New Challenge for Business Schools: Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability

In September 2015, GNAM (Global Network for Advanced Management), in collaboration with two affiliated centers at Yale University (Yale Center for Business and the Environment and the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication) and WBCSD (World Business Council for Sustainable Development), conducted a global survey of knowledge and views on environmental sustainability and climate change, career choices, and business school education. Data was collected from a survey distributed to participants from 29 business schools located in 25 countries on five continents, representing approximately 17,600 students globally. These business schools comprised the 27 members of GNAM, as well as two additional schools: Duke Fuqua School of Business (USA) and MIT Sloan School of Management (USA).

RBS, as one of the Asian members in GNAM, was invited to participate in the survey. RBS MBA students’ active engagement made its feedback rate rank the third among 27 member schools, which not only contributed to comprehensive data of values and opinions of rising business leaders from emerging economy, but also showed RBS students’ commitment to leadership duties and global development issues.

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The investigated areas were students’:
1.Knowledge about climate change and other sustainable issues;
2.Opinions on how these issues will impact business;
3.Considerations of companies’ environmental performance in career choices;
4.Impressions of how well business schools prepare students to navigate issues at the intersection of business and the environment.

Issues related to climate change and environmental sustainability are critical to the future of business and neither companies nor business schools are doing enough to address them according to the