Guest Editors’ Introduction to the Special Issue: Sustainability in Management Education

Overview and Background

Welcome to this Journal of Management Education (JME) special issue, “Sustainability in Management Education: Advances and Future Directions.” We are delighted to present this topic in JME, which is dedicated to enhancing teaching and learning in the management and organizational disciplines. This special issue coincides with the 10th anniversary of the Academy of Management Learning & Education (AMLE) special issue on “In Search of Sustainability in Management Education” (SiME) and with the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day. In keeping with these sustainability anniversaries, we embark on marking the advances and future direction of SiME.

This special issue builds on an extensive body of prior work focused on SiME published in JME and elsewhere. SiME has been the subject of several special journal issues (e.g., Egri & Rogers, 2003; Mintu-Wimsatt et al., 1993; Rusinko & Sama, 2009; Springett & Kearins, 2005; Starik et al., 2010) and books (e.g., Arevalo & Mitchell, 2017; Wankel & Stoner, 2009), as well as in scores of articles and chapters in volumes not specifically dedicated to SiME.

Another forum in which SiME research flourished was through a multiyear professional development workshop (PDW) series conducted at the Academy of Management conferences from 2009 through 2018. Building community and facilitating new knowledge was an outgrowth of the positive environment these PDWs generated. Since participants within the PDWs were at different professional stages of their careers, the PDWs provided the opportunity for junior and senior faculty to interact and learn from one another. In 2019 and 2020, symposia were offered on SiME research topics to highlight up and coming work by scholars. The PDWs and symposia were sponsored or cosponsored by the Academy of Management’s Organizations and the Natural Environment division, the Management Education and Development division, the Social Issues in Management division, and the Management Spirituality and Religion working group, demonstrating the breadth of support for SiME.

Building on this work, our aim for this special issue was to develop a literature of evidence-based studies about the effectiveness of different SiME approaches to help guide future SiME efforts. To fulfill this goal, our call for articles encouraged submissions to address evidence of effectiveness of SiME concepts, resources, and efforts, rather than mere description. We sought a variety of articles, including quantitative and qualitative empirical manuscripts, theoretical discourses and models, literature reviews, and general or specific appraisals of approaches to individual SiME learning, its integration, and assessment. Last, we looked for submissions to address the following categories of (1) pedagogy methods and techniques, (2) course and program design, (3) cocurricular aspects of SiME, and (4) professionalization of SiME. In total, we received 15 submissions of which 7 were accepted for an acceptance rate of 47%. Unfortunately, one submission had to drop out following acceptance, which brought our final accepted submissions to 6.

In the remainder of this introductory essay, we will present an overview of the development of the SiME field, including a review of the past special issues and volumes devoted to SiME. Then, we review the major themes in the SiME literature, explain how the current status of the field influenced our call for submissions, and review how the submissions received responded to this call. Last, we provide brief overviews of the articles in this special issue and address future directions and challenges facing SiME.

Historical Development of SiME

It was not until the late 1980s that attention began to be given to the increased coverage of environmental sustainability in management education. Beginning in 1988, several organizations, many of them newly created, significantly facilitated research and teaching of environmental sustainability and business. These included the Corporate Conservation Council of the National Wildlife Federation (which sponsored a Curriculum Development project for sustainable business education from 1988 to 1992; the Management Institute for Environment and Business (founded in 1990), which later became a part of the World Resources Institute; the Greening of Industry Network (founded in 1991); and the Organizations and Natural Environment Interest Group of the Academy of Management (created in 1995 after a 4-year organizing effort).

In the wake of the tremendous increase in attention by business to sustainability surrounding and following the 20th anniversary of Earth Day in 1990, and the creation of the organizations mentioned above, journal special issues and edited books began to appear on what is now termed SiME.

Past Special Issues and Edited Books on SiME

The first special issue, “Environmental Issues in the Curricula of International Business,” from the Journal of Teaching in International Business, represented an important step in the advancement of international business (Mintu-Wimsatt et al., 1993), where the editors and contributing authors sought to foster creative thinking in a manner consistent with the objectives of any business school. It was suggested that if business schools, particularly internationally oriented ones, were to fulfill their obligation to produce the managers of the future, academic training in business would have to include ecological awareness. In addition to coverage of the specific issues (e.g., global warming, ozone depletion, deforestation, water pollution, pesticides and toxic substances, etc.), and curriculum design and delivery, the editors identified “faculty competence” as perhaps the most serious concern for the future of SiME. The editors believed that at the time there was a need for training programs to educate faculty in environmental concepts and issues so that they could competently teach an environmental course.

