Charting the landscape: a typology of ecological sustainability in US business education Open Access

Sustainability in business education has evolved over several decades in response to increasing recognition of planetary challenges from anthropogenic activities. During this time, individual sustainability courses and broader sustainability-related curricula, such as Green MBAs, emerged. This evolution included academic associations (e.g. Organizations and Natural Environment division in the Academy of Management), journals (e.g. International Journal for Sustainability in Higher Education) and research in traditional academic business journals. Frameworks and concepts, such as natural capitalism (e.g. Hawken et al., 2013), shared value (Porter and Kramer, 2011), the circular economy (e.g. Esposito et al., 2018) and stakeholder theory (e.g. Freeman, 1984) gained prominence as tools for understanding and teaching sustainability. In addition, pedagogical advances focused on integrating multiple disciplines (Klein, 1990) to address increasingly more complex global trends.

In their “short and glorious history of sustainability in North American management education,” Rands and Starik (2009, p. 19) concluded that hundreds of schools offered courses on sustainability. They argued that these courses should incorporate a multidisciplinary perspective to address complex, wicked environmental challenges. They should teach a basic understanding of ecological principles, as well as the political and social challenges inherent in human society (Rands, 1994) to “build connections and to train students and managers to think, operate, and feel differently” (Raufflet, 2013, p. 445).

Business disciplines, such as marketing, strategy, finance and accounting, have long seen a coalescence in their curricula, as evidenced by a common core of topics without which a textbook in one of these areas would be remiss. While ecological sustainability in business education (SiBE) has become more prevalent, there is less insight into the degree to which a similar coalescence exists (Landrum and Ohsowski, 2017). Despite the rich history of SiBE teaching, there is a lack of clear understanding of what faculty actually teach in these courses, and the degree to which there is, similarly, a common core of topics taught. The present study attempts to provide clarity on this topic.

We surveyed top business programs in the US (undergraduate and graduate), top liberal arts colleges (with business majors) and top so-called green MBA programs to determine where these business and sustainability courses are being taught. We collected 78 syllabi from the 224 courses identified. We examined syllabi, first, because a key purpose of a syllabus is as a tool to bridge knowledge and learning (see e.g. Eberly et al., 2001). Second, we were interested in understanding what areas of knowledge SiBE faculty have coalesced around as important to teach, and, thus, what they deem their students need.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the current state of what faculty teach in business and ecological sustainability courses, and not to prescribe what they should teach. Our study provides three contributions. First, it presents an updated snapshot of the state of SiBE in the US. Our findings suggest that, unlike disciplines such as marketing, strategy, finance or accounting, there does not seem to be a core set of topics that faculty teach when it comes to SiBE. Nevertheless, there does seem to be coalescence across six types of courses. Our second contribution is our identification of six types of courses. These courses range in the degree to which they:

• incorporate natural or social science sustainability-related concepts; and

• adopt a general business or narrow functional perspective.

Third, unlike other studies of SiBE syllabi, we provide insight into who is teaching these courses, finding that faculty themselves demonstrate interdisciplinarity in their formal education. We conclude the paper by raising questions about the degree to which SiBE is experiencing a coalescence in the field, which might suggest a maturing in the field.

Scholars articulate SiBE pedagogical goals for both business students and business educators. For students, the stated goal of SiBE is:

• to help transform management education from contributing to the problem to acting as a solution to global sustainability (Wankel and Stoner, 2009); and

• for attention to sustainability to become as “widespread and as integrated as other concerns such as profit, quality, globalization, and technology” (Starik et al., 2010 p. 688).

The rationale is that through exposure, students’ attitudes and behaviors will change to embrace sustainability (e.g. Arruda Filho et al., 2019).

For educators, scholars argue that academic training in business should include ecological awareness (Mintu-Wimsatt et al., 1993), because an impediment to sustainability integration lies with educators’ discomfort with natural science material (e.g. Kurland and Zell, 2011, p. 503). Faculty can advance their education in both formal and ad hoc ways. Formal education could include doctoral programs in environmental science and management. Ad hoc training might come in the form of workshops, such as that offered by the United Nations-supported initiative Principles for Responsible Management Education in climate literacy.

