“I am delighted – but actually not at all surprised – to see your results,” U.K.-based author and entrepreneur John Elkington says. “The U.K. has been a globally significant incubator of thinking on sustainable development, CSR [corporate social responsibility], ESG and climate solutions for decades, with things coming to a head around the time of COP26 [the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference, in Glasgow].”

Exeter in particular has been instrumental in international policy discussions. For the past several years, a team led by professor Pierre Friedlingstein has spearheaded the global carbon budget, one of the COP’s central metrics. Other Exeter initiatives, such as the Global Tipping Points Report led by professor Tim Lenton, also figured centrally in this year’s summit discussions. In fact, several of the United Kingdom’s most influential climate scientists are on faculty at Exeter, and they are part of a team of 1,500 research and education specialists.

These top global MBAs for sustainability are maximizing impact

Likewise, sustainability is deeply embedded in Exeter’s curricula, but that doesn’t make it an exception among the ranking schools. Beth Patmore, MBA course leader at Nottingham Business School (ranked 16th), points out that this is part of a broader “systemic shift” in the United Kingdom, where sustainability has also been embedded in national policy frameworks, corporate governance codes and educational standards. “[It] is increasingly seen not as a niche concern but as a foundational lens through which strategy, finance, operations and leadership are taught,” she says.

Take, for example, the business school ranking by the Financial Times in London, a popular resource for MBA applicants. It now gives roughly 20% collective weighting to ESG-related curriculum content, the school’s carbon footprint, and faculty and student diversity among the key criteria in its methodology.

Sustaining a virtuous circle

“To me, this is also a question of supply and demand,” says Frederik Dahlmann, an associate professor of strategy and sustainability in Warwick’s MBA programs. “We know that sustainability matters to our students, for their roles, organizations and future career development, because they tell us it is an important factor when deciding where to study for their MBAs.”

Almost all the programs we contacted for this piece said the same. There is what Dahlmann calls a virtuous circle that is created within this system, where faculty are making meaningful policy and research contributions, attracting students who will go on to do the same, which in turn incentivizes universities to continue to make such contributions.

But what explains this dynamic in the United Kingdom in particular? ESG has waned in popularity in the United States and Canada, with major companies and institutions reneging on sustainability commitments following the election of Donald Trump amid fears of an unfriendly business environment. There were similar fears with businesses pulling back from commitments, fearing penalties from anti-greenwashing legislation (which has since been scaled back).

According to Donald Lancaster, program director of Exeter’s MBA, the likelihood of a similar state of affairs coming to pass in the United Kingdom is low. This is not only because the U.K. government’s pioneering sustainability initiatives have broad cross-party support, but also because strong markets and talent pools have developed around them. Even prior to the election of Trump, Lancaster points out, shareholder value has long been the overriding consideration in the U.S. context. Despite many exemplary sustainability-oriented MBA programs in the United Kingdom, they operate within a different cultural milieu than in the United Kingdom and Europe.

Hugh Wilson, a professor of marketing in Warwick’s MBA programs, suggests that the reason for this cultural discrepancy may be rooted in history. “As the epicentre of two world wars in the 20th century, Europe swung towards greater social and economic equality after each,” he says. European countries have sharp memories of the problems that can accrue in a society where these social and economic factors fall out of balance. Though that postwar ethos has been diluted over time, he proposes that it continues to influence the United Kingdom’s business and educational climate.

“We depend on a socially and environmentally sustainable world; environmental and social crises tend to hit us early and hard,” Wilson says. “[The U.K.] business community is acutely aware of the risks and opportunities that these create.”

Tristan Bronca is an award-winning magazine writer and editor based in Toronto.

The post A ‘virtuous circle’ has made the U.K. the world leader in sustainable business education appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The “impact” metric was introduced to the Corporate Knights MBA ranking several years ago as a bonus, but this year is the first that it has become part of the official ranking. Corporate Knights evaluated 179 programs and ranked the top 40 for their focus on sustainability. Ninety percent of the score these rankings are based on is awarded for the content of the curriculum, and now 10% has been awarded for impact – what schools’ alumni are doing post-graduation.

The school with the highest score on this measure this year was Bard College in New York, with an impact rating of 56%. Out of 62 graduates, Corporate Knights identified 35 who are either in sustainability roles or working at companies recognized for their sustainability efforts. By comparison, the average alumni rating was 16% among other schools that made the ranking. Only the University of Vermont’s MBA program had a comparable impact rating of 52%. 

For the last three years, Bard has consistently ranked in the top five MBA programs for sustainability. Bard stands out as one of the few business schools specifically designating its MBA as an MBA in Sustainability, another being the University of Vermont. “They are not shy about putting the program’s sustainability focus front and centre,” says Corporate Knights research analyst Muhammad Talha. 

We need our students out changing the world at scale in a hurry.

– Eban Goodstein, founder of the MBA in sustainability, Bard College

Bard’s graduates have compelling stories: a schoolteacher who went on to become a vice president of ESG (environmental, social and governance) for the Americas at Deutsche Bank within just one year of graduating; the emergency medical technician who became a managing consultant at the global firm Guidehouse. Perhaps the most famous example is Chelsea Mozen, who developed the idea for Etsy to offset its carbon emissions from shipping during her capstone project at Bard. Just four years after graduating, she was the chief sustainability officer for Etsy, making it one of the first major global companies to commit to a climate pledge.

“Our students’ interests range from food to fashion to energy. There’s a lot of variability,” says Eban Goodstein, an economist and the founder of Bard’s program. He explains that the program is highly experiential. “I think of it as 20 four-day retreats spread out over two years,” he says. “It’s almost more like a fine arts degree where you are learning directly from artists.”

