Education for Sustainable Development: Business School Preparation of Student Social Entrepreneurs

The research examines the state of social entrepreneurship curricula, that is, programs that combine education for sustainable development and traditional business entrepreneurialism instruction, at leading business school MBA programs in the United States. The research seeks to contribute to understandings of how sustainable development and entrepreneurial curriculum can be best integrated to enhance the training of social, or sustainable development, entrepreneurs. The research shows how sustainability leadership theories have become increasingly important to businesses and their corporate strategies, and then focuses specifically on entrepreneurial ventures to determine if any models of social enterprise education have been devised by experts in the fields of business, entrepreneurship, or sustainability. This research then shows that theories that incorporate sustainable development principles into basic business and entrepreneurial theory do exist. The field research then examines the presence of these social entrepreneurship-related training and resources in MBA curricula and shows that there is still an absence of comprehensive curricula that incorporate sustainability leadership into university-level coursework on entrepreneurship and business. The second part of the field research synthesizes the feedback of social enterprise practitioners, i.e. individuals with an MBA from a top-rated school are involved in the creation and running of social enterprise, on the efficacy of this training offered and at top-rated MBA programs and on the effectiveness of the current social enterprise curricula and how to further develop social enterprise training in these top-rated MBA programs and also in other MBA programs