Thus, pedagogical goals should revolve around transforming both how students and faculty engage with the world.

We examined five management education journals for articles on the teaching of environmental sustainability. Beginning with each journal’s inception year to Spring 2023, we found 55 articles published: Academy of Management Learning and Education (est. 2017; 6 articles); International Journal of Management and Education (est. 2012; 12 articles); Journal of Management Education (est. 1975; 29 articles); Management Learning (est. 1970; 6 articles); and Management Teaching Review (est. 2016; 2 articles). We were most interested in articles related to syllabi since these can act as a proxy for how faculty prepare students to contribute to a sustainable economy. We expanded this query using Business Source Complete for studies of syllabi in sustainability-related education (keywords: environmental sustainability; syllabus/syllabi; business). We replicated this search in Google Scholar, examining the first four pages of results.

Despite this range of articles related to teaching sustainability in business, we found only five studies focused on syllabi – the examination of what faculty on a broad level define as SiBE in their classrooms. Olalla and Merino (2019) analyzed 55 sustainability-related syllabi and found competencies focused on workplace knowledge dominated, with critical awareness for societal transformation virtually absent. Rezaee and Homayoun (2014) examined 147 syllabi from courses taught at business schools worldwide to determine the scope, educational approaches, topics and methods used relating to business sustainability education. They used these data to propose 10 business and sustainability education modules to help business schools better prepare their students for sustainability-related challenges. None of these modules prima facie incorporate natural science components, and rather, appear restricted to social science topics.

Wu et al. (2015) found 50% of universities in 12 Asian countries had sustainability-related courses, with case studies and discussion as the most common teaching methods. Jun and Moon (2021) reviewed 20,507 course syllabi from 10 sample universities in South Korea between 2013 and 2019 to examine the degree to which business schools have reflected sustainability-linked themes. They found an increase from 12.9% in 2013 to 14.7% in 2019. The most prominent sustainability keywords found were “ethics” and “corporate social responsibility,” pointing to a conflation of social responsibility and sustainability (see Bansal and Song, 2017). And sustainability, per se, appeared more often as a few weeks in a course rather than as a major theme. Finally, Brocato et al. (2022) examined 216 syllabi from sustainability-related marketing courses in the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)-accredited programs from 21 countries. They identified course titles, sustainability terms used in the syllabi, main objectives and pedagogical tools and resources.

In short, these five studies point to the increasing integration of SiBE but reveal gaps in natural science content integration and comprehensive analysis across business curricula. In the current study, we build on this research and offer insight into the nature of the syllabi across a broad range of disciplines. We ask, to what extent do faculty integrate natural science, to what extent are the syllabi disciplinary-focused, and who is teaching them? Such knowledge is key to understanding what philosophies and theories dominate contemporary SiBE and their implications for achieving global change.

Our research unfolded in four phases.

In Phase 1, we sought to develop a broad list of colleges and universities in the US. We compiled a list of 214 higher education institutions (HEIs) from six different rankings: US News and World Report’s Best National Liberal Arts Colleges (top 50); US News and World Report’s Best Business Schools Overall (30 top undergraduate business programs); US News and World Report’s Top 30 MBA programs; Forbes’ Top MBA programs (2019); Princeton Review’s 20 Top Green MBAs; and Princeton Review’s Top 50 green colleges. These rankings continue to influence matriculation decisions (Art and Science Group, 2023), and colleges continue to participate (Diep, 2023).

For each institution, we examined the respective schools’ websites to identify information about the presence of business sustainability courses. For some schools, we obtained syllabi directly from websites; for others, we requested syllabi from the relevant instructors through Summer 2023; or, if we found no instructor information, we contacted the respective department chairs, academic directors and/or faculty of similar teaching interests. We received 88 syllabi. From these syllabi, we eliminated those that did not mention the ecological environment in the syllabus, including in the course readings or assignments. We also excluded corporate responsibility or business-ethics focused courses that did not attend to the natural environment, and courses that were not business courses. Our final tally was 78 syllabi from 48 different institutions of higher education (see Table 1).