A second special issue, “Teaching About the Natural Environment in Management Education: New Directions and Approaches” (Egri & Rogers, 2003), appeared a decade later in JME. The editors as well as the contributing authors wanted to present to management educators some of the current opportunities, pressures, philosophies, programs, and techniques being developed that illustrated diverse teaching perspectives about organizations and the natural environment and to display how these innovations could influence students who would become managers. In addition to choosing articles that were pedagogically rigorous, thoughtful, and accessible, the editors identified a new “twist” in SiME. As they focused on management and the natural environment and the themes of the special issue, a question was raised as to whether the emphasis should be on managerial skills or conceptual content. While this question was not specifically addressed in the special issue’s articles, the editors argued that application of skills needed to advance sustainable practice—including team building, stakeholder analysis, systems thinking, negotiation and conflict resolution, interpretation of scientific research, and use of evidence—was an appropriate and needed approach in SiME, as was attention to topics such as critical pedagogy and management and spirituality.

While several edited book volumes on business sustainability have included one or two articles on SiME topics (e.g., Kolluru, 1994; Stoner & Wankel, 2010; Wankel & Stoner, 2008), the first edited volume focusing on teaching business sustainability appeared in 2004 (Galea, 2004). This volume’s chapters addressed an eclectic range of topics, such as critiques of traditional business education, descriptions of sustainable business courses and programs, exercises, and considerations to keep in mind when designing courses. This was followed by a second volume (Galea, 2007) that focused a bit more on case studies, exercises, simulations, and other more innovative teaching methods. The editor’s aim was to encourage faculty to design and offer courses that created a learning environment in which students took control over and responsibility for their own learning.

The next SiME-related journal special issue, “Educating for Sustainability: An Imperative for Action” (Springett & Kearins, 2005), appeared in Business Strategy and the Environment. Some of the main characteristics of education for sustainable development that were endorsed in this issue were that critical thinking and problem solving are called for to strengthen actor agency, that multimethod approaches should be employed along with different pedagogies that model the process, and that participatory decision-making processes are employed, such that learners are participants in making decisions about how they learn. While the editors confirmed their view that, while there were champions of education for sustainability who were pioneering innovative programs of research and teaching relevant to business and business education, student evaluations and feedback indicated a felt need for first-rate publications on education for sustainability and business. The editors also spoke of the need for interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability due to the complexity of the concept.

Rusinko and Sama (2009) crafted a second JME special issue, “Greening and Sustainability Across the Management Curriculum.” Their call for articles encouraged authors to offer their experiences in applying and operationalizing approaches to environmental education and sustainability within specific areas of the management curriculum. The resulting articles chosen for this issue provided classroom experiences of a wide range of scholars from around the globe and were narrated in the language of management theory and analytical pedagogy. Based on these articles, SiME apparently was being integrated across a wide range of management areas and postsecondary education levels. SiME was being defined broadly and authors’ approaches could be characterized as largely evolutionary, with some addressing the necessary conditions for revolutionary approaches. Pointing to the future, the editors argued that SiME would need to be integrated across the entire business curriculum and across all curricula in academe, as well as across all functions in organizations. One item of note was the inclusion of essays and perspectives on SiME from industry in this special issue. In general, the business sector discussed the importance of cultural change in the organization by reaching consensus and building inspired leadership. Some business leaders also expressed the need for business and academia to work in tandem as academics called for incorporating service learning and action research in SiME. Other business leaders viewed SiME as a competitive advantage for the next generation of knowledge workers. From academic leaders, it is noted that the case for environmental education had been made successfully and that it was advancing on an evolutionary rather than revolutionary track. It was contended that the shift was palpable and reflective of a changing outlook on the state of the environment and our collective capability for making substantive changes in outcomes.

A third edited volume focused on SiME also appeared that year (Wankel & Stoner, 2009). The editors attempted to provide resources that would help transform management education to be part of the solution to sustainability challenges rather than part of the problem and were encouraged by the variety of evidences of new programs and approaches. Contributions of the volume included a review of the history of SiME, a review of business sustainability degree options, and several specific examples of such programs including interdisciplinary ones and ones involving features such as action learning and industry concentrations. The editors were encouraged by the diversity, vibrancy, and sense of deeper purpose reflected in the SiME efforts reviewed.

