Business schools are redefining their approach to education — embracing new ways to equip future executives for a rapidly changing world.
And the winners of this year’s Responsible Business Education award for teaching show how academics are reimagining curricula by integrating sustainability, experiential learning and advanced technologies to tackle global challenges.
These programmes mark a turning point in responsible business education, say the judges, because it shows institutions are recalibrating their material to address the societal need for a more sustainable future, while also aligning with business’s demands for profits.
Outside the top five winners, the pool of submissions also included highly commended programmes that fell outside the criteria of being grounded in academic research. However, these submissions illustrated new ways in which academics are interacting with content. Some stood out, including a project from Saïd Business School, where an academic turned a classic case study into a movie.
Megan Kashner — one of the judges, and director of social impact and sustainability at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management — believes this year’s entries show how academia is emphasising in-the-field teaching to future business leaders. She says: “We are teaching our students increasingly practical skills and giving them the opportunity to practise the impossibly complex conversations [and] decision-making in negotiations that are actually what’s going to push [achievable] sustainability in business.”
Eric Cornuel, another of the judges and president of the European foundation for management development network association, agrees. He says the submissions this year “mark both a transformation in the teaching approach implemented but also a change in the relationship that business schools have with their social environment”.
A novel approach to negotiation
You can’t have an MBA without having a negotiation course, and Insead’s puts a fresh spin on tradition. The online, four-week Advanced Negotiations course at the French business school tackles the complexity of sustainability issues by focusing on case studies from the global south.
With close to 150 students enrolled in 2023, and expectations for that number to keep rising, the course offers case studies on stakeholder management in a mining company in Latin America, labour management negotiations in India and governance of cross-cultural differences in the Middle East.
“We argue that sustainability is a crucial negotiation variable,” say the academics overseeing the course, who include Horacio Falcão, professor of management practice of decision sciences at Insead. “We train participants to adopt win-win strategies, emphasising that these methods foster sustainable outcomes where no party feels marginalised. Win-win strategies help build stronger, collaborative relationships essential for addressing sustainability challenges.”
Falcão says the course “teaches students to use sustainable negotiation tactics to forge antifragile, inclusive deals, even under the most challenging conditions”. The course has been adapted for the modern era, say the academics behind it, because of the realisation that sustainability cannot be “imposed” in local communities, but needs to be an “inclusive and respectful negotiation process”. Sustainability should not just be a topic of discussion, the academics add, but “must permeate the entire negotiation engagement, integrating both content and process to increase the likelihood of successful, sustainable agreements”.
Kashner, one of the judges, says the take on negotiations is innovative: “This is truly a novel, and needed, approach to teaching about responsible leadership in a sustainability context. By focusing on the intersection of negotiations and sustainability, these faculty members have brought impossible decisions and interests that sit at cross-purposes to life for students. I want to dig into this material and consider how I can integrate it into my teaching.”
Group thinking
HEC Paris’s 2050NOW learning experience brought together more than 300 participants — including students, academics and business leaders — to think about how to bring companies into a more sustainable future. Held for the first time in April 2024, the course combined immersive multimedia experiences with deep conversations from all stakeholders, to envision a better world. By involving stakeholders in collective problem-solving, the programme sought to redefine education as a collaborative tool for impact.
Participants “travelled” via video to Kinshasa, described as a “mega city” and followed “Adama”, a leader working for a European multinational company who is struggling to have her voice heard among her colleagues at headquarters. The initiative, say the organisers, was designed to “illustrate the longitudinal impact of key business decisions and to mobilise the audience to intervene and identify solutions together”. It brought to life the “often tenuous” relationships between business decisions and the world they affect.
Maureen Sigliano, executive director of Impact Company Lab — an experimentation platform — at HEC, says the experience is “a transformational milestone” for the French business school, as it looks to empower business leaders “to reinvent a more sustainable future”.
She adds: “There was a newfound understanding that a just transition and business resilience will not be possible unless decision makers experience and include the voices of the places where sustainability issues are most pressing. The power of interactive theatre and scenario planning was recognised as a very effective way to experience what lies ahead.”
Gorgi Krlev, associate dean and professor of sustainability at ESCP business school and a Responsible Business Education awards judge, thinks the initiative is “really outstanding” because it engages stakeholders in finding a solution to the climate issue. He wonders, however, about the “next steps” and says it is important to make sure that the “immersive experience leads to a solution and implementation”. He adds: “That’s a huge challenge.”
