Data points With almost a quarter of business schools experiencing sustainability challenges, it’s little wonder that a sizeable proportion believe they have a leading role to play in shaping solutions for the future. Tim Banerjee Dhoul analyses new findings from upcoming AMBA & BGA research
As University of Edinburgh Business School dean Gavin Jack remarked in a recent interview for AMBA’s Ambition magazine: “Even though the impacts of climate change are already being felt, the major impacts may be perceived to be over the horizon for many.” Jack went on to say that “attention has seemingly shifted away from climate change in the business and geopolitical spheres, but it will return, most likely with a different set of strategic tasks to implement with less time and more urgency.” For this reason, some business schools are striving to keep challenges relating to sustainability and climate change firmly on the radar. Last month, for example, director of sustainability at ESMT Berlin and recent Business Impact contributor Joanna Radeke lamented that biodiversity was only mentioned four times in the current German coalition agreement, while space travel was mentioned 11 times. Certainly, there is widespread agreement on the need to encompass sustainability in business school curricula. Among priority areas designed to prepare students for a changing job
I n a recent survey of AMBA & BGA’s global membership, around a quarter (23 per cent) of business school leaders indicated that their school is currently experiencing challenges relating to sustainability and climate change. In fact, some 70 per cent of those experiencing challenges said that business schools have a “leading” or “significant” role to play in tackling global sustainability challenges over the next decade, while 78 per cent said their institution had made financial investments to create more sustainable campuses. Examples given included the introduction of more efficient energy consumption practices, recycling schemes and pledges to become carbon neutral by a fixed date. In addition, 42 per cent of these leaders said they had limited staff travel for reasons of sustainability. However, only seven per cent of all leaders surveyed placed issues relating to climate change and sustainability among the top three challenges in terms of current impact on their school. This left it at the bottom of a list of
10 issues put forward in the AMBA & BGA survey. Admittedly, the most cited challenges are highly publicised industry concerns, including economic uncertainty (selected as a top three challenge by 57 per cent), changing market demand (cited by 45 per cent), increased competition (41 per cent) and technological disruption (34 per cent). Even so, should we be worried at climate change and sustainability’s lack of prominence among more than 100 responding leaders? After all, “the energy transition” placed third in McKinsey’s Eight CEO priorities for 2024 and sustainability’s strategic advantage was among PwC’s five areas of focus for CEOs in 2025, with 64 per cent of those surveyed viewing climate change as a moderate to serious business risk. It is intriguing, then, that this is not a topic currently weighing as heavily on the minds of those at the helm of the world’s leading business schools as it might. One possibility for this is that the pressing nature of other priorities is temporarily pushing something sometimes seen as a longer-term issue further down the list.
10 Business Impact • ISSUE 4 • 2025
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