The final special journal issue on SiME prior to this one appeared a decade ago in the AMLE (Starik et al., 2010) and was titled “In Search of Sustainability in Management Education.” The editors, who considered themselves advocates of transformative approaches to sustainability, compiled and summarized the most transformative pieces in SiME, as well as pieces that were more incremental in nature as business schools continued to orient themselves toward sustainability change. The editors argued that the need for dramatically expanding and increasing the effectiveness of SiME required that business academics continually explore questions relating to knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills; the effectiveness of various delivery mechanisms in accomplishing program goals; the relative effectiveness of interdisciplinary programs versus the ones taught specifically by business faculty; and the most effective teaching materials and delivery methods, among other SiME-related dimensions. They also suggested that a vital need existed to reach the point where attention to sustainability in business schools became as widespread and as integrated as other concerns such as profit, quality, globalization, and technology. Of critical interest here was the editors’ call for attention to the topic of technology. A decade ago SiME academics could envision significant technological changes, both transformative and incremental, occurring throughout society and education in general and in organization and sustainability management in particular.

As we reflect today on this 2010 special issue, our whole educational system and working structures have had to switch over to full distance communication and online learning due to Covid19. As these technological changes have quickly disseminated globally, it suggests that all of us—teachers and students—need to realize that technology advancements need to urgently and substantially help address our sustainability crises. A final note made by the editors of the AMLE special issue was that the SiME field appeared to need to radically collaborate with many other disciplines both within and beyond business, academically and professionally. They called for development of integrative coursework and beyond-classroom projects that produce real and beneficial results in all these fields in order to empower students to take over the instruments of societal power and influence in order to transformatively advance sustainability in their lifetimes.

The most recent edited exploration of SiME was edited by two of the coeditors of this special issue of JME. The Handbook of Sustainability In Management Education: In Search of a Multidisciplinary, Innovative and Integrated Approach (Arevalo & Mitchell, 2017) incorporated, in addition to their own substantive introduction and conclusion sections, 25 other articles on SiME theory, development, acceleration, and innovation. This collection includes offerings discussing multiple systemic and life cycle SiME topics, including service learning, the use of cases, critical thinking, behavior change, entrepreneurship, simulations, curricula design, collaboration, and many more themes. Their final chapter concludes by thoroughly highlighting the significant aspects of each of these articles in their respective subject areas and by suggesting a breadth of implications and future directions for the exploration and application of SiME in the future.

Major Themes in the SiME Literature

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many business faculty and administrators saw attention to the environment as, at best, a fad and, at worst, a threat to business. In the face of such skepticism and antipathy, an early theme that developed in the SiME literature was the need for attention to sustainability in business schools (e.g., Post, 1990). This was sometimes associated with a critique of the dominant paradigm in business education (e.g., Kearins & Springett, 2003). A few scholars articulated a “theory of action” of what SiME could and should attempt to accomplish (e.g., Rands, 1990). In general, scholarship focusing on these themes has been normative in nature.

For courses to be taught, materials need to exist and syllabi need to be created. Thus, the concept of course elements has been a major theme in the literature, with subthemes focused on course design frameworks (e.g., Rands, 2009), readings (including textbooks and case studies; e.g., Hamschmidt, 2007), exercises (e.g., Gilbert, 2003), and assignments (e.g., Bradbury, 2003). While such attention was initially normative, much of the work in this thematic area became descriptive in nature as courses began to appear and scholars began to write about their teaching experiences and frameworks of options in course and even program design (Rusinko, 2010) began to appear. As elective business sustainability courses began to become more widespread, a few schools began to attempt major innovations such as required courses, field-based courses, minors, majors, and even sustainability-based MBA programs and schools entirely dedicated to SiME. This spawned two new themes: case studies on the design and offering of courses (e.g., White & Gunther, 2009) and programs (e.g., Pesonen, 2003). Generally, these case studies were descriptive and qualitative in nature, and a subtheme in such case studies was how to overcome barriers to institutional change.

As more sustainability courses and programs appeared, other themes have emerged: historical development of the field (e.g., Rands & Starik, 2009), theoretical or contextual factors that affect SiME design (e.g., Porter & Cordoba, 2009; Richardson & Kachler, 2017), and concepts/topics that should be included in SiME (e.g., Albert et al., 2017). This work has been both descriptive and normative.

