Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Professor Landrum of Chicago’s Loyola University, Business Schools are spending too much effort teaching students how to run a profitable business.
US business schools failing on climate change
April 21, 2017 5.34am AEST
Author: Nancy E. Landrum, Professor of Sustainable Business Management, Loyola University Chicago
Coca-Cola and Nestlé have recently closed facilities, and Starbucks is bracing for a global shortage of coffee – all due to effects from climate change. Climate change impacts every resource used by businesses: from agriculture, water, land and energy to workers and the economy. No business will be untouched.
As a researcher and professor of business management, I have found that sustainable business courses across the U.S. do not align with the scientific consensus that we need radical change to avert disastrous consequences of climate change.
These future business leaders are not being prepared for the climate change challenges their companies are certain to face.
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Reducing carbon emissions is the most common sustainability goal for companies. Many companies do this by becoming more energy efficient and reducing waste. But, as a whole, corporate sustainability efforts are best described as business as usual, with only small gradual improvements being made. Businesses are simply failing to grasp the deep change that is needed.
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Companies need to work within this scientific “carbon budget.” There is, indeed, a small group of businesses setting ambitious targets that are consistent with the science.
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For our research, we studied 51 of the hundreds of business programs in the U.S. We found that when an introductory sustainable business course is offered, it often remains an elective in the business school curriculum. Only a few business schools offer minors, majors, certificates or graduate degrees in sustainability management or sustainable business.
The 51 schools in our study are actually at the forefront of training students in environmental sustainability – that is, compared to the majority of business schools, which do not offer sustainability coursework at all. What we found is that even these schools are doing a poor job of preparing their students for the future.
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Future business leaders must be equipped with the scientific understanding of how climate change is currently impacting business, how it will impact business in the future and the profound change that is required of business and industry.
Professors of these courses should assign readings that communicate the scientific need for businesses to operate in a more sustainable way to address climate change. Such readings should note that “substantial changes” in policies, institutions and practices are required.
Such education can help shift the focus and motivation for corporate sustainability away from legal compliance and corporate profit toward a need to repair the environment and live in balance with the natural world.
Read more: http://theconversation.com/us-business-schools-failing-on-climate-change-75905
Nancy’s study referenced by The Conversation;
Content trends in sustainable business education: an analysis of introductory courses in the USA
Nancy E. Landrum , (Quinlan School of Business and Institute of Environmental Sustainability, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA)
Brian Ohsowski, (Institute of Environmental Sustainability, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Purpose
This study aims to identify the content in introductory business sustainability courses in the USA to determine the most frequently assigned reading material and its sustainability orientation.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 81 introductory sustainable business course syllabi reading lists were analyzed from 51 US colleges and universities. The study utilized frequency counts for authors and readings and R analysis of key words to classify readings along the sustainability spectrum.
Findings
The study reveals the most frequently assigned authors and readings in US sustainable business courses (by program type) and places them along the sustainability spectrum from weak to strong. In total, 55 per cent of the top readings assigned in the sample advocate a weak sustainability paradigm, and 29 per cent of the top readings advocate a strong sustainability paradigm.
Research limitations/implications
This study focused on reading lists of introductory courses in the USA; cases, videos and supplemental materials were excluded, and the study does not analyze non-US courses.
Practical implications
The findings of this study can inform instructors of the most commonly assigned authors and readings and identify readings that align with weak sustainability and strong sustainability. Instructors are now able to select sustainable business readings consistent with peers and which advance a weak or strong sustainability orientation.
Originality/value
This is the first research to identify the most commonly assigned authors and readings to aid in course planning. This is also the first research to guide instructors in identifying which readings represent weak versus strong sustainability.
Read more: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-07-2016-0135
What I find most objectionable about Professor Landrum’s point is her demand that sustainability courses be a mandatory component of business education.
Students have the choice of whether to sign up to sustainability electives. Studying sustainability might be useful if the student wants to work for a green champion like Apple Corp. But it probably makes more sense to study business, if the student wants to work for a normal company.
