Is the MBA Sustainable? Degrees of Change

Abstract

How appropriate is the MBA as the major vehicle for management education in Australia as we enter this new century? This question is explored from two perspectives the context of the imperative for sustainability and related curriculum design issues. A survey of MBA programs in Australia will be reported on in terms of their relevance to sustainability criteria and the capacity to integrate these concerns with curriculum material in the MBA. The dictates of the 21st century call for graduates with an ability to develop reflexivity in action, who can broach both worldviews and have skills that can negotiate the transformations required of corporate Australia. The MBA is at the crossroads - can it regenerate through an incremental path to integration of sustainability by changing curricula, teaching and learning techniques to enable the active engagement of students with sustainability issues? Or do we acknowledge the contested nature of knowledge creation and argue with Gregory Bateson that there is an ecology of ideas in which the simple integration of sustainability to create a holistic and integrated cuniculum requires the separation from the fundamental modernism that is reflected in a wide range of assumptions that underpin the MBA and will prevent the move to genuine sustain ability? The paper explores both these options.