The topics and issues addressed within the SiME literature and courses have increasingly moved beyond those dealing just with environmental sustainability to include those dealing with social sustainability as well. This is in keeping with both the Brundtland Commission’s 1987 definition of sustainable development (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) and the subsequent concept of the Triple Bottom Line by John Elkington (1994, 1999). We believe that most instructors implicitly or explicitly acknowledge the importance of economic sustainability in their SiME efforts, although they likely disagree with other business school colleagues about the degree of profitability that economic sustainability requires. However, precisely what social sustainability entails is not clear, and we do not believe that social sustainability is synonymous with social responsibility, the latter of which has been a concern of managers and management scholars since at least the 1930s. More attention needs to be given to the precise scope of social sustainability, and its role within SiME, but doing so is beyond the scope of this brief historical overview.

Adequacy of SiME Scholarship

A final theme that exists within the SiME literature, but is surprisingly underrepresented, is that of impacts and outcomes of SiME initiatives (e.g., Cordano et al., 2003; Miesing et al., 2017). If teaching students about sustainability is beneficial to both businesses and society, should we not care about the impacts of SiME courses and programs? Should we not want these impacts to be as substantive, comprehensive, measurable, and as positive as possible? For various reasons, including a general lack of training in educational assessment, management scholars generally focus on getting courses approved and offered but not on evaluating their impacts. The vast underrepresentation of articles on this topic provided one of the motivations for this special issue and several of the topics suggested in its call for articles.

Articles Received and SiME Areas Addressed

This special issue sought contributions that (1) advance a greater understanding of the range and extent of SiME teaching practices, including providing evidence of methods’ and techniques’ effectiveness; (2) enhance our understanding of the major challenges in course and program design and integration and how to best respond to these challenges; (3) share research on business students’ experiences with and the impacts of various SiME practices; and (4) advance our understanding of the professionalization of the field and of its relationship to similar fields, such as responsible management education (e.g., Forray & Leigh, 2012). Our call for articles encouraged seasoned contributors and newcomers to the conversation of SiME to offer their experiences in applying and operationalizing these approaches in sustainability education.

Our call was received with encouraging results. In total, 15 articles were submitted to JME for consideration in the special issue. Thirteen of these submissions focused on Area 1 (pedagogy methods and techniques), while also addressing Area 2 of our call (course and program design). Our Area 3 (cocurricular aspects of SiME) received six articles for consideration. These articles also addressed Areas 1 and 2 simultaneously. Consequently, three articles addressed Area 4 (professionalization of SiME). Of all 15 submissions, 9 were essays, 5 empirical articles, and 1 theoretically oriented. Articles draw on many concepts, frameworks, and theories. These include the following: experiential learning theory (scenario planning), planetary boundaries framework, feminist organization theory, cognitive learning theory (threshold concepts), social innovation education (social entrepreneurship intentions), collateral learning theory (collateral teaching), systems thinking frameworks (deep learning), transformative learning theory (complementary extracurricular activities), definitional complexity (definitional clarity), deconstructive theory (breaking down SiME concepts), instrumental theory (identifying social and environmental initiatives), critical theory (critical reflection on SiME), and systemic assistance methodology (measure student decision making). The range of management disciplines included marketing and management, entrepreneurship, and engineering, among others, whereas the level of instruction spanned undergraduate, graduate, and professional/executive education.

Articles Included in This Special Issue

“Teaching Sustainability Through Scenario Planning” by Belinda Wade and Tomas Piccinini focuses on the role of future scenario planning in SiME. This is a tool used by a number of business and government organizations that the authors argue need to be presented to students to help them lead their future organizations for organizational resilience and adaptation. The article features a structured workshop developed by the lead author that has been offered to graduate-level business students. It includes a theoretical foundation for future scenario planning, a case and a list of benefits of its use, some step-by-step techniques, and an evaluation. Learning objective topics covered in the article are complexity, awareness, presentation skills and confidence, and teamwork. The article closes with some suggestions on tailoring the workshop to the amount of time instructors have available for this purpose. The value of this work is its focus on and promotion of the teaching of scenario planning, which might be a very important technique for identifying sustainability-related risks and opportunities for individuals, communities, organizations, and, perhaps, entire societies, as we enter a very turbulent future.

