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Teaching business economics for sustainability with different interests in focus
Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Education.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0045-1587
2017 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

Calls for the inclusion of ‘sustainable development’ in the business curriculum has increased significantly in the wake of financial crisis and increased concern about climate change. New teaching approaches are being developed with the expectation that students will be better equipped to address environmental and social challenges. However, there is also a concern that the concept of ‘sustainable development’ has lost the potential to address environmental and social challenges. It has been described as having become a wolf in sheep’s clothing that merely provides superficial solutions and supports the status quo, thereby taking the wind out of the sails of ‘the real’ environmentalists (Blühdorn, 2007; Fergus & Rowney, 2005). In relation to the business curriculum, education for sustainable development has been argued as being particularly challenging (Springett, 2005). The challenge is in part related to assumptions underpinning orthodox business theories. In short, the argument is that the assumption that all humans are driven by self-interest has a detrimental effect for societies by creating the assumed selfish behaviour. Research show that economists and students in economics indeed act more egoistically (Cohn, Fehr, & Marechal, 2014), although there is a disagreement regarding the effect of education, mainly because of the potential selection effect (Etzioni, 2015). I here seek to make a contribution to this field, not by adding an answer to this particular debate but by a study of educational practice in situ.  Several studies show different kinds of socialisation effects (Wang, Malhotra, & Murnighan, 2011). However, there is a lack of empirical research focusing the particular aspects of economics education that could have these socialisation effects. In this paper, I will therefore illuminate situations in educational practice where certain perceptions of appropriate actions emerge, are reproduced or challenged. Considering the current development of new teaching approaches to include sustainability in the business curriculum and the potentially detrimental effect of the homo economicus assumption, it is relevant to pay attention to the roles of a business person that are privileged when ‘sustainable development’ is integrated in business education. The purpose of this paper is therefore to contribute with knowledge about the roles of a business person that are privileged in business education when the concept sustainable development is integrated in classroom practice, and how different parts of the subject matter and/or particular classroom practices open up for different roles.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2017.
Keywords [en]
business education, sustainable development, logics approach, discourse analysis, classroom observations
National Category
Didactics
Research subject
Subject Learning and Teaching
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-150205OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-150205DiVA, id: diva2:1192942
Conference
2nd ARTEM Organizational Creativity and Sustainability International Conference, Nancy, France, 14th-16th September, 2017
Available from: 2018-03-24 Created: 2018-03-24 Last updated: 2022-02-28Bibliographically approved

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Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

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Andersson, Pernilla

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