In Bard’s MBA, students begin working on real-world projects in their first year, often with major industry players. The goal, according to Goodstein, is not just to respond to, but entirely shift how we address – and prevent – mounting environmental and social challenges. “We need our students out changing the world at scale in a hurry,” he adds.

All of the MBA programs on the list open up a multitude of options to get that done. For many of these students, it means taking on a key corporate sustainability role at a global leading company, or launching their own enterprise with values of social responsibility and environmental sustainability embedded in the organization’s DNA. But in a different economy, the approach post-graduation might look very different.

2025 Better World MBA top 40

Take, for example, the top-ranked “large” school, defined as a program with more than 80 graduates annually. This year, the spot belongs to Centrum’s PUCP in Peru. Centrum was one of just two South American schools on the top 40 list (the other, Colombia’s Universidad Externado, jumped from 112 in last year’s ranking to 40 in this year’s).

Centrum operates in a different context than the majority of schools in the ranking, which are overwhelmingly from the Americas or Europe. The Peruvian economy is largely “informal,” associate dean Sandro Sánchez explains. While many Centrum graduates are vying for corporate jobs (about 20 graduates of the last two years landed at companies like Vestas and Schneider Electric), the majority of these students go on to work in – or start – smaller companies, including those outside the urban centres in sectors like mining and agriculture, which remain the engines of the Peruvian economy. 

This is not the same business environment where you tend to see corporate sustainability officers or climate pledges. But this is precisely what makes this training so important. It’s here that graduates’ vision for social and environmentally positive change – a vision they develop in their MBA program – will have the greatest impact.

Tristan Bronca is an award-winning magazine writer and editor based in Toronto.

2025 Better World MBA top 10 large schools

METHODOLOGY

The 2025 Corporate Knights Better World MBA Top 40 ranking examines the performances of 179 business schools, drawn from the most recent FT100 MBA Ranking, the Princeton Review Best Green MBA, the Top 40 from the 2024 Better World MBA ranking, and all current PRME Champions; and business schools accredited by the Association of MBAs, the AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) or the EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development) QualityImprovement System (EQUIS) and also signatories to the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education that opt in for evaluation. Based on publicly disclosed information on their websites, schools are evaluated on the sustainability content of their core courses and can review and request revisions to the analysis. Additionally, schools may voluntarily provide the number of recent graduates employed with impact organizations, which is worth 10% of the overall score.

The post These top global MBAs for sustainability are maximizing impact appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“It’s critical for students to engage with case studies that reflect local conditions, offer context-specific solutions and link them to global discourse,” explains professor Manoj Chiba, GIBS’ MBA director at GIBS.

This shift, he says, reflects a growing recognition of the continent’s unique business landscape, “giving students a deeper understanding of the complexities and opportunities they’ll encounter in their own markets.”

Across the continent,  business schools are embracing local narratives, turning the classroom into a space where African ingenuity and global relevance meet and changing how students see themselves – not just as participants but as creators of a more sustainable and equitable global economy.

“African business students are no longer simply inheriting frameworks from Western institutions; they are now developing the tools to shape them,” says Chiba.

Addressing climate change impacts in Africa

Europe’s colonial rule in Africa may have largely ended by the 1960s, but its legacy has profoundly influenced the continent’s modern education system. Historically, African education, from primary to post-secondary levels, has mirrored Western models while often sidelining Indigenous knowledge and local contexts. But now, African business schools are developing programs that move beyond colonial influences toward a more inclusive and relevant future. This involves not just revising curricula but also integrating African perspectives and addressing local challenges directly – including the impacts of climate change on the continent.

Despite contributing only 3.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, Africa suffers some of the most severe consequences of global warming. From erratic prolonged droughts in the Sahel region and East Africa to devastating floods in countries like Mozambique and Nigeria, these climatic shifts are catalysts for broader socio-economic issues, including migration, health crises and conflicts over dwindling resources.

By 2050, up to 86 million Africans could become internal climate migrants due to deteriorating living conditions, according to the World Bank. And Africa’s youth – 60% of the continent’s population is below the age of 25 – say they want business to respond. According to a 2023 World Economic Forum report, 65% of African youth are interested in sustainable business practices. In this challenging landscape, African institutions have an opportunity to develop sustainable solutions tailored to the continent’s specific needs.

And more are stepping into the spotlight for doing just that.

Today, the shift towards sustainability is not only timely but essential. It goes beyond business ethics to encompass broader challenges relevant to both African and global markets.

– Jackson Omondi, graduate of Strathmore University Business School 

Fostering entrepreneurship and sustainable development

This year, Corporate Knights’ 2024 Better World MBA ranking of the top 40 business schools for sustainability shines a light on this progress, with two MBA programs from African institutions making the cut: GIBS and the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (UCT), ranked 25th and 7th, respectively.

Since becoming a signatory of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education in 2009, GIBS has woven the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) deeply into its curriculum, Chiba explains. This commitment “is central to GIBS’s mission to drive businesses to contribute positively to healthier economies and communities,” he says. Post-graduate diploma students, for instance, are required to incorporate at least one of the 17 SDGs into their first-year business projects, ensuring that real-world impact is woven into academic rigour.

The school also offers specialty programs tailor-made for changemakers, including its social entrepreneurship program as well as its Corteva Women Agripreneurs program. In the CWA program, women entrepreneurs in farming engage in a blended curriculum that combines theory, workshops, field immersions and mentorship, all aimed at fostering sustainable business skills. Chiba notes that in a world of rapid change, “business education must be as dynamic and forward-thinking as the environments it seeks to serve.”