In Phase 2, we uploaded two types of data to Dedoose, an online mixed methods software program. First, we uploaded a list of descriptive information about each of the 214 institutions and, when available, for the 224 courses, and instructors. We assigned each school a unique ID, which we use to reference in the present paper. Second, we uploaded the 78 syllabi. We linked each syllabus to its relevant descriptor data, reconfirming the instructor and course information with the institution’s website as we did. We coded for:

1. course overview; and

2. course goals and objectives.

In Phase 3, we used the Gioia methodology (Gioia et al., 2013) to identify first-order, second-order and aggregate dimensions. The first author manually coded (in Dedoose.com) the syllabi text (first-order) for general themes (second-order), such as “business as a force for good,” “communication,” “leadership” and “strategic analysis.” We further organized the data into four categories (aggregate dimensions), based on levels of analysis: personal responsibility (individual), business-skill-related development (employee), competitive strategy (organization) and systemic [social–ecological–economic (SES), Raufflet, 2013].

In Phase 4, during November 2023, we used generative AI as a research partner in two ways (Gamieldien et al., 2023; see also Grimes et al., 2023). The ideas we prompted the generative AI with emerged from our data coding. First, we used it to help distinguish components of an emerging typology. We sought to confirm our assessment of whether a concept found on a syllabus was largely grounded in natural social, social science or was fundamentally interdisciplinary. Using generative AI in this manner helped us:

• to confirm our suppositions about how to categorize relevant concepts; and

• to verify the degree to which the generative AI results provided reasonable interpretations.

For example, if the generative AI had replied that climate science was primarily a social science, we would have had less confidence in the results.

Second, we used generative AI to reinforce our interpretations of the data. In particular, we uploaded the course objectives and goals for the 78 syllabi into ChatGPT3.5, in small batches. For each set of excerpts, we asked “can you identify the degree to which these ideas are present: personal responsibility development, business-related skill development, competitive strategy, and or betterment of the larger social-ecological-economic system?” At the end of this process, we asked ChatGPT3.5 to summarize these findings. We replicated this query in Anthropic’s Claude.ai and in Pop.ai.pro. ^[1]

The state of SiBE as evidenced through 224 courses and 78 syllabi.

We identified 224 relevant courses from 152 unique top US undergraduate and graduate business programs. About 194 (87%) were elective courses and 29 (13%) were required.

Eighty-eight of the courses were at the undergraduate level, and 136 at the MBA level. (Forty-four schools did not have any sustainability-related courses). The 224 courses were housed across business departments in accounting, corporate responsibility, entrepreneurship, finance, management, marketing and operations.

We found 48 unique schools among the 78 syllabi collected, representing a 32% (48/152) response rate and 35% (78/224) for courses. Most syllabi were dated Spring 2023 (35%), followed by Fall 2022 (23%). Only 17 of the 78 (22%) were required courses. Only 6 of the 78 (8%) courses were cross-listed. The majority, or 43 (55%), were semester-long courses (as compared to module, trimester or summer offerings).

Few instructors used textbooks. As one faculty member wrote in their syllabus, “Sustainability is not a ‘mature’ discipline. Due to the fast-growing nature of this field, we do not adopt a textbook in this course and instead, rely heavily on case discussions as well as games, experiential and student directed learning” (83.1).

We noted four aggregate themes in the course goals and objectives: personal responsibility; business-related skill development; competitive strategy; and systemic for SES betterment (see Table 2). The following discussion of each is one we edited that generative AI produced in response to our query (described earlier) to summarize these course goals and objectives.

Several courses emphasize the development of personal responsibility, especially in leadership roles. Students are encouraged to understand their own responsibility as leaders in promoting corporate responsibility and sustainability. However, it does not seem to be a major focus compared to the other themes.

A strong emphasis exists for developing skills relevant to business, such as sustainability reporting, financial analysis, stakeholder management and strategic thinking. Courses prepare students to identify, analyze and report sustainability information that is material to financial statements and valuation, marketing, strategic planning and entrepreneurial thinking.

