Will Businesses and Business Schools Meet the Grand Challenges of the Era?

Sandra Waddock
Additional contact information
Sandra Waddock: Carroll School of Management, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 15, 1-11

Abstract: Meeting today’s grand challenges means changing the economics paradigm that informs both business practice and business/management education. This paper asks whether business schools meet the challenges of the 21st century and argues not without shifting away from the core—neoliberal—paradigm of economics. This essay makes the following argument. Paradigms shape narratives. Changing core narratives is a powerful lever for transformation. Narratives are constructed of core ideas (memes) that replicate readily from mind to mind. Neoliberalism’s memes are pervasive and highly resonant in business schools. To move towards sustainability, the fundamentals taught in business school need to shift away from neoliberalism’s tenets towards what gives life to economic systems. From a theory perspective, neoliberalism’s lack of attention to social and ecological consequences of economic activity plays a large part in shaping today’s crises, including the pandemic, climate change, and biodiversity loss. A new/next economics paradigm is needed that shifts away from an emphasis on only financial wealth and constant economic growth on a finite plant towards life-centered economies that foster wellbeing and flourishing for all, creating what scholars call collective value. The result of this analysis is a conceptualization supporting new memes that include collaboration and competition, stewardship of the whole system, a cosmopolitan to local sensibility, and recognition of humanity’s deep embeddedness and connection with other people, other beings, and nature. The article concludes that business schools need to meet this challenge head on, changing the fundamentals of what is taught and why.

Keywords: sustainability; business schools; management education; transformation; system change; neoliberalism; memes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/15/6083/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/15/6083/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:15:p:6083-:d:391297

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().