UCT’s Graduate School of Business has similarly put local realities at the heart of its curriculum by incorporating in themes like water management and transportation. The university’s Centre for Transport Studies is developing solutions such as electric bus networks to tackle the challenges of growing pollution, a warming climate and rapid urbanization in African cities. MBA students can work directly on projects such as these, using local case studies to understand and address real-world issues.

GIBS and UCT are far from the only African business schools reimagining business education that is rooted in local context while connected to global discourse. While not part of Corporate Knights Top 40, Lagos Business School in southwestern Nigeria is homing in on entrepreneurship and sustainable development in the region’s dynamic tech ecosystem, fields critical to the continent’s growth trajectory. In North Africa, the American University in Cairo is making strides in research on economic development and governance, further cementing the university’s role as a key player in addressing regional challenges.

Jackson Omondi, an East African supply chain expert who graduated from Strathmore University Business School’s leadership program, in Kenya, more than a decade ago, notes how much it has evolved. “Ten years ago, sustainability wasn’t part of the conversation, and the program was built around a narrow curriculum. The focus was squarely on business ethics and leadership, and most participants were sponsored by Kenyan corporations like Kenya Airways,” he says. “Today, the shift towards sustainability is not only timely but essential. It goes beyond business ethics to encompass broader challenges relevant to both African and global markets.”

MBAs serving African climate priorities

African universities are also gaining ground as climate leaders on the global stage, thanks in part to initiatives like Business Schools for Climate Leadership (BS4CL) Africa, which emerged from last year’s COP27 in Egypt. Launched by PRME Chapter Africa (whose goal is to develop the Principles for Responsible Management Education) and BS4CL Europe, this collaboration promises to redefine business education across the continent by putting climate action at its core.

“BS4CL Africa gives voice, advocacy and action to Africa’s unique requirements as we craft our fit-for-purpose responses to what is fast being recognised as a climate catastrophe bearing down on Africa and the world,” GIBS professor Roze Phillips told University World News in 2022. She noted that it’s in line with the saying “Nothing about us without us.”

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The six founding schools will collaborate on joint courses and research that serve African climate priorities, as well as student competitions and corporate partnerships, all focused on accelerating impact and fostering future business leaders who actively contribute to a more climate-resilient future.

The pan-African collaboration exemplifies the drive toward reclaiming agency and ensuring that African voices dominate discussions on sustainability and development. African business schools are now focusing on outcomes that benefit a diverse range of stakeholders, beyond corporate shareholders. To truly decolonize the curriculum, schools are going beyond diversifying reading lists. They are taking tangible steps to incorporate diverse knowledge sources and educational methodologies from various cultural and philosophical backgrounds.

It’s a sizeable task, as Phillips said in 2022: “We will need to question the very basis of business school education and what business schools stand for.”

Howard Thomas, professor extraordinaire with GIBS, argues that business schools around the world have deviated from their mission of creating public value, becoming too aligned with business interests and maximizing shareholder returns. That also creates an opportunity for African business schools that are redefining responsible leadership.

In rapidly evolving climate emergency, it’s a something more African youth are demanding – and more schools are beginning to deliver.

Shilpa Tiwari is an ESG strategy and communications consultant, and the founder of No Women No Spice. She lives in Tanzania and Toronto.

The post African MBA programs are reclaiming sustainability in business education appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The shift, while heartening, presents a challenge: how best to measure these programs’ commitment to sustainability and the impact they’re having on the world of business more broadly? For this year’s Better World MBA ranking, the Corporate Knights team considered two metrics: what is being taught and where graduates end up.

“Courses are the main input for an MBA program, and the impact that graduates have in the world is their main output,” says Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps. “If a business program is excelling on the sustainability dimension of these two measurements, it’s a strong signal they are leading the way fostering holistic business leaders of the future.”

Stonemeijer, who graduated from the University of Exeter’s Business School in 2018, may be one of them. He entered the program with five years’ experience in the fast fashion industry and a growing frustration with its priorities. He’d always had a thing against waste – in his early 20s, he and a carpenter friend launched a start-up, crafting wooden bow ties and tie clips out of offcuts from his friend’s workshop – and wanted to see genuine efforts to reduce it.

Courses are the main input for an MBA program, and the impact that graduates have in the world is their main output.

–Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps

“Sustainability is not just one way to approach business,” Stonemeijer says from his London office. “It is the only way.” He found a match in the Exeter program (which ranks 10th overall on the Top 40 and is in the top five for impact grads, see table below); all courses were taught through the lens of how to make business “not just less bad, but more good.”

After graduating, he worked as a consultant on sustainable strategy in the retail and manufacturing sectors before joining the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity founded in 2010 by the eponymous sailboat racer who was prompted by her 2005 solo circumnavigation of the globe to dedicate her life to promoting waste reduction and the circular economy. Stonemeijer manages special projects for the foundation, in areas beyond the classic waste triumvirate of clothes, plastics and food. He says the MBA allowed him to reframe his focus, from one industry to innovation generally, while also introducing him to the foundation, which is part of Exeter’s network of partners.

Alyssa Stankiewicz also encountered her future employer while doing her MBA, at the University of Vermont’s Grossman School of Business. Raised Quaker in a small town in the Mad River Valley of Vermont, Stankiewicz did a degree in linguistics at a liberal arts college in Virginia before going to work for American Flatbread, a Vermont-based bakery and restaurant that champions local and organic food. For a decade, she baked, gardened and worked her way up to restaurant manager. She was impressed by how well the company treated its employees – offering kitchen staff weekly massage therapy, for instance – and by the central role it played in the community at large.

