Inspiring sustainable careers: Bridging the gap between education and workplace practices

To achieve the climate change mitigation targets, businesses need to adopt greater sustainability practices. As such, driven by the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), business schools have placed a much greater emphasis on educating students about sustainability.

However, there can be an ongoing gap between educating students about sustainability and transferring this knowledge into the workplace. Recognising the gap, my teaching practices focus on equipping students with the skills and knowledge to sustain and influence sustainability behaviours as they transition from university to the workplace. Aligning with UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and PRME, my goal is to empower students to translate sustainability knowledge into business and explore ways to overcome potentially prohibitive workplace cultures to act sustainably.

To do so, I combine class-based and industry-connected activities, including:

  • Visits to factories/warehouses/facilities for direct observation of sustainable practices (e.g., Zipform, Sealed Air, Tomra Waste, and Close the Loop)
  • Case discussions to understand how international and local businesses become sustainable, what challenges they face, and how (or if) they recover from the challenges
  • Debates and explores peers’ perceptions about sustainability (e.g., is packaging waste better than food waste?)
  • Presentations by award-winning industry professionals.

Outcomes

  • Organisations receive analytical reports developed by the students on their processes and how they can improve sustainability. They also connect with potential future employees.
  • Over 150-200 students annually benefit directly by gaining discipline-based knowledge and authentic experiences from industry visits and guest speakers.
  • Graduates have received sustainability-specific roles, e.g., waste management, marketing, and packaging
  • Graduates regularly post on LinkedIn about how they have translated their sustainability learning into responsible decisions in their workplaces.

Awards

  • Dean's Awards for Excellence in Responsible Management Education and Teaching Excellence.

Monash researchers

Leave this here so that Accordion nested does not detect this CT as not existing.

Want to know more?

Associated Unit: MGF5691 Global sustainable operations and supply chain management 

Bhattacharya, A., Au, W. C, & Croy, G. (2024). Using theory of planned behavior for developing business students as capable change agents for social sustainable development. In A. Šilenskytė, M. Cordova, M. A. Schmitz, & S. M. Toh (eds) The Palgrave handbook of social sustainability in business education (pp. 485-506). Palgrave Macmillan.