Abstract
Despite the growing importance of educating business and management students about sustainability, little is known about the characteristics of different student segments in terms of their perceptions of the educational techniques used for sustainability training. This chapter proposes to profile university students based on their perceptions of sustainability education techniques and investigates whether they are significantly different in terms of socio-demographic and academic characteristics and their attitudes toward sustainability. With the use of cluster analysis of 432 students at a major Spanish university, three clusters were identified with significant differences in terms of perceptions and attitudes towards sustainability education techniques. Additionally, findings showed differences in the formation of the clusters according to the belonging bachelor's degrees. The study suggests that student segmentation based on these factors is appropriate, and thus academic and practical implications are discussed.
TopIntroduction
Over the last decades, the various social, environmental, and economic crises facing the world have pushed diverse intergovernmental organizations (e.g., the United Nations) to promote sustainability in business and management education (Cullen, 2017; Starik et al., 2017; Terán-Yépez et al., 2021), as sustainability offers managers and businesses opportunities for alleviating these crises. For example, the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) represents a global call by the United Nations (UN) to integrate international values into business education (Alcaraz & Thiruvattal, 2010), aimed at building a more sustainable and inclusive global economy (Haertle et al., 2017). In this respect, higher-education institutions are deemed to be the driving force that spurs future leaders to adopt sustainability in businesses (Hesselbarth & Schaltegger, 2014; Noy et al., 2021). In this research, the authors adopt the conceptualization of sustainability as a balance of economic, social and environmental factors in equal harmony. Thus, sustainability in businesses encompasses business models that integrate economic profitability with positive environmental and social impact.
Increasingly, higher-education institutions are promoting initiatives to incorporate sustainability issues in education. In this regard, there is an enriching field surrounding students' conceptualization and awareness of sustainability issues and their commitment to the improvement of their knowledge towards it. Namely, Lambrechts et al. (2018) showed that there needs to be more unique approaches to the acquisition of sustainability competencies. Moreover, Sundermann and Fischer (2019) found that university students revealed substantially different considerations to the concept of sustainable development to their future careers. Other studies stated that there exist differences in the knowledge and awareness of sustainable development goals (SGGs) and their determination in building a career in the field of sustainable development among students (Albu, 2022; Ang, 2021).
The increasing role of higher education institutions to foster sustainability (Cole & Snider, 2019) has fueled the development of a variety of education techniques to raise sustainability principles in future managers’ minds (Noy et al., 2021; Sandri & Holdsworth, 2022). Although academics have recognized the value of considering students’ preferences for elucidating effective education methods for teaching about sustainability (Terán-Yépez et al., 2021) and started to examine their role to increase students’ engagement (Zsóka & Ásványi, 2022), empirical research on the perceptions of students surrounding sustainability learning techniques1 is still scarce. Thus, more research is required to shed light on students’ perceptions of education methods for learning about sustainability.
Contributions in the literature widely agree that students’ segmentation provides several advantages to higher-education institutions and is critical in terms of articulating a successful educational strategy implementation and execution (Bitrián et al., 2020; Lambrechts et al., 2018; Walsh & Rísquez, 2020). Students’ segmentation can be understood as the process of finding key characteristics among students to differentiate them from others in order to customize different strategies of interest. According to existing studies, students segmentation provides higher-education institutions with the possibility to tailor the many distinguishing features of students in order to increase their engagement (cf. Ness et al., 2002) and to explore student segments to select the type of students that the institutions plan to serve in the first instance (Shneor et al., 2021). For example, some studies have used segmentation techniques2 to classify students according to their engagement with flipped classrooms (Walsh & Rísquez, 2020), learning through business simulation games (Bitrián et al., 2020), or to identify motivational profiles (Zhang & Lin, 2020).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Principles for Responsible Management Education: Set of ethical parameters aimed at guiding the training in higher education institutions of future business leaders in corporate sustainability-minded skills and capabilities.
Attitudes towards Sustainability: How an individual adapts actively and integrally to the social, economic and environmental surroundings as a result of a cognitive, affective and behavioral process.
Learning Approaches: Different types of knowledge acquisition are adopted by the learner according to the personal and institutional elements involved.
Sustainability Learning Techniques: Holistic and/or specific educational methods that consider the socio-economic-environmental interaction in the learning process.
Sustainability in Businesses: Business models that integrate economic profitability with positive environmental and social impact.
Students’ Segmentation: Process of finding key characteristics among students to differentiate them from others to customize different strategies of interest.
Curriculum Content: The plan or syllabus followed by an academic institution to inform the structure of the teaching process, which underpins the content, techniques and methodologies employed.
Educational Strategy: The combination of teaching and learning techniques that enable the teacher and student to create a fruitful and optimal educational process.
Students’ Engagement: Measure of students’ interaction level with their educational environment both intellectually and emotionally measured through their participation and quality of effort.