Interested in this business model, she enrolled in the Grossman program with a mind to possibly starting her own company. As a weaver, she was toying with the idea of an art therapy centre. Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine she would land where she has: working for the financial services company Morningstar, where she reviews portfolios, develops qualitative rating frameworks and works to improve transparency on sustainability funds.

Sustainability is not just one way to approach business. It is the only way.

–Tim Stonemeijer, University of Exeter Class of 2018 and special projects manager at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation

“I think about this work as serving my parents, who are not financial people,” she says on the phone from the Morningstar headquarters in Chicago. “Finance can feel exclusive and confusing. It needs someone to clean it up, to decipher the language.”

Stankiewicz attributes the unexpected twist in her career to the finance professors at Grossman, who persuaded her that she had a knack for analysis. With their encouragement, she entered an annual nationwide challenge issued by the renowned Wharton School, the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, to develop a hypothetical investment portfolio that adhered to several United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Her group won. The program also introduced her to Morningstar, where she did the practicum that serves as the capstone of the Grossman MBA. She was surprised to discover that its mission – to ensure that everyday investors have the tools to understand where their money is going – aligned with her own values.

Together with Bard College in New York State, the Grossman School tops the Corporate Knights charts for alumni impact. Sanjay Sharma, dean of the Grossman program, says this is very much its goal: to have an impact not only on graduates, but also on their future employers.

As an example, he recalls a phone call he received in 2020 from Steve Phelps, then CEO of NASCAR (the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) and a Grossman alumnus. Phelps was looking for advice on how to respond to the discovery of a noose in the garage stall of Black driver Bubba Wallace at an Alabama speedway. The much-publicized incident unleashed a charged discussion about racism in the stock-car racing world.

I was starting to think about the bigger picture. I was looking for purpose.

–Jonaki Majumdar, Maastricht University School of Business and Economics Executive MBA Class of 2023, and global sustainability manager at Siegwerk

After much consideration, Phelps decided to make a plea for diversity and to ban the Confederate flag from all NASCAR racecourses: a controversial move that, Sharma says, ultimately resulted in a significant increase in race attendance. While acknowledging that NASCAR is an unlikely poster child for sustainability, Sharma cites the proverbial sustainability mountain.

“You have to take the first step, then you start to see opportunities,” he says from his office in Burlington, Vermont. In recent years, two other Grossman graduates have joined NASCAR, including the company’s current chief sustainability officer, who has committed to net-zero operating emissions by 2035.

Graduates cite the network of like-minded peers as one of the greatest benefits they derive from these MBA programs. “We have a common outlook,” says Jonaki Majumdar, describing her fellow students at the Maastricht University School of Business and Economics, the top European program in this year’s ranking. “We’re certainly not saints, but we’re also not selfish. We’re interested in the more altruistic side of life.”

Majumdar entered the Maastricht program as a self-described hard-core finance professional. With an undergraduate business degree and chartered accountant accreditation from her native Kolkata, she had worked as a risk-management and security consultant for several multinationals. She had been exposed to lots of money and power but felt that something was missing. “I was starting to think about the bigger picture,” she says from her home in the Dutch city of Utrecht. “I was looking for purpose.”

Maastricht’s MBA, which is offered in English and is available only to working professionals, is very international, with more than 50 nationalities represented in its present cohort. Ron Jacobs, the program’s executive director, characterizes sustainability as the “matrix” covering the entire curriculum, which is constantly expanding to incorporate new issues and understandings.

“Leadership is no longer about command and control,” Jacobs says, as an example. “It’s about employee health and creating a sustainable working environment.”

Majumdar is now sustainability manager for Siegwerk, a global ink and packaging firm based in Siegburg, Germany. She works on all aspects of the company’s sustainability strategy, including the circularity of its products, its carbon footprint and compliance with regulations across the many jurisdictions in which it operates. She finds the work vastly more rewarding than anything she did prior to the degree.

She describes the Maastricht MBA as the best life choice she’s ever made. “If I have one regret,” she says, “it’s that I didn’t do it earlier in my career.”

Given current trends, chances are that sooner than later, MBA programs that don’t teach through a sustainability lens will be the slimmer of the pickings.

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.

2024 Better World MBA Top 40

*As scores are normalized against the top five, the top schools are tied. We used pre-normalized scores for ranking purposes.

**Schools are tied due to having the same final weighted score.

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2024 Better World MBA – Top 10 Large Schools

*Average of 2022 and 2023 MBA graduates

Note: A large school is defined as an MBA program with over 80 graduates a year.

Methodology

The 2024 Corporate Knights Better World MBA Top 40 ranking examines the performances of 174 business schools, drawn from the most recent Financial Times list of the top-100 global MBA programs; the Princeton Review’s Best Green MBA list; the schools that made the 2023 Corporate Knights Better World top-40 roster; and business schools accredited by the Association of MBAs, the AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) or the EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development) Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) and also signatories to the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education that opt in for evaluation. Based on publicly disclosed information on their websites, schools are evaluated on the sustainability content of their core courses and can review and request revisions to the analysis. Additionally, schools may voluntarily provide the number of recent graduates employed with impact organizations for up to a 10% alumni impact bonus to their overall score. 

Correction: An earlier version of this story understated the number of nationalities represented in the MBA cohort at Maastricht University.

The post The world’s most sustainable MBA programs are producing a generation of changemakers appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Goodstein and Schleimer are both directors of a kind of MBA program that didn’t exist when they were students. The programs they direct – at Bard College, in New York State, and the Griffith Business School, in Queensland, Australia – landed in fourth and first places respectively on this year’s Better World MBA ranking. Members of Goodstein and Schleimer’s generation have witnessed a shift in their discipline that, as the Corporate Knights ranking suggests, more and more business schools are competing to embrace.

