Building Sustainable Legacies 5 March 2015 © Greenleaf Publishing 2015 87
Changing Directions in
Business Education
Knowledge Sharing for Sustainability
Suzanne Benn, Tamsin Angus-Leppan, Melissa Edwards,
Paul Brown and Stuart White
University of Technology, Sydney
Business schools are lagging other sectors in recognising the grow-
ing importance of sustainability concerns in business decision mak-
ing. Many educators blame the ambiguity of sustainability-related
concepts, lack of interdisciplinary knowledge on sustainability issues
and their little training in the teaching methods needed to support
knowledge development in business sustainability. This paper
presents findings from an exploratory study of educators at one
university where sustainability is incorporated in business and other
areas of the teaching curriculum and where a community of practice
has been developed to share sustainability-related material across
the disciplinary areas. Through the lens of the boundary objects that
facilitate knowledge sharing around environmental and social
aspects of corporate sustainability, the paper discusses the barriers
and opportunities to engaging students with the new business
models of corporate sustainability.
O Business
schools
O Embedding
sustainability
O Interdisciplinary
curriculum
O Sustainable
business
O Boundary
objects
Professor Suzanne Benn’s work spans the sciences and social sciences. She
works with colleagues at UTS Business School and across UTS to promote
sustainability. She is a specialist in education for sustainability, sustainable
business and corporate responsibility.
Dr Angus-Leppan is a qualitative researcher specializing in organizational
sustainability at UTS Business School. Her research focuses on sensemaking
and corporate sustainability.
Melissa Edwards is a senior lecturer at the UTS Business School since 2005,
where she specialises in sustainability management and organisation theory.
Her research focuses on sustainability, social impact, complexity and
stakeholder theories.
u
UTS Business School, Box 123,
Broadway, Sydney, NSW, 2007,
Australia
!
Suzanne.benn@uts.edu.au
u
UTS Business School, Box 123,
Broadway, Sydney, NSW, 2007,
Australia
!
Tamsin.angus-leppan@uts.edu.au
u
UTS Business School, Box 123,
Broadway, Sydney, NSW, 2007,
Australia
!
Melissa.Edwards@uts.edu.au