In “Business Schools as Living Labs” Robert Sroufe explores the potential of business school buildings as learning laboratories in advancing SiME, experiential learning, and combined performance measurement. The author utilizes a building-based learning (BBL) approach to design and deliver assignments aligned with multidisciplinary learning outcomes and correlated with the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. BBL offers an integrated pedagogy for bringing together business practitioners, faculty, staff, and students to evaluate and conceptualize existing buildings for improved overall health and performance for its owners and occupants. The BBL develops students’ intellectual competencies and decision-making skills while exposing them to sustainable products and practices. As a result, students become sustainability problem solvers as part of their MBA program. The author challenges our thinking about the potential of existing campus buildings as learning labs and pathways to solving wicked problems by exposing students to a dynamic new frontier of integrated management. The integration of BBL into business school pedagogy can provide many opportunities, which are outlined in the article, along with its challenges. Readers will likely appreciate the author’s in-depth coverage of BBL and how it enables faculty and students to work together on real issues of sustainability involving a variety of different stakeholders in the delivery of engaged learning and SiME.

In “Teaching Climate Leadership: Promoting Integrative Learning in Courses on Strong Sustainability” Rae Andre presents an argument for developing SiME courses around two key concepts: (1) strong sustainability, which focuses on having no net negative impact on planetary carrying capacity, rather than weak sustainability or mere greening, which is focused on just becoming less unsustainable and (2) integrative learning pedagogies, which attempt to promote student behaviors of autonomy, realism and practicality, excitement and anticipation, and agency and critical thinking. The author then describes a course built on these two concepts and describes the very positive reactions of students who have taken the course. Andre’s ideas offer much food for thought for SiME educators as they design or contemplate redesigning their courses.

Matthew Urdan and Patrice Luoma, in “Designing Effective Sustainability Assignments: How and Why Definitions of Sustainability Impact Assignments and Learning Outcomes,” address a fundamental issue faced—whether realized or not—by all teachers. Using student group articles as their data source, the authors demonstrate the negative impacts that arise from failing to present clear and distinct definitions of related concepts (sustainability and social responsibility) and from failing to clearly and precisely specify what students are expected to look for as they analyze the practices of an organization. All educators, regardless of the material being covered, will benefit from considering the ideas presented in this article.

Three coauthors who have previously copublished with one another (Patricia Kanashiro, Gordon Rands, and Mark Starik) crafted a provocative essay focused on the concept and practice of “Walking the Sustainability Talk: If Not Us, Who? If Not Now, When?” (It should be noted that the last two coauthors of this essay also are guest coeditors of this special issue of JME and that the regular JME editors managed the double-blind review process for this essay as well as for the final article listed below.) In their essay, the authors assert that a significant need exists for faculty who teach and research sustainability to both engage in sustainable behaviors and make such practices visible to their respective stakeholders. Kanashiro et al. suggest the significance of social learning from faculty modeling sustainability behaviors, propose ways to do so for each of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, and address the challenges faculty may face in making these upgrades. They close their essay by suggesting some implications of their sustainability practice assertions and the need for more research on the extent of faculty sustainability behavior and on the identification of both the extent of such practices and how these practices could best be communicated to students and other stakeholders in their respective networks.

“Gendering Sustainability in Management Education” by Jorge Arevalo presents the perspective that, through the integration of SiME and feminist organization concepts and practices, management education should be mandatory in higher education programs to equip students to successfully enter diverse working environments. The author, who is this special issue’s lead coeditor, develops a wealth of important and useful facets of the gender and sustainability topic. To name several important contributions, he identifies numerous gaps in the gender and SiME literatures, connects Feminist Organization Studies to SiME, forwards a framework, and suggests teaching methods or strategies, such as role-plays and a case study, that explore and integrate gender and SiME. In doing so, a comprehensive and thorough review of multiple feminist perspectives is offered. Of particular value are a pair of tables that very clearly illustrate the panorama of viewpoints and dimensions described and analyzed in the article. These represent the author’s theoretical and application framework for integrating the topic in business courses.

All six of the articles published in this special issue present arguments for increased attention to particular sustainability concepts and/or pedagogies in order to enhance the effectiveness of our teaching. Four of the articles offer some degree of empirical evidence, while two are strictly essays. We believe that all make meaningful and important contributions to the SiME field. However, the extent to which they rely on data that are treated using quantitative statistical methods is very low. This suggests that much work remains to be done in designing and conducting investigations of the impact of SiME.

