By Mark G. Edwards, Jose M. Alcaraz, & Sarah E. Cornell
The impact of human activities on the planet recently overshot a remarkable demarcation point. Since 2020, human-made objects and materials, or “anthropogenic mass”, now exceeds all living biomass on Earth. We have now produced more “stuff” by weight than the entire storehouse of life. Apart from its sheer material burden, this human disturbance to Earth’s natural systems is intimately related to many challenges facing humanity. The emergence of zoonotic diseases and the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing tragedy of climate change, the extreme loss of biodiversity, the displacement of millions of people and growing social conflicts due to resource scarcities are all directly connected to this rapid growth in human activity.
Given that business drives much of this activity, how should business schools respond to these challenges? What would business and management schools do if they understood and accepted Earth system science findings on how global economic activities are degrading the resilience of the biosphere? In our article, Management Education and Earth System Science: Transformation as if Planetary Boundaries Mattered, we argue that Earth system science raises urgent concerns about the relationship between business, society, and nature. We propose ways that educational institutions might respond if they were to take the science seriously.
The purpose of business needs radical reframing. Currently, economics rules the roost, as evidenced in responses to the pandemic. The debate on whether economics or social impacts should be prioritised surfaces the deeply held assumption that economic growth is the central organising principle of government policy and the dominant paradigm of business. The pandemic shows the folly of this assumption. It also highlights the primacy of a healthy natural world for both social and economic security and prosperity. Earth stewardship means embedding economic activity within resilient social and natural systems.
This scientifically based reframing has transformative implications for management education. In our article, we envision how management education would respond if it truly lived up to its scientific origins and status. Business schools that acted as if planetary systems mattered would:
i) radically reframe connections between business, society and nature,
ii) transform management education so that business engage with social and ecological challenges across multiple scales, from the local to the global;
iii) embed ethics education in all programs so that moral competencies were connected with social and environmental innovation and
iv) reconceptualise the purpose of business and of management as governance and stewardship towards human flourishing and ecological regeneration.
Most importantly, business schools that base their mission and operations on today’s alarming knowledge of imperilled Earth systems would be working to transform their core functional domains of institutional purpose, social context and engagement, pedagogical practice, curricular design, and research focus.
Via this transformation, management education would adopt “long-term temporality” in developing its purpose, and place “the integrity and health of global natural systems at the heart of economic decision-making”. It would courageously seek to address “the grand challenges of global sustainability” that can seem overwhelming, even for the most progressive business educators and managers. Business schools would recognise their responsibility to be truly innovative and confront the sustainability crises that Earth system science is highlighting.
We see these as modest, yet potentially fruitful, points of entry to inspire business schools and management educators to reframe their purposes and activities – because the state of the planet and its ecologies matter.