Walking the Talk on Education for Sustainable Development: The Value of Circular Economy Education in the Age of Complexity

Roberta Angelis () and Giancarlo Ianulardo ()
Additional contact information
Roberta Angelis: Cardiff University Business School
Giancarlo Ianulardo: University of Exeter Business School

Circular Economy and Sustainability, 2025, vol. 5, issue 4, 3305-3316

Abstract: Abstract In the wake of contemporary societal grand challenges, the circular economy has emerged as a plausible vision towards a more responsible, resilient and prosperous future. Embraced by several national and supranational policies and espoused by incumbents and innovators in the business context, circular economy thinking has also made inroads in the academic literature. Scholars from across disciplinary fields have contributed to a lively and vibrant research community. However, while education is amongst the systemic conditions enabling the transition towards the circular economy and higher education plays a pivotal role as a global stakeholder, the burgeoning circular economy literature has remained almost silent on how to integrate circular economy into higher education, on its benefits and implications. Based on a course experience in higher education, this article proposes a pedagogical approach for introducing the next generation of business leaders to circular economy thinking and its relevance for flourishing within planetary boundaries. The benefits of this proposal are twofold. From an operational viewpoint, drawing on the i5 Principles for Responsible Management Education Playbook, an open access resource specifically designed for transforming business education and developing more responsible leaders, this article enriches the emerging literature at the intersection between education, the circular economy and the socio-ecological approach to management education and scholarship. From a conceptual viewpoint, it shows that this approach to circular economy teaching is in line with recent calls from higher education scholarship to promote an ecological and imaginative vision of higher education.

Keywords: Circular Economy; Systems Thinking; Responsible Management Education; Societal Grand Challenges (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s43615-025-00577-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:circec:v:5:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s43615-025-00577-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/43615

DOI: 10.1007/s43615-025-00577-5

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Circular Economy and Sustainability from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().