Suggestions for Future SiME Practice and Research

In keeping with and expanding on the arguments presented in the last two articles, we suggest that management educators significantly broaden their perspectives on what is being taught within SiME, who is being taught, and how. Regarding what is being taught, we argue that we become far more inclusive in the kinds of sustainability topics that are included in SiME. In addition to all things climate related, especially energy technology and policy, socioeconomic issues, such as race, diversity, equity, gender, inclusion, age, population, consumption, materials, peace, violence, human habitat, autonomy, expression, health, pandemics, the human treatment of other animals, and artificial intelligence, need far more attention and consideration in SiME.

On who is being taught SiME topics, in addition to students who attend Western Hemisphere colleges, it appears that a massive expansion of online learning for all students worldwide is currently underway and will continue to expand, so SiME teachers need to ensure topics of concern to the global south and east are given due consideration in this online expansion. Even beyond that phenomenon, technological imperatives may signal that the perception of who is a possible SiME student can and should be expanded to include former students (alumni), precollege students, community members, organizations (including businesses but not excluding others), and stakeholders of those organizations, such as customers, employees, and suppliers. We also should not neglect our faculty and administrative colleagues, both within and beyond the management and policy professions, as potential SiME students, since sustainability can be considered one of the most interdisciplinary topics humans have yet encountered. Indeed, if the sustainability and SiME fields expand or deepen in the directions mentioned above, much of the planet’s human population, regardless of interest, could be included as possible SiME students.

Finally, regarding how SiME is taught, technological advancements may allow us to provide more high-quality audio and video SiME programming, such as virtual tourism, including cultural exchanges, and to address differences in capacity in producing and receiving such programming; to provide more on-site SiME opportunities to, for instance, grow healthy food, produce useful, quality hand-crafted goods via 3D printing, participate in circular economy projects, and protect and nourish local natural environments; and to focus more attention on measurement of sustainability, from macro to micro. The future of SiME is an exciting yet challenging opportunity to more closely approach its—and our—full potential!

While the articles in this issue have begun to address the gap previously identified in research on the impacts and outcomes of SiME, we believe that the field still requires much more attention along this line.

We suggest that scholars begin by reconsidering the theory of action, or logic, of SiME mentioned earlier (Rands, 1990), which has four basic steps. First, exposure to information about sustainability and business should lead to increased awareness, as well as knowledge, skills—which include abilities—and attitudes (KSAs). Second, sustainability-oriented awareness and KSAs should lead individuals to engage in ongoing sustainability learning and skill development and in attempting to apply these in organizations. Third, these efforts by employees should result in organizations changing and becoming more sustainable. Finally, increased organizational sustainability should result in minimizing damage to and beginning to maintain and even restore the health of social and ecological environments, which we argue is the ultimate goal of SiME. Reflecting on this chain of logic raises a multitude of questions, many of which were raised in this special issue’s call for articles. While some of these questions were addressed by submissions, many more remain to be explored. We believe that our research questions, and our course and program designs, should be driven by a goal of maximizing effective long-term, prosustainability action by our students. The time available for us to answer these questions and determine how to most effectively impact our students—whomever and wherever they may be—is becoming increasingly short as our planet’s sustainability crises worsen and tipping points loom on the near-term horizon.

In light of such a goal, increasing our research on the impacts and outcomes of SiME is likely to pose some challenges. These include lack of training in evaluation research on educational programs; determining robust measures of the impact of pedagogies, courses, and programs; conducting high-quality research with the small sample sizes typical of many sustainability courses; adequately controlling for the multitude of variables associated with teaching courses; and finding sufficient appropriate publication outlets and other means of widely disseminating and rapidly diffusing SiME best practices. Addressing some of these research challenges will likely require us to engage in greater collaboration with other teacher-researchers-practitioners and to add “how should I structure my course to facilitate research on its sustainability impacts and outcomes” to the already lengthy list of considerations we must address as we design our courses. Despite these challenges, we believe that the goal of creating a more sustainable society, and the theory of action of how our business sustainability courses and programs can help achieve this goal, makes it a worthwhile and indeed an imperative challenge to meet. To meet it, we invite all management educators to join with us and increasingly conduct research on the sustainability impacts and outcomes of our teaching.