Sustainability and Australian Undergraduate Management Courses

Abstract

The academic literature arguing that there is an urgent requirement for businesses to become more sustainable is large and rapidly expanding. There is also a demonstrated need for managers to develop a better understanding of sustainability and the appropriate strategies required to improve business sustainability. In addition, there have been international calls for educators to address sustainability in their programs. The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which business sustainability is being incorporated into undergraduate business and management courses in Australian universities. The high percentage of international students enrolled in these courses suggests our findings have implications beyond the Australian context. The findings demonstrate that more than half of Australian universities did not explicitly identify sustainability as part of their business/management curricula and those universities that did address sustainability did so, in most cases, only in a limited way.