Not Ready for Prime Time. Sustainability education in business schools is not ready for prime time. For two days, university faculty, eco-conscientious business executives and NGOs from around the world rubbed elbows at the posh Windsor Park Hotel in Rio de Janeiro and mulled over the problem of introducing environmental and social sustainability education into the curricula of business schools worldwide. The UN’s third Global Forum for Responsible Management Education (PRME) coincided with the larger Rio+20 Summit preparations happening at RioCentro on the other side of town. During the event, organizers and participants acknowledged that corporations are already taking a leadership role in the field of sustainability and that business schools have been too slow to adapt to this change. Over the course of the event, no consensus among the participants emerged as to why management education programs are not embracing sustainability education. The event seemed to be a confused, albeit well-intentioned call to action, ending in the inspiring but non sequitur launch of he “50+20 Management Education for the World” side-project with its own emotionally evocative call to action. 50+20
The aggressively creative and amorphous 50+20 was billed as a collaborative initiative between GRLI, WBSCSB and RRME. John Cimino, one of the principle founders of 50+20 and a professional opera performer, sang an operatic rendition of Robert William Service’s “The Call” at the start of the group’s launch. Cimino, who is also CEO of Creative Leaps Inc, a consulting company that trains business leaders and politicians in deeply divided places, stressed that the group’s primary objective was to “broaden the scope of what management education really means.” Cimino and 50+20 plan to use creative and performing arts to “promote learning as a transformative experience…to nurture the leader in the human being and the human being in the leader.” While PRME and the UN’s Global Compact have produced documents and mission statements with “many virtures,” Cimino says that 50+20 has a plan for action that is “bolder and goes farther.” He sees the new group’s role as a “kick in the pants.” This kick start is something the process sorely needs, but moving poetry and slickly edited launch videos may not be enough. Supply and Demand.
