Business is the largest undergraduate major in the US and probably in many other countries. Management education at business schools worldwide therefore has a crucial role in training future business leaders and to provide students with the skills needed to strive towards a more sustainable form of capitalism or to contribute towards a more sustainable world. However, an only recently published study by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching found most undergraduate programs at business schools in the US as “too narrow, failing to challenge students to question assumptions, think creatively, or understand the place of business in larger institutional contexts”. The authors recommend the rethinking of the education at large by integrating more “liberal arts learning into the business curriculum” in order to “help students develop wise, ethically grounded professional judgment” that really makes a difference for the global well-being.      

At the center of this paper was the following research question: Which are the driving but also hindering aspects for sustainable development coursework in higher education institutions in general and business schools in particular and what effect do they have? With help of a case study and loosely structured interviews, a round of E-mails to colleagues, and the analysis of course descriptions, the sustainable development ‘issues’ taught by the teachers and the elements included in the curriculums at the School for Business, Economics and Law at Gothenburg University is illustrated.

In summary, the study demonstrates with two models, which include internal and external (driving and hindering) factors, that Sweden, compared to e.g. the US, seems to have an institutional and contextual advantage in the way business schools are part of society but also the way how many business teachers, already today, integrate liberal arts and humanities in the curriculums. A debate about the role of a business school and its evolution in order to achieve a sustainable world follows, illustrating the unique potential but also the major drawbacks of business schools as knowledge space for sustainability. Despite the many local victories, especially at the particular business school in Sweden, but also on other places around the world, the paper illustrates that there is still a long way to go and more work across disciplines and institutional boundaries is needed before we can talk about an entirely systematic and proper transformation towards teaching sustainable capitalism at business schools.