Management education for actuation in sustainable business environments: Challenges and trends of a Brazilian business school

Abstract

This paper aims to describe and analyze, via a qualitative case study, how the pedagogic project from a management educational program enables the formation of managers to work at a sustainable business environmental. It was established a debate between the themes sustainable business and managerial education in the context of a Brazilian business school with international approach. It is considered that the business environment undergoes transformations that imply rethinking the relationship among man, organization and world; the economic paradigm; and how to produce and create value, not only for the present, but also for the future generations. In relation to the managerial role, it is assumed that there is an ongoing transition that goes beyond the typical administrative functions such as planning, organizing, leading and controlling, and encompasses the field of influence, of adaptation to different contexts, of unpredictability, of thinking beyond mental fences, and of interaction with paradoxes. Data was collected via triangulation, by the articulation of semi structured interviews with eleven professionals from the school’s managerial and technical board, and documental analyses and nonsystematic observation. The evidences show the school’s efforts to enable its pedagogic projects on a basis of assumptions of education oriented to sustainability, by arranging the experiential learning environment, characterized like a collaborative, collective and interdisciplinary, and by promoting education by reflexive, conscientious and autonomous persons, with a large view of the facts and responsibility for their actions. However, the business schools is involved in a paradoxical situation, by attending the corporative world demands that insist in managerial practices that are not sufficient for the business model of sustainable environmental, in view that the corporative universe continues to operate with an economical and short term utilitarian logic, which is contrary to long term sustainable logic.