Engaging with the contradictions of capitalism: teaching ‘sustainability’ in the business school

We live in an era of environmental and social crisis. Humanity’s inventiveness has over the past two centuries created unimaginable wealth for a small part of the world’s population; however, this has come at a huge environmental cost in terms of biodiversity loss, ocean acidification and climate ch...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wright, Christopher, Nyberg, Daniel
Format: Book Part
Language:English
Published: Routledge 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1423753
Description
Summary:We live in an era of environmental and social crisis. Humanity’s inventiveness has over the past two centuries created unimaginable wealth for a small part of the world’s population; however, this has come at a huge environmental cost in terms of biodiversity loss, ocean acidification and climate change – degrading the very ecosystems upon which we depend as a species. In order to be relevant in the future, business schools need to play a central role in confronting this most critical of issues; however, much of what passes for ‘sustainability’ education remains wedded to a defence of the system that has generated this crisis – free-market capitalism. Naïve best-case scenarios are promoted to justify continuous economic growth and consumption, albeit in a marginally less unsustainable fashion. In this chapter we argue that we are facing a far more profound sustainability challenge.