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Integration of sustainable development in higher education's curricula of applied economics: Large-scale assessments, integration strategies and barriers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2015

Kim Ceulemans ,
Marijke De Prins ,
Valérie Cappuyns  and
Wouter De Coninck
Kim Ceulemans
Affiliation:
Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculty of Economics and Management, Brussels, Belgium
Marijke De Prins
Affiliation:
Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculty of Economics and Management, Brussels, Belgium
Valérie Cappuyns
Affiliation:
Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculty of Economics and Management, Brussels, Belgium
Wouter De Coninck
Affiliation:
Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculty of Economics and Management, Brussels, Belgium
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Abstract

The attention for sustainable development (SD) is ever growing (Van Poeck, Vandenabeele, & Bruyninckx, 2009). Although the importance of SD integration in higher education (HE), both on strategic and operational level, is often stressed, actual measurements of this integration are less frequent. Therefore, a large scale assessment was set up to assess SD integration within 33 professionally and academically oriented programs of applied economics in a total of 22 Flemish HE institutions. The integration of SD in applied economics programs is crucial for society, among others because business students are our future managers (Ceulemans & De Prins, 2010). The interrelations between different SD integration strategies and the barriers to them were also studied in this research, leading us to a new concept, where two different dimensions of SD integration are combined. From the research we can conclude that an SD integration approach that combines horizontal and vertical integration with bottom-up and top-down seems to be the most beneficial for sustained SD integration efforts.

Keywords

sustainability assessmentsustainability integration strategieshigher educationapplied economics
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Management & Organization , Volume 17 , Issue 5: Educating for Sustainability and CSR: What is the role of business schools? , September 2011 , pp. 621 - 640
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 2011

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