Using cross-disciplinary learning to create the next generation of Sustainable Business leaders

“If we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up where we’re heading”[1]. Where we are heading is climate and ecological catastrophe. We are at a tipping point, where we need to rethink the way our society as a whole operates. Young people will be taking the blunt of climate change, and therefore will play a central role in the fight towards a sustainable, socially just, and prosperous future. However, are students prepared to lead this transformation? If not, how can we empower them to become changemakers and create true systemic change? Before we answer these questions, we need to take a step back and analyze how our society as a whole operates.

John Fullerton, in his groundbreaking white paper entitled: “Regenerative Capitalism”, proposes a rethinking of our current capitalist system by applying universal principles and patterns of systemic health grounded in living systems such as bacteria and human beings, non-living systems such as hurricanes and transportation systems, and societal systems such as monetary systems and economies[2]. His work is grounded on the concept of “holism”, which Jan Smuts defines as “the tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution”[3]. This concept is applicable everywhere in the natural world: from the formation of water all the way to the functioning of the human body. Unfortunately, humanity has gotten away from ecology’s fundamental holistic functioning in favor of a reductionist and mechanistic worldview. Such a worldview is characterized by the belief that “everything in the world can be broken into separate parts with little or no reference to the patterns of relation amongst those parts.”[4] This reality is ever-present in the modern world and is at the heart of our current ecological crisis. Humanity operates within a greater, more complex whole, but acts as if the modern economy of developed countries and the biosphere are two separate parts with no interconnected feedback loops. This assumption is proven false[5], but yet we act as if humans were above the natural world. There is an omnipresence of this kind of behavior in private sector organizations which manifests itself through pollution and incessant waste, amongst many other factors. What are other, less obvious areas in which we see this kind of thinking permeate? 

One notable and highly ironic example of where this worldview has ingrained itself is the world of business academia, of which I am a part, as a student at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management. Management schools in Canada typically offer traditional and ultra-segmented programs such as finance, accounting, marketing, etc. but very few offer integrated programs that involve some form of cross-disciplinary learning. The Canadian Business Youth Council for Sustainable Development, an organization of which I am a part, which connects the 8 most active student run organizations on sustainable business across Canada, set out to research the ecosystem of integrated management programs in universities across the country and was deeply disappointed by its findings. [6] McGill university is one of the only universities in Canada that provides this kind of integrated program in their faculty of management. Entitled “Managing for Sustainability”, it is a joint program between the Management, Geography, and Environment faculties which provides management students with a variety of perspectives around sustainability and the ecological crisis. Unfortunately, even this niche program is extremely limited in its cross-disciplinary scope.

What does this lack of cross-disciplinary education and holism in management schools imply?

The ecological crisis cannot be fought in silos. It cannot be fought by the private sector alone, by the public sector alone, or the plural sector alone. It requires the highest degree of collaboration and holistic thinking. Business students can no longer go into the world perpetuating the status quo, and the ones that do want to become changemakers cannot go about this transformational change with a siloed understanding of the problem. Universities have an opportunity to embrace holistic thinking in management faculties to give young people the wide-ranging tools and perspectives to fight for a sustainable, socially just, and prosperous future. As sustainability is quickly becoming more and more of a focal point for management faculties across the country, now is the time to act, and student groups are extremely well poised to promote this cross-disciplinary approach to changemaking. Student-run, sustainable business organizations in management faculties act as integral parts of the structure of universities, while still operating outside all of the administrative and bureaucratic confines of a higher educational institution. They have a unique opportunity to promote a holistic approach to fighting the ecological crisis by putting collaboration at the core of their work, to break down silos and bring different perspectives to the table. The Desautels Sustainability Network (DSN), a student run organization for which I have been co-president over the last year, has been a driving force in promoting sustainability and cross-disciplinary learning at the management faculty[7]. Our overarching goal is to create the next generation of sustainable business leaders, and we understood very early on the need to adopt a cross-disciplinary approach to equip youth with the necessary tools to fight the ecological crisis. Here are three concrete and reproducible projects that we have successfully implemented to make this a reality, that other student groups should consider taking on as well.