This year’s Better World MBA ranking considered 209 business schools across the world – 50 more than last year – and focused on one metric: what proportion of the core (mandatory) curriculum addresses concepts of sustainable development. While the ranking, first conducted in 2010, has historically considered the diversity of faculty and the proportion of its research devoted to sustainability issues, this year’s methodology goes back to basics, asking a simple question: what is being taught? It credits all core content relating to environmental, social and governance performance, with topics ranging from biodiversity to carbon pricing, Indigenous consultation, child labour, corruption reduction and employment equity.

Secondary consideration (for a bonus of up to 10%) was given to the percentage of recent graduates who have landed in impact organizations – defined as non-profits, Corporate Knights Global 100 or Clean 200 companies, and any company deriving the majority of its revenues from sustainable activities.

The results demonstrated consistency among the high achievers. Half of the top 10 schools on this year’s list appeared in last year’s top 10, and the top school, for the fourth year in a row, is Griffith Business School. At the same time, seven entirely new schools joined the top 40 list.

One of these was Bard College, a private liberal arts college located on the Hudson River north of New York City. Goodstein established the MBA in 2012, having joined the Bard faculty three years earlier. He’s proud to say that Bard’s MBA in Sustainability is the only one on offer at Bard; in his view, the “conventional” MBA – that either ignores sustainability or treats it as a nice-to-have elective – belongs in the history books. Ranked fourth in the Corporate Knights list, the Bard program placed first in the Princeton Review’s ranking of Green MBAs in the United States.

Goodstein considers Bard’s approach quite unusual in a country where Milton Friedman’s economic logic – of profits and shareholders first and at all costs – has held sway for so long. “Business for good is a new concept here,” he says. Many still resist the idea that the exploitation of natural and human capital on which capitalism has historically depended is actually a design flaw that needs to be corrected.

Goodstein is proud to say that Bard’s MBA in Sustainability is the only one on offer at Bard; in his view, the “conventional” MBA – that either ignores sustainability or treats it as a nice-to-have elective – belongs in the history books.

The Bard program also wants to upend demographic trends. Some 65% of its students are female, and 35% identify as non-white; scholarships are offered to first-generation Americans. Among its most impressive alumni are Chelsea Mozen, chief sustainability officer at Etsy, who implemented a carbon-neutral delivery program at the e-commerce company, and Emma Jenkins-Long, who entered the program as a public-school teacher in Vermont and is now vice-president of ESG strategy for Deutsche Bank in New York.

The inertia that Goodstein says characterizes mainstream corporate culture in the U.S. stands in contrast to the context described by Tamim Elbasha, director of the MBA program at Audencia Business School in Nantes, in western France. Elbasha, originally an optician from Syria who did his MBA in England and later a PhD in strategic management, considers the Audencia program part of a sweeping transformation. The French Ministry of Education has issued a new competency framework for business schools that emphasizes corporate social responsibility and orientation to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Elbasha says most business schools are following suit.

Audencia’s program rose nine spots on the Corporate Knights ranking, landing in 28th place this year thanks to a nearly quadrupling of its core sustainability courses. These represent a radical rethink of what business really is. One of them is called Gaia, referring to the hypothesis put forward in the 1970s positing that Earth’s living and non-living elements interact to form a balanced whole; it’s the kind of material that, until recently, would have been hard to find outside a faculty of environmental studies.

Elbasha says that one of the biggest challenges facing today’s business students is to accept that – in contrast to the traditional curriculum – “we don’t have all the answers” to many sustainability issues. Students have to learn to accept uncertainty.

For many, reckoning with overwhelming challenges turns into what Schleimer describes as a personal and emotional journey. At Griffith, Schleimer has seen several cohorts of students realize, through the program, that their personal and professional values can be aligned – a revelation that has precipitated many career changes.

Schleimer’s own awakening came when she entered academia to teach innovation strategy and realized, even in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007/2008, that textbooks on the subject were still promoting the “red ocean thinking” of cutthroat competition, compromised value and low cost. Schleimer opted to teach without textbooks. Now, as director of the MBA in Sustainability – the only MBA on offer at Griffith – she insists that all of its core courses be “values-led.” She ropes in experts from across the university to ensure that students learn to think “outside business.” She has no problem referring applicants who are looking for an “executive, corporate-style” MBA to other programs.

Of course, that breed of student – primarily motivated to do an MBA to boost their salary – still exists. Mike Valente meets them at the Schulich School of Business at York University, where he directs the MBA program and oversees the sustainability courses that make up half the total core courses. But gradually, he sees Schulich’s graduates realizing that the salary raise they’re after may not be at odds with, but rather contingent upon, their understanding of sustainability issues – or that the jobs they find post-graduation are much more rewarding than what they were doing prior.

Schulich’s Valente feels that business schools have a responsibility to shape a new kind of leader and is frustrated by foot-dragging. He sees many approaching sustainability much as large corporations have: first by greenwashing, then by isolating the subject as an elective, then by gradually introducing it into core courses.

Poulomi Sengupta, who graduated from Schulich’s International MBA program in 2021, grew up in Kolkata and studied geology before joining British Gas. There, she realized that she would be better positioned to “do the least harm to the environment” if she understood the financial underpinnings of the industry. Her employer recommended the Schulich program, with its specialization in global mining management.