Sustainability is positioned as a competitive advantage in various courses, affecting strategic thinking, organizational design and product development. Students learn how sustainability can be a response to regulation, a reputation builder, a risk minimizer and a driver of innovation. The competitive strategy angle of sustainability is also significantly present.

Courses address global social and environmental trends, aiming to equip students with the knowledge and tools to contribute to a sustainable economy and environment. Entrepreneurial action is highlighted as a means to drive movement toward a sustainable economy and address global challenges. The courses explore the interconnectedness of economic, social and environmental dimensions and encourage students to apply sustainability principles to improve the larger SES system. This idea of contributing to the betterment of the overall system is highly emphasized throughout the text.

Overall, these syllabi focused on driving change and engaging stakeholders. The course objectives emphasize the betterment of the SES system first, followed by business-related skill development, competitive strategy and personal responsibility. This emphasis on the betterment of the SES system suggests a reprioritization in business education among the faculty teaching these courses, from one historically focused on skill development and competitive strategy (e.g. Zeff, 2008).

As we coded the data, we noticed the syllabi fell along two continua. First, some courses emphasized the importance of providing students with basics in natural science. Others focused on interdisciplinary concepts such as circular economy, life cycle analyses, or tragedy of the commons. Still others provided instruction only on social science concepts such as Creating Shared Value (CSV) (Porter and Kramer, 2011) or stakeholder theory (see Freeman, 1984). We labeled this first continuum: “natural science” to “interdisciplinary” to “social science.” That some instructors may interpret sustainability as based in natural sciences, while others place it in social science has support in academic research (Urdan and Luoma, 2020). Sustainability and corporate responsibility research evolved separately. While sustainability research emerged from the natural sciences, corporate social responsibility research originated from the social sciences (Bansal and Song, 2017), thus, it seems reasonable to observe the integration of natural science, social science and interdisciplinary concepts in the course syllabi.

Second, syllabi reflected content from a general business perspective, emphasizing a broad understanding of sustainability in business but not anchored in any particular business discipline or strategic focus, while others were explicitly anchored in a business function (e.g. finance, marketing, supply chain management) or a strategic focus (e.g. energy). We labeled this second continuum “general business” to “narrow function.” (see Tables 3 and 4.)

Below we provide an overview of the six types of syllabi:

1. Natural science and general business (N = 4): Includes instruction on basic natural science topics (e.g. climate science) within a general business focus.

2. Interdisciplinary and general business (N = 18): Includes instruction on concepts that bridge natural and social sciences, such as tragedy of the commons, circular economy and biomimicry, within a general business focus.

3. Social science and general business (N = 17): Includes instruction focused squarely in general business and social science (e.g. corporate social responsibility).

4. Natural science and narrow function (N = 2): Includes instruction on natural science topics (e.g. climate science) within a specialized business area.

5. Interdisciplinary and narrow function (N = 5): Includes instruction on concepts that bridge natural and social sciences within a specialized business area, such as in finance or accounting.

6. Social science and narrow function (N = 32): Includes instruction focused squarely in social science within a specialized business area, such as in finance or accounting.

The courses designated as “social science” might engage with the natural environment through case studies on relevant topics, such as water stewardship in the beverage industry. The natural science courses will not necessarily focus exclusively on natural science topics, but do intentionally incorporate instruction on basic science, such as climate science, thermodynamics, or the water cycle.

Of note, the majority of the syllabi in our sample focus on instruction in social science within a specialized business area. These included courses on ESG (environment, social, governance) in finance and centered around impact investing, in accounting focused on measuring and reporting of ESG, as well as courses on operations and sustainability, leadership and sustainability, and marketing and sustainability. The second and third most common foci of the syllabi provided more general examinations of sustainability within a purely social science perspective or an interdisciplinary one. Courses that incorporated content on basic ecological principles were the least common.

The state of SiBE as evidenced through instructor educational credentials.