Follow the leader
MBA courses are often criticised for lacking hands-on experience for future executives. London Business School’s Sustainability Leadership and Corporate Responsibility programme, however, tackles that head on by bringing alumni to share their experiences from diverse sectors — from energy to luxury.
LBS alumni share their expertise in how to deal with sustainability dilemmas faced by leaders in the field, helping students create both social and economic value in diverse industries.
Interactivity is key. Students prepare questions during their pre-session assignments, which helps them think deeply about how they can use the knowledge in their own careers. They are required to write profiles of other LBS alumni in leadership positions as part of a group assignment. And their final coursework requires them to assess their own leadership strengths, set measurable goals, and develop next steps to boost their leadership skills.
Ioannis Ioannou, associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at LBS, says the course stood out because of its focus “on the leadership needed to address the complexities of sustainability”.
He says: “What makes it truly unique is the direct involvement of LBS alumni who are at the forefront of driving sustainable change. These leaders share their personal journeys, offering students a first-hand look at the challenges of navigating resistance, making tough trade-offs and fostering innovation in demanding environments. By learning from these real-world experiences, students build the skills to lead responsibly, balance competing priorities and inspire others to create meaningful, lasting transformation.”
Cornuel says the course is not only a forum where students and alumni discuss dilemmas from the field but also a leadership course. He says: “Far from certain courses that become more ecology and sustainability courses than management courses, this course never loses sight of the issue of creating value in business.”
Being there
Many business schools now use virtual reality and UNSW Sydney Business School’s Diverse Horizons: VR for Transformative Inclusive Education course was selected by the judges as an example that breaks new ground. It immerses students in the realities of marginalised groups.
The programme uses VR as a tool to show students some of the challenges faced by disabled individuals. It aims to achieve a simple goal: to help students rethink their role in addressing excluded groups’ needs.
Each tutorial session has individual VR goggles for up to 25 students at once, allowing each student to have an experience that emphasises the personal dimension.
In the Elements of Marketing course, academics introduced a VR module entitled Riding with Amy. It puts students in the shoes of a woman with disability, to build solidarity and respect.
Cornuel says the course “breaks away from the idea that learning takes place by presenting the material to be studied, from the outside”. He says: “It marks a major shift away from the case study [and] assumes that learning is best achieved by experiencing situations.”
The course emphasises the importance of addressing real-world inequities in business education. Veronica Zixi Jiang, associate professor at UNSW, says: “My submission stood out because it demonstrates an innovative integration of virtual reality to deeply engage and educate inclusion within the business curriculum. This is a transformative approach, to cultivate an inclusive mindset among students.
“This innovation reflects a broader shift in the higher education sector towards embracing immersive technologies, to prepare them for the diverse realities of the global marketplace. It showcases a future where technology and compassion effectively intersect, setting a new trend for how we educate future leaders.”
Role play
Cranfield School of Management’s role-playing board game presents different visions of a sustainable future for Europe by 2050. Played by more than 2,500 people since 2018, the Game of Life has helped to boost students’ understanding of the connection between society and business and the power of the collective in effecting change.
Referring to a sample of in-depth interviews carried out with people right after they have played the game, the school notes: “Early analysis suggests that players develop a set of psychological features and competencies that align with the properties of agency: intentionality, forethought, self-regulation and self-reflectiveness.”
Rosina Watson, the school’s associate professor of sustainability, suggests this way of learning is different “because it goes beyond knowledge or even competencies”. She says: “It offers people a safe space to practise exercising their agency to contribute to sustainable transitions — as individuals, as members of organisations and, collectively, as an industry sector ecosystem. It does this by allowing participants to break free from assumptions about an organisation’s role, reimagine the structure of an ecosystem, and renegotiate each organisation’s role within that structure.
She adds: “We have demonstrated a form of sustainability education that can develop change agents, and we hope other educators will adopt the four principles that make it effective: convening an ecosystem; shifting time horizons; making ‘business as usual’ untenable; and freeing players from preconceived ideas and role identities.”
Kashner, an awards judge, says this role-play exercise has all the key features of a successful formula: systems thinking; empathy development; and role-playing gamified simulation. She adds: “I’m eager to learn more and check it out. It’s based on sound research and academic inquiry, and has been tested and used in postgraduate education, among other applications.”
Javier Espinoza is the FT’s EU correspondent and has an EMBA from IE Business school. He was also a judge of the awards
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