BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
T o take care of business and ensure its personification of the Earth, and she has therefore become a natural choice for those seeking to preserve the environment; not least after the Gaia hypothesis – a theory centred on the mechanics of a complex system that shapes the Earth's biosphere and maintains it as a fit environment for life – came to prominence in the late 1970s. At Audencia, Gaïa aims to further multidisciplinary understanding to help students and business take better care of the Earth. As environmental movements and awareness gather pace, it has begun by offering a programme for business students within Audencia’s Grande École master’s in management programme, as well as executive education modules for companies. longevity, we must take care of the Earth. That’s the message of Audencia’s new school for ecological and social transition, Gaïa. In Greek mythology, Gaia is the The school is headed up by Audencia professor José Maillet, who has a firm focus on climate solutions. The course he developed on economics and energy transition in 2019, for example, has now been integrated into the basic knowledge base of Audencia students and taken by more than 1,000 participants. In this interview, Maillet tells Business Impact more
of the relevance of a transversal education, combining hard sciences (physics, climatology, biology), human sciences and management sciences. In the end, 193 out of an intake of 550 students joined the Gaïa course in September. A recent survey shows that a large number of first-year students want to join this course next year. It is therefore very likely that we will have even more Gaïa students in 2023.
Do you think a programme like Gaïa could or should become a mandatory part of the Grande École master’s in management programme?
about the programme for students, its aims and the responsibility of business education towards addressing environmental concerns. What is the problem that the Gaïa programme is trying to solve in business education? The devastating consequences of global
“We still need to understand the world around us to take care of it”
The teaching of ecological and social transition topics is not new at Audencia. Students can choose the ‘CSR Track’ in their first year, but whatever track
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they choose, all students follow a compulsory course of 24 hours [on these topics] in the first year of the Grande École programme. By the end of this course, they will already have a clear vision of the major changes to come. The specific aim of Gaïa is to allow students motivated by transition subjects to go faster and further, to experiment and ultimately offer them a truly
warming, the collapse of biodiversity and the widening of inequalities (to name a few) place us in an emergency
situation and oblige us, at the same time, to accelerate and to make the choice of a certain form of radicality. This is the whole point of Gaïa, the first school of ecological and social transition backed by a business
school. Gaïa is not just a programme for Audencia students; this is a school that caters to a much wider audience. Audencia employees, companies and many of its stakeholders already benefit from Gaïa's expertise. Further programmes will appear in 2023 for students from a wide variety of backgrounds. The new programme at Gaïa is an optional track on the Grand École master's in management programme. What proportion of Grand École students have chosen this in the programme's first year, and how do you expect this number to change over the coming three years? Initially, we estimated that about 10 per cent of our intake of 500 students would be motivated by the Gaïa course [available in the Master 1, or M1, segment of the Grande École programme]. But as early as February this year, while the programme was in preparation, we discovered growing enthusiasm from Audencia students for these topics. All the recent major climatic events – the megafires, the floods, and now the war in Ukraine – have made many students aware
transformative experience. Audencia does not aim to train only managers of ecological and social transition. Other professions with strong technical expertise remain essential to the implementation of a successful ecological and social transition. For example, the school trains highly technical financial experts, capable of integrating environmental and social issues into management tools. On the other hand, at Gaïa we train ecological and social transition managers with a solid background in finance, making it possible to take on board the necessary changes in this sector. Both sets of expertise are complementary. This kind of synergy already exists in certain disciplines. For instance, today's biology research needs not only biologists, but also computer scientists with knowledge of biology to produce more relevant results. It is this kind of synergy between technical experts who understand Gaïa topics and managers of ecological and social transition that we seek to develop.
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