Business versus sustainability? A qualitative study focused on Swedish business students’ perceptions of business sustainability and its relation to action competence as part of UN’s Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)

Abstract

Across the world it is recognized that business have to become more sustainable. Different sustainability initiatives have started to emerge in educational settings, but still few educators are able to graduate business students with skills allowing them to manage the complexity of sustainability within businesses. At the same time has Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) been recognized as one key strategy for pursuing sustainable development and the concept is currently used as inspiration for new initiatives. The Swedish 2011 educational reform is one recent reform adjusted for ESD, but still few studies have investigated what effect ESD aspects have had in current learning for Swedish students. As ESD refer to knowledge, attitudes and empowerment at its absolutely core this study have focused on how business students perceive sustainability within business through interviews, and analyzed what effects these perceptions have for students’ empowerment. The result was divided into both common aspects and three categories to recognise the general similarities but also internal differences. After analyzing the result with the concepts of ESD, Foucault’s power-knowledge, and Robertson’s glocalization it is concluded that there is a consistently and uneven understanding of the three aspects of sustainability which hinder the students from getting empowered to act for sustainability within the field of business. It is further recognized that neither of the students could describe what economic sustainability is, and argued that a different teaching approach to economic aspects of sustainability would enable the students to better understand and act for sustainable business.