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Business ethics, CSR, sustainability and the MBA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2015

Norman S Wright  and
Hadyn Bennett
Norman S Wright
Affiliation:
Woodbury School of Business, Utah Valley University, Orem, UT, USA
Hadyn Bennett
Affiliation:
Ulster Business School, University of Ulster, Antrim, UK
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Abstract

The issues of business ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability have come to attract increasing attention in management education in recent years, at least from the perspective of potential employers, accrediting bodies and business school alumni. This paper examines the extent of penetration of these three subjects in to global MBA curricula through an examination of course content and structure pertaining to the Financial Times Global MBA Rankings top 100, the Australian Financial Review BOSS top 17 ranked Australian MBAs, and the seven MBA programmes currently offered by universities in New Zealand. The findings reveal that: a variety of delivery modes are utilised; while the teaching of ethics has achieved considerable penetration, only about fifty percent of MBA programmes include it as a required subject (and even then it may only constitute part of a larger subject); and that the teaching of sustainability has achieved much lower penetration, with only six percent of MBA programmes examined incorporating the topic into their core curriculum. Implications for the design of MBA programmes and future research directions are then discussed within the context of a business environment in which increasing prominence is being given to these subject areasx.

Keywords

management educationsustainabilityethicscorporate social responsibility
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Management & Organization , Volume 17 , Issue 5: Educating for Sustainability and CSR: What is the role of business schools? , September 2011 , pp. 641 - 655
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 2011

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