Educating Responsible Business Leaders: Organizational Hypocrisy in British Universities’ Commitment to Environmental Sustainability Education

Czarnecka, Barbara and Baxter, Katherine Jane and O'Rourke, Grace (2025) Educating Responsible Business Leaders: Organizational Hypocrisy in British Universities’ Commitment to Environmental Sustainability Education. Journal of Management Education. ISSN 1052-5629

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Abstract

Abstract This study examined the commitment of British universities to educating responsible business leaders capable of addressing grand challenges related to environmental sustainability. Specifically, it investigated the extent to which environmental sustainability topics are embedded in the course descriptions of business-related programs, and how these descriptions relate to universities’ formal commitments to sustainability and selected organizational characteristics. This is the first study to provide a systematic analysis of 2,758 business-related courses offered by all British universities, thereby contributing comprehensive new insights to the ongoing debate on education for environmental sustainability. The analysis focused on evaluating both the frequency and depth of integration of environmental sustainability topics within course descriptions. Findings indicate that all universities regardless of their formal sustainability commitments or organizational characteristics—offer a similar amount of sustainability-related course content. Notably, a university’s formal commitment to sustainability at the organizational level does not correlate with a greater inclusion of environmental sustainability in course content.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information and Comments:	© The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed.
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Business, Law and Criminology > Liverpool Hope Business School
Depositing User:	Katherine Baxter
Date Deposited:	10 Oct 2025 14:53
Last Modified:	10 Oct 2025 14:53
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/4771

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