Business faculty are often thought of as shying away from corporate sustainability courses because it is assumed they lack formal training in the natural sciences. We were interested to learn about the instructors’ formal educational backgrounds. To what extent do faculty have natural science backgrounds and/or embrace the study of environmental sustainability? We searched the instructors’ websites and/or LinkedIn profiles for information related to undergraduate and graduate degrees. We coded these in terms of natural science (e.g. physics, chemistry), applied natural science (e.g. electrical engineering), social science (e.g. political science), applied social science (e.g. urban and regional planning) or humanities (e.g. philosophy, theater). While recognizing that business is a social science, we separately coded for business degrees. In only two cases, were we unable to find information. For 18 of the instructors, we could not locate information about their undergraduate degrees. (see Table 5.)

Twenty-seven of the 78 instructors of record, or 35%, have a degree in natural science (bachelors, masters and/or doctoral). Fifty or 64% have formal business degrees (bachelors, masters and/or doctoral, and not including economics degrees). Twenty-six or 33% have degrees in more than one discipline (e.g. a bachelor’s degree in natural science and a doctoral degree in management). Fourteen or 18% of the faculty have formal degrees in both natural or applied science and business (e.g. a master’s in chemistry and a doctorate in management).

We conclude that faculty in this sample have diverse educational backgrounds spanning natural science, applied natural science, social science, applied social science, humanities and business. As expected, a significant portion, 64% (50 out of 78), of the instructors have formal business degrees. However, a substantial number of instructors (33%) have degrees in more than one discipline, showcasing interdisciplinary expertise. And a significant percentage (35%) of the faculty have a background in natural science, contradicting the idea that business school faculty lack formal education in natural science.

This paper provides three contributions. First, it presents an updated snapshot of SiBE in US business education. Second, it develops a typology of six types of courses. And, third, it provides insight into who is teaching these courses. We discuss each below.

We asked, what are faculty teaching to students in terms of ecological sustainability and business? Scholars urged that these courses should incorporate a multidisciplinary perspective, which should include a basic understanding of ecological principles, as well as political and social challenges (Rands, 1994), with the intent to create personal responsibility to make change.

Our qualitative analysis suggests the syllabi demonstrate a holistic approach, incorporating personal responsibility development, business-related skill development, competitive strategy and the betterment of the larger SES system. The overarching goal appears to prepare students to be responsible leaders, equipped with the skills and strategic and systemic mindset to contribute positively to both business and the broader societal context. These objectives align with the literature (Rands and Starik, 2009). However, since these courses remain largely elective rather than core curriculum requirements, it is difficult to conclude that business students are graduating well-prepared to address global environmental challenges, indicating a need for business schools to integrate sustainability more consistently across their programs and potentially make it a core requirement to ensure all students are exposed to these critical concepts.

Our results further suggest that sustainability courses in business curricula are often the length of modules rather than an academic semester. Few achieve multidisciplinarity by being cross-listed, and even fewer courses emphasize natural science. Nevertheless, the results do suggest that the courses being taught address individual, organizational and systemic levels. At the individual level, courses seek to develop in students personal responsibility in their roles as future leaders as well as their own impacts on the natural world. The courses also seek to develop in students business-related skills that will enable them to be effective contributors to ecological sustainable organizations. At the organizational level, courses position sustainability as a competitive advantage, and, thus, attempt to align sustainability concerns with that of profit. Finally, most prominently, courses explore the interconnectedness of economic, social and environmental dimensions and encourage students to apply sustainability principles through entrepreneurial action to improve the larger SES system.

A decade ago, Raufflet (2013) developed a typology of curriculum integration. On the y-axis, he placed knowledge integration as either interdisciplinary or mono-disciplinary, where “disciplines” represent the range within business (e.g. from Finance to Organizational Behavior). On the x-axis, he identified the unit of analysis, either a focus on business and its competitiveness or on sustainability of the larger SES system. His typology resulted in four types of integration: strategic/competitive (interdiscipline/business), functional (monodiscipline/business), systemic (interdiscipline/SES system) and integration by application (monodiscipline/SES system).

