: Governance and Management, King’s University College, London, ON N6A 2M3, Canada

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 19, 1-17

Abstract: Business education faces shortcomings that can be mitigated through the broad perspective of interdisciplinarity, fulfilling a call for a greater orientation toward Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Despite the relevance and urgency, current frameworks cannot embed context-related problems into their design, increasing the detachment of wicked problems and management education, and falling short of the goal-oriented prerogative. Interdisciplinarity is up to this task as an educational attitude and behaviour rather than a toolkit of cross-disciplinary classification. This paper aims to propose a framework for interdisciplinarity-based sustainability management for business education. We established the framework via a literature review analysis, and then we validated it through discussions with specialists from the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (UN-PRME) to introduce a model with 49 evidence-driven, interdisciplinarity practices. We grouped results in three main dimensions of analysis connecting the 16 categories. We gave special attention to spaces of discomfort that ought to be fostered in business schools under a critical thinking perspective and the student’s role in the relevance of sustainability education. The work harbours practical implications for developing better practices for management education by blending an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability in the management education literature.

Keywords: interdisciplinarity; Education for Sustainability (ESD); Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME); business schools (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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