Business education and its paradoxes

Linking business and biodiversity through critical pedagogy curriculum

Bibliographic Data

ID11160658
AuthorsH Kopnina (0000-0001-7617-2288, Northumbria University Newcastle upon Tyne UK, corresponding author), Alice C Hughes (0000-0002-4899-3158, School of Biological Sciences University of Hong Kong Hong Kong Hong Kong), Ruopiao Zhang (0009-0001-5927-6509, Macau University of Science and Technology Macau SAR China), Mike Russell (0009-0001-9572-4946, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences Amsterdam the Netherlands), Engelbert Fellinger (0009-0001-4331-5825, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences Amsterdam the Netherlands), Simon M Smith (0000-0001-8083-2728, Oxford Brookes Business School Oxford Brookes University Oxford UK), Les Tickner (Northumbria University Newcastle upon Tyne UK)
Year2024
Volume50
Issue6
Pages2712-2734
Publication date2024-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBritish Educational Research Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-1926 • E-ISSN: 1469-3518
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/berj.4048
OpenAlexW4400498361
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited104

The Kunming‐Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, launched during the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in December 2022, encourages governments, companies and investors to publish data on their nature‐related risks, dependencies and impacts. These disclosures are intended to drive businesses to recognise, manage and mitigate their reliance on ecosystem goods and services. However, there is a ‘biodiversity blind spot’ that is evident for most organisations and business schools. Business education rarely addresses the root causes of biodiversity loss, such as the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources. As the dominant positioning of Education for Sustainable Development Goals (ESDG) presents biodiversity in anthropocentric instrumental terms inadequate for addressing ecosystem decline, we posit that a more progressive and transformative ecocentric education through ecopedagogy and ecoliteracy is needed. Both approaches include the development of critical thinking about degrowth, the circular economy and conventional stakeholder theory to include non‐human stakeholders. Using comparative case studies from Northumbria University, the University of Hong Kong and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, we illustrate how business education can be transformed to address biodiversity loss, providing theoretical guidance and practical recommendations to academic practitioners and future business leaders

Biodiversity · Business · Business education · Economic growth · Economics · Environmental resource management · Higher education · Natural resource · Pedagogy · Political science · Public relations · Sociology · Stakeholder engagement · Sustainability · Sustainable Business · Sustainable development · Transformative learning · Ecology · Innovation and Socioeconomic Development · Sustainability in Higher Education · Sustainable Supply Chain Management

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