Now 38 and based in Toronto, Sengupta describes the degree as the perfect bridge to a career that interests her much more. Conducting ESG research for Morningstar Sustainalytics, she is learning how to quantify non-financial factors across multiple industries. She feels the position offers a “bird’s eye perspective” of the economy that had been a black box to her as a geologist.

At 13th place, Schulich’s program landed first among Canadian schools in the Corporate Knights ranking, as it did in the inaugural 2010 ranking. Valente feels that business schools have a responsibility to shape a new kind of leader and is frustrated by foot-dragging. He sees many approaching sustainability much as large corporations have: first by greenwashing, then by isolating the subject as an elective, then by gradually introducing it into core courses.

In the sustainability course he teaches, Valente asks students to simulate the most “egregious” corporate behaviour imaginable – practising the kind of greed evident in the opioid crisis, grocery chain collusion and Volkswagen’s “Emissionsgate.” It’s an exercise in reflection. He encourages students to apply a critical lens to all facets of the degree.

There is no question that business schools are reorienting themselves. But there’s still a ways to go. This year, for the first time, Corporate Knights applied a social-purpose lens to the programs under consideration (see ‘Are MBA programs teaching social purpose?’). Going beyond the traditional pillars of sustainable performance, social purpose cuts to the heart of a company, to its raison d’être. The somewhat radical proposition puts purpose, rather than profit, at the centre of all decision-making. Not surprisingly, the notion has not yet entered the curricula of most business schools. But given the ambition of the top runners, it is just a matter of time.

Methodology

The 2023 Corporate Knights Better World MBA top-40 ranking examines the performances of 209 business schools, drawn from the most recent Financial Times list of the top-100 global MBA programs; the Princeton Review Best Green MBA list; the schools that made the 2022 Corporate Knights Better World top-40 roster; and business schools accredited by the Association of MBAs, AACSB (the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) or the EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development) Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) and also signatories to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education that opt in for evaluation. Based on publicly disclosed information on their websites, schools are evaluated on the sustainability content of their core courses and can review and request revisions to the analysis. Additionally, schools may voluntarily provide the number of recent alumni employed with impact organizations for up to a 10% bonus to their overall score. For the complete methodology, visit our resources page.

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In 2022, Corporate Knights published The Social Purpose Transition Pathway, a report that graded companies on how well they were implementing their social purpose. This year, we have carried the social purpose theme to the educational realm.

A social purpose business model goes beyond focusing on profit and considers the value that is being generated for society. In a classroom, it translates into curriculum that teaches future business leaders how to use assets, resources, competencies, products, services and influence to create solutions to society’s social, environmental, socio-economic or socio-ecological challenges. A crucial order of the day.

In partnership with Coast Capital and the Canadian Purpose Economy Project, we asked and analyzed the responses to two optional questions in this year’s Better World MBA: do you teach the social purpose business model in your core curriculum, and does your business school itself have a social purpose statement?

What we found

1. The social purpose business model is not yet widely represented in the mission statements or curricula of business schools. Most business schools do have mission statements, but clearly defined social purpose statements are rare.

Of the 209 schools in this year’s universe, 19.6% had mission statements that were weakly aligned with social purpose, and 45 schools had unequivocal social purpose mission statements.

Among the leaders receiving an A grade in our assessment is the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University, which incorporates social purpose into its mission, “Business for a Better World,” aimed at creating shared prosperity and propelling equity and justice. “This isn’t just a forward-looking statement; it’s a dedication to cultivating business leaders who can effect meaningful change.”

For the question about curriculum content, of the 44 MBA curricula we reviewed, almost half had some social-purpose-related material, but only two schools contained sufficient evidence of social purpose content in their course descriptions to merit an A grade in our assessment. Those leaders included Griffith in Australia (also our top-ranked program in the Better World MBA this year) and Frankfurt School of Finance and Management.

2. The social purpose business model is widely misunderstood by business schools and is often conflated with an emphasis on sustainability performance, triple-bottom-line accounting, adherence to ethical standards and other non-financial metrics of company performance that do not by themselves make a purpose-driven company.

Social purpose course integration scoring and results

Social purpose statement scoring and results

Read the full Better World MBA methodology, including social purpose criteria.

Ralph Torrie is director of research at Corporate Knights. Sanna Uppal is a research analyst at Corporate Knights.

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Previous Top 40 MBA Rankings

2021 Better World MBA

Better World MBA: Top 40 ranking

2020 Better World MBA

2020 Better World MBA ranking results

2019 Better World MBA

2019 Better World MBA results

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Laudable, say youth activists, sustainable business leaders and those tracking school performance, but still not good enough to equip tomorrow’s corporate leaders for purpose beyond profit.

“The pace of change is definitely not as fast as it should be given the climate crisis and the social crisis we are in, and the ambition is not high enough,” says Maxime Lakat, executive director of Re_Generation, a youth-led campaign for business schools and companies to incorporate human and ecological wellbeing in decision-making.

No less impatient is Mette Morsing, head of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education, the largest global initiative on transforming leadership to address the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “We know what to do, but progress is slow,” says Morsing, whose organization was founded in 2007 and now has 880 business school signatories. “If you look at business school curriculum, it is still very much driven by an agenda set in another time.”

Including purpose, not just profit, means business schools must prepare a different kind of future corporate leader.

“We want [MBA students] to think not just about profit maximization, shareholder supremacy and short-termism,” says Morsing. “We want them to think long-term, because that is what business needs – to think stakeholder orientation and to think about society at the centre of the stakeholder model, not the corporation.”

As schools reimagine themselves, the corporate-sector response is sometimes paradoxical: eager for a new generation of sustainability leaders but not always translating that aspiration in job postings.

