Sustainable development: how to prepare tomorrow’s business leaders 

At a time when it is becom­ing increas­ing­ly urgent for com­pa­nies to take on board today’s envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges, this study looks at how future com­pa­ny man­agers view sus­tain­able devel­op­ment issues, and rein­forces the impor­tance of address­ing these issues dur­ing their training.

Con­duct­ed pri­or to the Covid-19 health cri­sis, the study by man­age­ment doc­tor Pilar Acos­ta and pro­fes­sor Maria Jose Mur­cia (Uni­ver­si­dad Aus­tral, IAE busi­ness school, Argenti­na) is set against a back­drop in which the need for gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es to com­mit to gen­uine sus­tain­abil­i­ty has become even more press­ing since the pandemic. 

Sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, which aims to rec­on­cile eco­nom­ic growth with envi­ron­men­tal con­straints such as lim­it­ed nat­ur­al resources, is emerg­ing as the solu­tion of choice to envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems. But the fea­si­bil­i­ty of such a change in our growth-ori­ent­ed soci­ety is still being debated. 

This study looks at ways of chang­ing the way busi­ness lead­ers view sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. This vision, which is cru­cial to the devel­op­ment of busi­ness strate­gies, shapes the cur­rent eco­nom­ic think­ing. The deci­sions tak­en by com­pa­nies have a real envi­ron­men­tal, eco­nom­ic and social impact. So it’s worth look­ing at how future busi­ness lead­ers per­ceive sus­tain­abil­i­ty issues, and how they see the inter­con­nect­ed rela­tion­ships between three fac­tors: eco­nom­ic growth, social pros­per­i­ty and the environment. 

Mas­ter’s degrees in busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion (MBAs) are the main route into cor­po­rate man­age­ment, train­ing the busi­ness lead­ers of tomor­row. By inter­view­ing stu­dents on this type of course, the study was able to deter­mine their con­cep­tion of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, and how this, com­bined with the infor­ma­tion and val­ues they con­sid­er, influ­ences their decisions.

The study, con­duct­ed strate­gi­cal­ly in Latin Amer­i­ca, a region con­tain­ing the world’s great­est bio­di­ver­si­ty and numer­ous nat­ur­al resources, high­light­ed three major con­cep­tions held by stu­dents regard­ing the rela­tion­ship between eco­nom­ic growth, social well-being and the environment: 

• The pro-econ­o­my vision: These future man­agers give pri­or­i­ty to eco­nom­ic growth, tak­ing an inter­est in social and envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems only when they are aligned with eco­nom­ic objectives. 
• The pro-envi­ron­ment vision: For almost a third of those ques­tioned, envi­ron­men­tal issues are cen­tral. Although this group favours reduc­ing the con­sump­tion of nat­ur­al resources, they are unable to com­plete­ly link the increase in con­sump­tion with the envi­ron­men­tal impact of eco­nom­ic growth. 
• The eco­nom­ic-envi­ron­men­tal vision: More than half of the future busi­ness lead­ers ques­tioned show an inter­est in envi­ron­men­tal issues while favour­ing eco­nom­ic growth. This group finds itself torn, par­tic­u­lar­ly as regards the ben­e­fi­cial effects of eco­nom­ic growth on social issues, or the role of new tech­nolo­gies in com­bat­ing envi­ron­men­tal problems. 

As a result, a large major­i­ty (85%) of tomor­row’s busi­ness lead­ers show a strong inter­est in both envi­ron­men­tal and social issues, while recog­nis­ing the impor­tance of eco­nom­ic growth. When it comes to sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, our future busi­ness man­agers are not look­ing exclu­sive­ly for prof­it, nor are they seek­ing to rec­on­cile con­tra­dic­to­ry objec­tives per­fect­ly. But this study also shows that future man­agers have a mixed under­stand­ing of the con­nec­tions between the eco­nom­ic, social and envi­ron­men­tal aspects of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. In prac­tice, this gap can lead to dif­fi­cul­ties in mak­ing deci­sions that require the inte­gra­tion of infor­ma­tion from these inter­con­nect­ed themes.

The con­cept of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment rep­re­sents an immense chal­lenge, since it involves tak­ing into account the inter­ac­tion of a num­ber of issues (the econ­o­my, qual­i­ty of life, respect for the envi­ron­ment, etc.) on dif­fer­ent time scales (short‑, medi­um- and long-term solu­tions). So it’s not sur­pris­ing to find that respon­dents, like the rest of the pop­u­la­tion, find it hard to make sense of cer­tain information. 

As future busi­ness lead­ers rep­re­sent a cru­cial link in the estab­lish­ment of a sus­tain­able econ­o­my, it seems essen­tial to pre­pare them as well as pos­si­ble to man­age sus­tain­able devel­op­ment issues. So it’s not sur­pris­ing that more and more MBAs are trans­form­ing their con­tent to incor­po­rate envi­ron­men­tal issues more directly. 

85% of tomor­row’s busi­ness lead­ers show a strong inter­est in envi­ron­men­tal issues.

The study car­ried out pro­pos­es not only to intro­duce these sus­tain­abil­i­ty issues into the edu­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lum of tomor­row’s busi­ness lead­ers, but above all to make them face up to the mul­ti­ple chal­lenges that this implies by empha­sis­ing inter­dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ty. Stu­dents will be con­front­ed with com­plex and some­times para­dox­i­cal sit­u­a­tions, chal­leng­ing their own per­cep­tion of these issues. Work­ing on these issues in groups, through sim­u­la­tions and case stud­ies, and inter­act­ing with aca­d­e­m­ic, indus­tri­al and gov­ern­ment play­ers, would help to devel­op crit­i­cal think­ing and con­struc­tive debates, dri­ving a change of per­spec­tive on sus­tain­able development. 

Whether for future busi­ness lead­ers or for the gen­er­al pub­lic, aware­ness of the con­tra­dic­tions and para­dox­es in our per­cep­tion of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, although desta­bil­is­ing, could moti­vate changes in behav­iour with a major impact on our econ­o­my, our soci­ety and our planet.