"Whether it's called sustainability education or not, business people are definitely looking for the skills you get from courses in sustainability," says Anita Roper, director of sustainability at Alcoa. "It gives you the capacity to think holistically, instead of thinking only like an economist or a human resources director or an engineer."
Roper's job description is a good indicator of just how much holistic thinking is becoming a requirement in some parts of corporate America. "To put is simply, my job is to integrate sustainability into Alcoa," she says.
Specifically, that means identifying the measurement tools, such as those included in annual sustainability reports that the company examines, to determine whether it is making progress toward its sustainability goal. Over the past decade or so, such reports have become de rigueur. More than 2,000 companies now issue them, according to Thomas Gladwin, a professor at University of Michigan Business School. The Beyond Grey Pinstripes project recently bestowed its lifetime achievement award on Gladwin.
Inside Alcoa, Roper says, integrating sustainability means developing programs on what she calls a "lifestyle scale" for the company's employees. "Sutainability isn't a nine-to-five thing," she says.
Her job also requires her to examine how to work with Alcoa's stakeholders in a sustainable manner. That's important, both Chapple and Roper say, because multinational corporations are increasingly focusing on the needs of all of their stakeholders, especially in the communities where they are located. As a result, it follows that MBA programs wanting to attract students of the caliber that go on to run Fortune 500 companies need to incorporate sustainability education into their course work. According to Beyond Grey Pinstripes, they are.
"What we are seeing is more emphasis on how corporations interact with communities. Business school education is catching up, and a solid trend that's taking root is the notion of business as a stakeholder in society," Chapple says.
Roper is convinced that the trend toward the greening of graduate business education is not going to fade any time soon. The skills it teaches are ones corporations find they increasingly need. "Big picture thinking and engagement with different types of people, not just your own with help with that thinking," she says.
The move toward green MBA programs will not be complete, however, until more universities offer them and until required courses in these programs include the teaching of environmental and social impact management, Beyond Grey Pinstripes poins out. Only then will every student who graduates with an MBA have to examine those issues.
And it's becoming increasingly important that they do. "At the end of the day," Roper says, "sustainability is a business philosophy."
++++
Visit Beyond Grey Pinstripes for a list of the top schools:
FROM Lohas Journal's Factbook Edition, a SustainableBusiness.com Content Partner.