“There is a gap between what is being taught and a company’s human resources and talent acquisition department knowing what is being taught,” observes Bernt Blankholm, founder and chief executive officer of Highered, the career arm of the European Foundation for Management Development, a global business school network. “I wish the recruitment industry would pay better attention to what is being taught,” he says. Too often, he adds, chief executive commitments on sustainability fail to trickle down to job descriptions for operational positions at the firm.

That said, businesses are clearly keen for school curricula that embed sustainability in core courses.

“There is no CEO of a company tomorrow that cannot understand sustainability,” predicts Tim Moerman, sustainability and ESG director for global brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev in Europe. He argues that MBA students, no matter their focus (finance, marketing or supply chain), must be well-versed in carbon emissions, packaging and water, for example, and their social and environmental impact. “If business schools don’t provide these kinds of competencies, students will not have jobs,” he warns.

The pace of change is definitely not as fast as it should be given the climate crisis and the social crisis we are in, and the ambition is not high enough.

-Maxime Lakat, executive director of Re_Generation

Among schools reimagining their MBA programs (see 2022 Better World MBA Top 40 ranking), common patterns emerge: increasing integration of sustainability in core courses, research relevant to the SDGs, and expanded opportunities for students to work with underserved communities.

At the Berlin-based European School of Management and Technology (ESMT), a private non-profit business school, 26% of fulltime MBA content links to ethical, social and environmental issues, including relevant case studies, according to the school. Students can work on social-impact projects at the school’s FUTURE Institute for Sustainable Transformation. In a boon for research, ESMT this year announced industry-funded professorships in sustainable finance, accounting impact measurement, circular business, and energy markets and transition.

“Sustainability is something that is at the core of the survival of the competitiveness of the company,” says ESMT president Jôrg Rocholl. “[Sustainability] now is a fundamental part of the strategic development of a company relating to all markets, from capital to labour, where new employees only want to work for companies that are truly sustainable.”

But are all schools doing enough?

“The answer is clearly no,” says Peter Bakker, president and chief executive of the Switzerland-based World Business Council for Sustainable Development. “I know business schools are moving, and many have added sustainability elements to their curriculum,” says the former global company CEO. “But in the core of the current business curriculum, it is still shareholder value that beats the drum.”

If you look at business school curriculum, it is still very much driven by an agenda set in another time.

–Mette Morsing, head of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education

Reinforcing the profit focus, he observes, are rankings that reward a business school for MBA salaries two years after graduation. “Where you can get the best incomes is at Goldman Sachs and other firms on Wall Street,” says Bakker. “It is not going to be at some sustainability job somewhere.” He calls for a “system-wide conversation on ‘How do we actually measure how much impact a particular MBA has?’”

One alternative is a new global, student-driven assessment that rates, not ranks, a school’s commitment to tackling society’s big problems. In five categories, the Swiss-based Positive Impact Rating (PIR) system groups schools by their level of progress in demonstrating social impact.

Students, positioned as key stakeholders in a school’s mission, rate its curriculum, ped-agogy, student support, culture and societal engagement. They also assess whether schools are living up to their aspirations, identifying what they should do less, or more, of to deliver impact. “Students are right there [at school], and you can involve them,” says Katrin Muff, president of PIR and director of the Institute for Business Sustainability. “Students are amazing change-agents for schools.”

I know business schools are moving, and many have added sustainability elements to their curriculum, but in the core of the current business curriculum, it is still shareholder value that beats the drum.

-Peter Bakker, president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development

Muff, who hopes to expand PIR to 100 schools next year from 46 currently, concedes that progress takes patience. “There are significant barriers to change, much more in the business school and university setting than business.”

One of those barriers is the academic reward system that credits discipline-focused faculty for the number of peer-reviewed citations.

“When we evaluate faculty for hiring or promotion and tenure and salary increases, how often are the criteria being looked at even asking for faculty contributions in terms of social purpose?” asks Wharton School business professor David Reibstein, a board member of the Responsible Research in Business and Management network, which promotes academic work that contributes to social good. “We really need to change that [citation] impact measurement.”

Amid calls for purpose-driven business education is a growing recognition of the role of systems thinking to effect change.

“Business schools are the embodiment of our inability to think in systems; there are many silos,” says Jury Gualandris, a professor of operations management and sustainability at Ivey Business School, whose purpose statement now reads “inspiring leaders for a sustainable and prosperous world.”

As leader of Ivey’s Centre for Building Sustainable Value and its sister organization, the Network for Business Sustainability, Gualandris sees the potential to harness the centre’s interdisciplinary research focus and the network’s problem-solving agenda to tackle complex problems from multiple perspectives. “How do we transition from a silo approach to knowledge to a more integrated approach?” he asks.

Gualandris reflects on how “impact” is not a buzzword in the school’s current material, “but it should be. It communicates well the intention behind what we do.”

In fact, intention, communication and system-wide collaboration will all need to align if business schools are to remain relevant in training tomorrow’s sustainability-savvy leaders.

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The answer, a strong yes, took shape with a willingness to further embed the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into course content and expand collaborations with non-business researchers also interested in environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. That strategy to go deep on curriculum and wide on research is a theme that resonates through the 2021 Corporate Knights Better World MBA Ranking.

“The pandemic, for me, changed everything,” says Stephanie Schleimer, MBA director of Australia’s Griffith Business School, which took top spot in this year’s top-40 Better World ranking for the second year in a row. She adds: “It was this global awareness, for the very first time, that we are fragile as a society and [however] anyone would like to argue about COVID, in the end it is related to our fault as a society and our relationship with our planet and our natural environment and species.”

