SUSTAINABILITY
BIOGRAPHY Jessica Chelekis is the MBA director and a senior lecturer in sustainability and global value chains at Brunel Business School, Brunel University London. She is also a member of the school’s Marketing and Corporate Brand Management Research Group. Chelekis is an expert in marketing and consumer research, with a focus on how socio-cultural forces shape consumption patterns and values in modern societies. She is particularly interested in critical consumption studies – how and why consumers use ethical and political beliefs to guide their consumption choices
The sustainability mindset approach focuses on developing students’ eco-literacy progressively, with the critical thinking skills to re-examine their own worldviews and paradigms and the knowledge and abilities to implement action. The sustainability mindset is comprised of four content areas: ecological worldview, a systems perspective, emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence – or philosophical intelligence, as I prefer to think of it. This approach addresses a fundamental issue in embedding sustainability in an MBA programme: whatever the surveys say, students do not arrive at the start of a programme with the same levels of understanding, awareness or critical thinking skills to dive straight into the technical issues of implementing sustainability. First and foremost, our job as responsible business educators is to equip MBA students with the literacy, perspectives and intelligences to inhabit the values and motivations that will propel them into careers as business and industry leaders. Guiding students to embrace new mindsets In addition to the usual approach of addressing sustainability through a programme of business cases and challenges, guest speakers and learning content, we are introducing a workshop series to guide students in developing their sustainability mindset. It is this required workshop series that will be the foundation for our entire MBA programme – no electives or alternative options. We plan to hold three, in-person workshops throughout the academic year. The initial workshop will work on building eco-literacy and sustainability awareness. The second will engage students in critical thinking exercises focused on developing awareness of their own paradigms and ideologies, alongside exercises for them to scrutinise their own and others’ common assumptions. The third and final workshop, meanwhile, will focus on exploring sustainability in action with practical business cases. We are still in the early stages; we need to experiment with various pedagogical techniques, assess the effectiveness of our design and identify where and how we can improve. Our ultimate goal will be to redesign the MBA programme so that, rather than addressing sustainability in each of the traditional topics – finance, operations management, strategy and so on – the programme will take a holistic view so that individual modules address specific sustainability issues, such as energy transition management and innovation for sustainable impact. As well as offering a far-reaching approach to equipping MBA students with the critical thinking skills and mindset to address the wicked problem of sustainability, this also helps overcome the disciplinary silos in traditional MBA teaching, bringing together considerations of strategy, leadership and operations, for example, as they all bear simultaneously on the sustainability issues businesses face. To embed sustainability in MBA education effectively takes time and careful deliberation and can take place over some years. But starting the process is of vital importance. We have begun this journey in the Brunel MBA and while there is still much work to be done, we are proud of what we have already accomplished.
“While developing sustainability knowledge and tools is a start, it does not necessarily mean students will automatically adopt a sustainability mindset”
Ambition | DECEMBER 2024 | 15
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