The technological community as a framework for educating for sustainability in business schools

This paper adapts and extends the technological community perspective (e.g., Van de Ven, 1993), to review and analyze the outcomes of a series of three research projects funded by the Australian Government as reported in a number of publicly available documents. The projects were designed to support education for sustainability within Australian business schools and to promote knowledge sharing between the business schools and industry around sustainability. Project participants included seven business schools and their industry collaborators. The technological community perspective, which is particularly well-suited to examining this innovative education for sustainability project, is a theoretical framework that examines evolution of innovation at the community level; this includes multiple internal and external stakeholders, and is beyond the more traditional uni-dimensional focus on organization or industry levels. This approach provides lessons with respect to complex and dynamic interactions between and among multiple stakeholders responsible for successful development and dissemination of sustainability in business schools, corporations, and beyond. Hence, this paper addresses issues raised in the call for papers for the special issue of Journal of Management and Organization, ‘Educating for Sustainability and CSR: What is the role of business schools?’ The paper addresses the questions: (1) What are the barriers for business schools with respect to integrating sustainability in the curricula; (2) What role do partnerships with other stakeholders play in such initiatives?