1.    Mapping out sustainability-related student groups in non-management faculties and creating a strong network between all of them.

An excellent way of promoting cross-disciplinary learning is through events organized with other non-management student groups on campus. To be able to do this however, one needs to first know who these organizations are. Last year, when DSN sought out student groups across campus working towards the same goal of a sustainable, socially just, and prosperous future, we quickly realized that none of these organizations were in close communication and were aware of each other’s actions. We therefore created a network connecting all these organizations, with regular mixers and a chance for each organization to update others on their crucial work. This initiative, started by DSN, was formally integrated by the McGill administration under the McGill Office of Sustainability to ensure its longevity.

2.    Collaborating with other non-management student-run groups on events that present different perspectives on sustainability-related challenges.

Management students critically lack non-business perspectives for tackling the grave problems of our time, and students from other faculties tend to forgo the private sector perspective altogether. To tackle this issue, DSN has sought out student groups across campus to collaborate on meaningful events, bringing together both the private sector and non-private sector perspective to sustainability related topics. In November, DSN partnered with an organization from McGill’s Mac Campus (the agricultural campus) to organize a series of panels on “The Role of the Private Sector in Driving Sustainable Agriculture”. The event was meant to bridge the gap between students in the management faculty and agricultural faculty, and give them the tools to incorporate perspectives from both fields. In January, DSN also partnered with Sustainability in Engineering at McGill (SEAM) on a cross-disciplinary case competition called BRIDGE, bringing together 40 students from both the engineering and management faculties to come together and create solutions to a sustainability related challenge for Engineering consulting firm WSP. These straightforward events are excellent ways of giving management students a comprehensive understanding of differing perspectives.

3.    Creating a task force to advocate for a sustainability-centric curriculum  

If we want to go to the root cause of the issue of reductionist thinking in management faculties, we need to transform the way courses are taught. Over the last two years, DSN’s academic team has been closely working with the management faculty to integrate more sustainability and cross-disciplinary content within the core management curriculum. To do this, DSN created a working group with professionals from the private sector, students, members of faculty, and members of the administration, to build legitimacy in the eyes of the faculty and ideate new structures for these courses. This has proved highly successful, even after having been met with much pushback.

You can learn more about implementing these approaches and many others on the Canadian Business Youth Council for Sustainable Development’s website. The Youth Council shares best practices from council member organizations to inspire Youth to replicate some of our initiatives and establish student organizations dedicated to sustainability in their business schools across the country. It is also home to a Youth Guide filled with knowledge from 50 of Canada's most important leaders from a diversity of sectors and industries.

We, student groups, cannot allow management faculties to perpetuate mechanistic, siloed thinking that does not set up students properly to work towards a sustainable, socially just and prosperous future. There is an urgent need for increased collaboration across fields of study, in the same way as our living systems all around us collaborate, to bring differing perspectives together and create the most powerful change. Student groups have a unique opportunity to promote this sort of collaboration, and three simple ways for student groups to start doing so have been outlined above. While most of this article focuses on management faculties and sustainable business, siloes exist all throughout academia and beyond. If we want to empower youth to become systems innovators and tackle the grave problems we face today, we need to radically rethink what youth is being taught, and how it is being taught.

[1] Iea. (n.d.). World Energy Outlook 2011 – Analysis. Retrieved from https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2011

[2] Fullerton, J. (2015, April). Regenerative Capitalsm . Retrieved from https://capitalinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/2015-Regenerative-Capitalism-4-20-15-final.pdf

[3] Smuts, J. (1926). Holism and evolution. New York: Macmillan & Company Limited.

[4] Fullerton, J. (2015, April). Regenerative Capitalsm . Retrieved from https://capitalinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/2015-Regenerative-Capitalism-4-20-15-final.pdf

[5] Allen, M., Dube , O., & Solecki , W. (2019). IPCC Report 2019 Framing and Context .

[6] https://www.businessyouthcouncil.ca/

[7] https://www.facebook.com/DesautelsSustainabilityNetwork/

[8] https://www.businessyouthcouncil.ca/