In the past year, Griffith faculty analyzed the Master of Business Administration’s core courses, already rich in sustainability topics, probing what was missing relative to the UN SDGs. Accounting, for example, became “accounting for accountability,” with students taught to read a balance sheet, as usual, but also how to value natural resources, including water consumption.

The school expanded collaboration with academics from other faculties to address global crises whose solutions are beyond the reach of one discipline.

In 2020, the school also almost doubled the number of publications on sustainability and ESG compared to a year earlier.

At York University’s Schulich School of Business, the top Canadian entry and fourth overall in the top-40 list, mounting concern about the climate crisis led to a decision to elevate sustainability as one of eight core areas in the MBA, starting fall 2022. Sustainability electives and specializations have been offered since the 1990s.

“We are looking at a watershed moment as far as recognition of the emergency of environmental degradation,” says interim dean Detlev Zwick. “We are a business school, and we are not advocating an end to capitalism; we need to be at the forefront of developing knowledge and approaches to save capitalism and the environment.”

With designated space now allocated for them, sustainability-conscious professors in real estate, ethics and other subjects work alongside each other at the school. “There is going to be very interdisciplinary work done and hopefully a lot of outreach to other faculty where similar questions are asked with a different lens,” says Zwick.

Cross-fertilization opportunities extend to MBA students who can take electives at York’s Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change. With its raised profile, sustainability becomes “the right platform” to expand interdisciplinary research, says Zwick, noting recent faculty success in landing Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grants on corporate performance in ESG topics.

A similar pattern of collaboration applies at Griffith, where business students take electives offered through the university’s International Water Centre and business professors participate in multi-pronged, interdisciplinary research on climate change, civic engagement and social impact.

Interdisciplinarity comes naturally to the University of Vermont’s Grossman School of Business, eighth this year and a consistent top-10 Better World performer for its Sustainable Innovation MBA (SIMBA). Three Grossman faculty members are fellows at the university’s Gund Institute for Environment, whose director lectures in the business school, says SIMBA program director Caroline Hauser. Grossman recently hired a new faculty member with expertise in corporate sustainability strategies that add value by solving environmental problems.

This fall, the SIMBA program enrolled 47 students, the largest cohort in its eight-year history. Over the past year, the school added a course in data analytics tailored for sustainable businesses and, given the Black Lives Matter awakening, integrated identity themes into a course on leadership and teamwork.

“Since business schools started, being a leader has been defined in one specific way: the straight white male archetype,” says Hauser. “It’s really important to expand your idea of what a leader looks like.”

Meanwhile, recent program accreditation changes promote the enrichment of ESG content and cross-disciplinary cooperation. In 2020, AACSB International, a global accrediting body for business schools, identified societal impact in four of nine accreditation standards, with schools encouraged to “demonstrate how their programs, faculty, and learners will innovate to positively impact society,” president and CEO Caryn Beck-Dudley stated in an email.

For Switzerland’s University of St. Gallen, in ninth place in the top-40 list, doubling down on sustainability and SDG commitments is a top priority. School leaders spent the past two years assessing MBA content for coverage of corporate social responsibility and sustainability themes, concluding that they were fully incorporated in some courses but not in others. The refreshed MBA, set for fall 2022, now links to the UN’s SDGs.

Recently arrived MBA director Amanda Shantz, from Grimsby, Ontario, aims to build on the renewal. “What I would like to do is be a little bit more proactive when it comes to threading sustainability through the curriculum,” says Shantz, also noting the importance of gender, diversity and inclusion. “We have a really great opportunity to make change happen in business school.”

Institutionally committed to SDG principles, St. Gallen is home to more than 30 independent research institutes and centres that draw on various disciplines. Between 2015 and 2019, says Shantz, 87% of faculty journal articles were SDG-related.

Earlier this year, young academics at St. Gallen added momentum by establishing an “impact scholars’ community” to pursue multidisciplinary research related to the UN SDGs. “They want to create synergies across institutes and strengthen the collaborative research culture,” says Shantz.

Some schools actively encourage academics to escape discipline silos. The Netherlands’ Maastricht University School of Business and Economics identifies sustainability as one of three research priorities through 2025, with modest incentives (funding to host a conference or reduced teaching loads) for professors who look beyond their discipline.

The recent incorporation of two institutes on sustainability and governance into the school supports its ambition to deliver impact on global issues, says MBA director Boris Blumberg.

“Of course, [sustainability] problems are complex, the solutions are not clear, [as] there are many opinions,” he says. “And that is exactly what universities and business schools are there for: to put their energy into getting ideas on how to solve those complex problems.”

Jennifer Lewington is an intrepid reporter and writes regularly on many topics, including business school news.

The post The world’s most sustainable MBAs think global and teach local appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Download the complete Top 40 Better World MBA Excel scorecard

About the methodology

The 2021 Corporate Knights Better World MBA top-40 ranking examined the performances of 147 business schools, drawn from the most recent Financial Times list of the top-100 global MBA programs; the schools that made the 2019 Corporate Knights Better World top-40 roster; and business schools accredited by AMBA, AACSB or EQUIS and also signatories to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education that opt in for evaluation. Based on publicly disclosed information on their websites, schools are evaluated on seven metrics and then given the opportunity to review and request revisions to the analysis. The performance indicators (with weighting in brackets) are: core course integration of sustainability (30%), research publications per faculty member on sustainability topics in calendar year 2020 (20%), percent of total faculty publications in 2020 on sustainability topics (20%), number of citations per faculty for those publications (10%), sustainability-focused research institutes and centres (10%), faculty gender diversity (5%) and faculty racial diversity (5%).

See full methodology for more information.

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