Sustainable Change: Education for Sustainable Development in the Business School

This paper examines the implementation of education for sustainable development (ESD) within a business school. ESD is of growing importance for business schools, yet its implementation remains a challenge. The paper examines how barriers to ESD's implementation are met through organisational change as a sustainable process. It evaluates change brought about through ESD in a UK-based business school, through the lens of Beer and Eisenstat's three principles of effective strategy implementation and organisational adaptation, which state: 1) the change process should be systemic; 2) the change process should encourage open discussion of barriers to effective strategy implementation and adaptation; and 3) the change process should develop a partnership among all relevant stakeholders. The case incorporates, paradoxically, both elements of a top-down and an emergent strategy that resonates with elements of life-cycle, teleological and dialectic frames for process change. Insights are offered into the role of individuals as agents and actors of institutional change in business schools. In particular, the importance of academic integrity is highlighted for enabling and sustaining integration. Findings also suggest a number of implications for policy-makers who promote ESD, and for faculty and business school managers implementing, adopting and delivering ESD programmes