Based on our data, we develop a typology that resembles Rauflett’s theoretical typology but also departs from it. Where Rauflett advocated for knowledge integration as bimodal within business disciplines, we observe in our sample a broader knowledge integration, one that spans from natural science to social science. Syllabi designated as “natural science” contain intentional goals to educate students about basic science, e.g. as related to climate science or the water or carbon cycles. Syllabi designated as “social science” restrict instruction to theories and frameworks found only in social science (in particular, in business), such as Porter and Kramer’s (2011) CSV, or Freeman’s (1984) stakeholder theory. Bridging these two ends is the “interdisciplinary” category. These syllabi incorporate theories and frameworks that are inherently interdisciplinary, such as circular economy, life cycle analysis or tragedy of the commons.

And unlike Raufflet (2013) who extends the business focus to the larger SES focus, we find the syllabi in our study rest squarely in the business organization unit of analysis. However, we find nuance here. Some syllabi adopt a broad approach to environmental business education, others intentionally examine multiple business aspects and/or functions, while still others follow what Rauflett coined as “integration by application”. These latter syllabi rely on the tools of the business discipline to inform sustainability (e.g. marketing to promote green products) or to examine how sustainability impacts that particular business discipline (e.g. ESG in finance).

SiBE has been faulted for lacking a cohesive core. As Wiek et al. (2011, p. 3) commented more than a decade ago, “It seems that the field is still in search of over-arching concepts that would relate and integrate sustainability competencies in a meaningful way.” In this paper, we ask, Are we witnessing a coalescence of core topics in SiBE? Some hints of this journey might lie in the developing interdisciplinary tranche. In particular, the field of SiBE, if it were to become such, might live in the interdisciplinary frameworks and theories, such as circular economy, industrial ecology, natural capitalism and the like.

Our data, too, suggest a coalescing around six types of courses. Characteristic of the narrow approach is that faculty are relying on the traditional disciplines of business (e.g. finance, marketing and operations) to address sustainability challenges. By comparison, the interdisciplinary courses draw from concepts that have largely grown and developed in response to the interdisciplinary nature of business and natural environmental challenges.

On a practical level, this classification of course categories can help business schools:

• design courses (and programs) that are more aligned with the interdisciplinary nature of sustainability, ensuring that students receive a comprehensive education that prepares them for real-world challenges; and

• business schools can compare their courses against the typology to assess whether they are providing a comprehensive education that covers the necessary sustainability concepts and skills.

In so doing, the typology can encourage schools to adopt a more holistic approach to sustainability education.

Our results suggest that faculty acquire academic training in natural science in two ways outside of a business doctoral program. First, at least 35% of the instructors of the syllabi surveyed hold bachelor’s, master’s, and/or doctoral degrees in a natural or applied natural science. They have sought focused education in these areas outside of business education. Second, given the blurring between corporate responsibility and corporate sustainability, it is likely that educators may have received formal training in corporate responsibility in their business doctoral programs, as is true for this study’s first author, and this training lent itself an avenue to explore and embrace corporate sustainability.

This interdisciplinary background among faculty has significant implications for teaching sustainability-related courses. Such diversity enables cross-disciplinary collaboration, allowing business faculty to bridge disciplinary divides and work with natural science colleagues, thereby expanding the pool of potential instructors. Institutions can prioritize faculty with interdisciplinary backgrounds or facilitate collaborative teaching partnerships with natural science faculty. This diversity in faculty expertise ultimately supports the integration of sustainability concepts into business curricula, better preparing students to tackle complex SES issues.

In short, we find it promising for students’ education that faculty who teach sustainability-related courses in business programs increasingly have formal education in both natural and social sciences. Such interdisciplinarity helps faculty train students to understand the critical role the natural environment plays for business and how fundamentally business affects the natural environment.

The significance of this study lies in its examination of the current landscape of SiBE as an emerging academic discipline. While we highlight the absence of a cohesive core in SiBE in contrast to established fields like marketing or finance, we see strong signs that SiBE is in the process of forming into a recognized field of study. This unity is evident in the six types of courses. Moreover, our study reveals a significant degree of interdisciplinarity among instructors’ educational backgrounds, at variance with perceptions that business faculty lack formal natural science training.

