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.