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Profit IS sustainability. These ridiculous claims of climate change disaster have reached comedic levels.
The green parasites just may succeed and we will all suffer for it. They are worse than eugenics promoters.
Agree with your main objection. At university we had two mandatory courses for incoming freshman. Diversity and Critical Thinking. Diversity was a complete joke. Run by a history prof who spent most sessions talking about the failure of his marriage or moving from Mississippi to California to discover real racism. He also bragged about his power to help failing minority students. Students were completely disengaged and bored.
Critical Thinking was taught by an openly Marxist prof with a man crush on Noam Chomsky. Nothing critical ever happened in that thinking free zone. It was straight indoctrination. Students suffered through it.
I scored A in both classes just by attending and pretending to listen. Leftists always go to main force when their product isn’t selling. Something in their DNA or whatever. Not really important to know why. Just have to keep slapping them down.
Whenever I read an article like this, I like to take one claim and follow the links provided. For this one, I chose the Starbucks coffee shortage issue. Here’s what I found:
“If temperatures warm at expected rates, 80 percent of land in parts of Brazil and Central America currently used to grow the most popular type of coffee, Arabica, will become unsuitable to the crop by 2050, according to research by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture.
“…decline is predicted…buyers could very well be forced…”
And then this: “Rising average temperatures in many of these countries have already begun to shrink coffee farmers’ yields.”
OK, and actual, apparently data-backed claim. Following that link took me to this paper:
“Coffea arabica yields decline in Tanzania due to climate change: Global implications”
“Highlights
• Climate trends in the Coffea arabica growing regions of Tanzania are investigated.
• Substantial increases in all three temperature variables (Tmin, Tmax, Tmean) are found.
• Minimum temperatures have substantial influence on coffee yields.”
So, data is presented. Let’s see it.
“Based on downscaled climate models, Tanzania is projected…”
“…there has been increased attention on the substantial rise in night-time (minimum) temperatures and the effect these have on tropical crops, particularly in India and south-east Asia..”
“… a global scale, minimum temperatures have increased about twice as fast as maximum temperatures”
Links are provided, ostensibly for these articles, but all the links actually point back to the article I’m reading. Is this a new trend in providing references? However, a helpful red-tinted overlay of Tanzania shows the projected temperature increases in the country by 2050, with no supporting reference.
Then there’s this:
” there is still very little evidence that the observed changes and variability in climate patterns over recent decades have already impacted coffee production globally and particularly in East Africa. This is largely due to the fact that smallholder production systems in East Africa are data poor.” (italics mine)
Pay attention kids — this is how one admits you have no data on your topic in a peer-reviewed paper. Then the authors slide this one by:
“…several global change studies are based on interpolated climate data, such as the global gridded datasets from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/). However, for some countries and regions, including the Tanzanian highlands, the number of stations used for interpolations is minimal.”
Don’t let a lack of data on either the coffee production or temperature trends stop you from writing a good paper. Finally they get to the point:
“The objective of our study is to quantify the impact of climate change on Tanzania’s arabica coffee production.”
…with “data poor” coffee production data and “minimal” temperature data. But this doesn’t stop the authors from presenting temperature data with three decimal places.
Finally, we are presented with this graph of coffee production, showing the decreased trend since 1976 or so. But there is something odd about it. After a big step down from 1993-1995, the trend has been up, with a lot of variance.
http://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0168192315000830-gr2.jpg
To sum up: in a article purporting to show the loss of coffee bean production in Tanzania, the authors admit they have “minimal” temperature data, the bean production records are “data poor,” the biggest issue is higher nighttime minimum temperatures — an UHI signpost, if ever there was — and sure enough, the weather stations are in urban areas at the MET offices. Finally, the production trend graph showing nothing but increase since 1995 — the last 22 years.
What was the problem again?
Good analysis, James.
They act like they know what they are talking about until one digs down into the details. Thanks for doing the digging for us.
James, love to see this expanded into a full post, please send to Anthony with full links etc.