Wankel and Stoner (2009, p. 5) write, “To a very large extent our management education enterprise has provided the tools, mindset and ethical perspectives to encourage, empower, and justify actions that continue to destroy the capacity of the planet to support our species and many others.” The question becomes, to what extent has the current state of SiBE risen to the challenge to move from being “part of the problem to being a significant part of the solution” (p. 5)? Based on our sample of 78 syllabi, we can conclude that coverage of environmental issues has moved beyond courses in business and society and business ethics to stand-alone courses in multiple business disciplines, but still remains largely an elective to the core curriculum, and is not as consistently integrated throughout business education as early scholars had advocated for. This coalescence of six types of courses bodes well for sustainability education because it introduces and recognizes the interdependence of business with the natural environment. Unfortunately, since these courses tend to be electives rather than key components of a core curriculum, this positioning perpetuates the perception that the natural environment is apart from, rather than a necessary part of, business.

We note nine limitations. First, the present study is subject to the common limitations of qualitative research, such as the inability to generalize to large populations and the researchers’ biases (Queiros et al., 2017). Second, it represents a snapshot in time and the researchers’ ability to collect relevant data. Third, it involves self-selection bias of those who responded by submitting their syllabi to us. Fourth, we only studied US institutions, and we limited these to top-ranked programs.

A fifth limitation is that we could only interpret information about the course based on what was actually printed in the syllabi. Often this information was incomplete. For example, one syllabus mentioned “E.S.G. cases” but did not provide the cases themselves (92.2) while another that the Harvard business case list would be announced in class (153.1).

A related limitation is that we could only assess standalone courses. We could not determine the degree to which instructors are integrating sustainability considerations into their other courses, or across a business program through extra-curricular activities. While we recruited the syllabi with the missive that they be sustainability-focused courses, we observed that 18 (23%) were syllabi that reflected environmental sustainability as a small component of a course otherwise dedicated, e.g., to leadership or marketing or finance theories.

Seventh, we lacked information on the degree to which instructors taught more than one section of the sustainability course in any given semester. For example, a course would have twice the reach if the instructor taught two sections compared to one in a semester.

Eighth, we did not examine programs specifically focused on sustainability management (e.g. UCSB’s Bren School), but on traditional business education.

Finally, noticeably our study focuses only on ecological sustainability. To understand the broader sustainability dimension and its coalescence in business toward its own field, scholars would need to focus on social and governance implications of sustainability as well.

Future research can delve more deeply into content, integration, impact, and reach. First, one can extend the present study to examine content. Scholars have demonstrated that the terms “sustainability and CSR are commonly […] used interchangeably,” and the result impacts student learning and outcomes (Urdan and Luoma, 2020, p. 794). Future research could examine the 78 syllabi for lack or presence of “definitional and contextual clarity in sustainability assignments” (Urdan and Luoma, 2020, p. 799), as well as the assumptions underlying the cases and readings instructors include. We noticed that Harvard Publishing cases are popular among instructors. What are the underlying value assumptions that drive these cases? Which cases are repeatedly taught to students and what are the implications of that focus on outcomes? And in all these iterations, one could examine the differences between required courses and electives. In addition, future research could examine the evolution of corporate responsibility into sustainability courses. As we observed earlier in the paper, ethics and corporate responsibility topics are often included in sustainability courses. Future research can examine this evolution to better understand how we arrived at sustainability and, ideally, what might come next.

Second, it would be important to distinguish between subject matter contained in:

• a standalone course;

• that which is integrated in an otherwise nonsustainability-focused course; and

• that which is part of a larger sustainability-focused module or program.

Certainly, in the first two instances, it would be interesting to note what sustainability elements faculty deem as essential, given the limited time available to devote to SiBE in the respective course or curriculum.

Third, future research can examine the impact of SiBE. Currently, there exists a paucity of research on the impact of SiBE on student outcomes. To address this need, one could collaborate with instructors across institutions for a large-scale survey (before and after) to assess student attitudes, student actions and student career choices. Similarly, we have little information on where corporate sustainability leaders seek extended education and how this translates into their actions. What we do know is that they seem to have different understandings of sustainability than do faculty (Urdan and Luoma, 2020). Future research could focus more specifically on SiBE in executive education.

Finally, future research can extend the reach to compare US institutions with those in other countries, especially those in Europe, where sustainability is more embedded in the national culture.