Sustainability Centres and Fit: How Centres Work to Integrate Sustainability Within Business Schools

A variety of theoretical traditions, including strategic management (Venkatraman 1989; Andrews 1971) and contingency theory (Drazin and van de Ven 1985), have examined fit between an organisation’s strategy or structure on the one hand, and the organisation’s environment on the other. In strategy, the idea of congruence or alignment between strategy and environment is thought—explicitly or implicitly—to have a positive effect on performance (Miles and Snow 1978; Kaplan and Norton 2006). It should be noted that whilst the consensus has pointed towards the positive effects of fit on performance, dissenting voices can be found. For example, Voelpel et al. (2006) argue that in response to modern turbulent environments, misfit can present a strategic response that may be intentionally drawn upon in organisations seeking growth and innovation. In a similar vein, as conflicting demands are being placed on organisations by stakeholders, Brunsson (2002) highlights misalignment between strategy and some stakeholder demands as a necessary element for businesses to remain in operation.

Research in strategic management has highlighted that the concept of fit should be treated as multidimensional and dynamic (Zajac et al. 2000; Venkatraman 1989). Ansari et al.’s (2010) theorisation of technical, cultural and political fit builds on this tradition to examine how new practices can be made to fit within the internal environments of organisations. They argue that technical, cultural and political factors will determine the degree of fit between organisational characteristics and new practices that are implemented by the organisation. Because Ansari et al. (2010) focus on the consequences of misfit for subsequent practice adaption, they have not theorised in detail the complex intra-organisational work that may be needed to achieve fit. In other words, the question of how fit is achieved between new practices and an organisation’s internal environment has not yet been addressed in a comprehensive way. Ansari et al.’s (2010) framework mirrors to some degree concepts developed in a separate, but parallel literature on institutional work (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006; Perkmann and Spicer 2008). This literature examines various types of strategy that are employed by actors within an organisation to institutionalise new practices, so that these practices become acceptable and taken for granted.

Given our goal of examining how centres work towards the integration of sustainable business education through fit/misfit strategies, we will draw on both the fit and the institutional work literatures. Worries remain that sustainability has entered but not yet become embedded into mainstream business education (PRME 2015; Starik et al. 2010). We argue that a multidimensional conceptualisation of fit will enable us to respond to recent calls to examine the dynamics that guide business schools’ efforts towards sustainability integration (e.g. Hommel and Thomas 2014). Specifically, we analyse three types of fit:

Technical fit is defined as the alignment with current organisational structures, capabilities and knowledge. In the context of sustainable business education, barriers to technical fit stem from the interdisciplinary nature of the subject as well as challenges in curriculum (re)design. With regards to the challenges posed by interdisciplinarity, various studies show that the existing structures in business schools do not easily accommodate an interdisciplinary subject such as sustainability, given that staff might be trained in a narrow discipline (Benn and Martin 2010) or are unfamiliar with specific recommended sustainability teaching styles (Akrivou and Bradbury-Huang 2015; Benn and Martin 2010; Maloni et al. 2012; Sharma and Hart 2014). These challenges aggravate structural problems in curriculum re-(design); leading to a situation where sustainability topics are often offered in elective or specialised courses rather than as part of the core curriculum (Rasche and Gilbert 2015).

Whereas Ansari et al. (2010, 2014) emphasise fit with existing technologies, the literature on institutional work provides a richer conceptualisation of the kind of work that is needed to achieve technical fit. For example, technical fit may involve cognitive types of work, such as the development of templates, procedures, manuals or tools that serve to aid alignment and integration (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006; Perkmann and Spicer 2008; Suddaby and Greenwood 2001). Moreover, achieving technical fit is likely to include what institutional theorists refer to as ‘bricolage’: creatively constructing new structures and templates from a mixture of new and existing elements (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006, p. 229).

Cultural fit is defined as alignment with the cultural values, beliefs and practices of organisational members (Ansari et al. 2010, p. 78). In the context of sustainable business education, resistance from organisational members has been identified as one of the barriers to sustainability integration, since the normative characteristics of sustainable business education may be incompatible with norms held by other business school constituents (Rasche and Gilbert 2015; Solitander et al. 2012; Benn and Dunphy 2009). As pointed out by a number of (critical) studies, the dominant belief in business schools is influenced by a neo-liberal ideology, which does not accommodate a holistic perspective on sustainability (Banerjee 2011; Akrivou and Bradbury-Huang 2015; Giacalone and Thompson 2006). A lack of cultural fit in business school may thus stem from clashes in core beliefs and values underpinning business education held by staff members across a range of disciplinary groups. Greater cultural fit is achieved when there is congruence between the inherent norms and values of a practice such as sustainable business education, and the existing values and beliefs of organisational members. This entails framing practices in such a way that they are tolerated at a minimum, and in a best case scenario actively participated in (Canato et al. 2013). Framing can also involve giving scope to the appropriate roles and responsibilities of those involved (Ansari et al. 2010, p. 78). Cultural work often involves cooperative processes that emphasise building communities that share similar norms and values (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006, p. 228). In order to counteract cultural misfit, in the long-run, changes may be necessary to the broader organisational culture (Canato et al. 2013), so that both the practices that are being promoted and the environment in which they are being received are likely to change in the course of integration.

Political fit entails alignment with the agendas and interests of key organisational actors. This perspective recognises that organisations consist of individuals and groups that have evolving and diverging interests and resources (Weber and Weager 2017). In the context of sustainable business education, substantive integration depends in part on internal organisational politics and the allocations of power and resources (Solitander et al. 2012). Barriers to political fit may involve reported lack of interest from senior school leaders (Doherty et al. 2015; Sharma and Hart 2014). Alternatively political fit may not be achieved due to conflicting or vague demands placed on deans by external actors such as accreditation agencies. Organisations such as the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative, which seek to promote sustainable business education, do not provide a clear template for its design and implementation (Rasche and Gilbert 2015). Achieving political fit typically involves capturing the interests, power structures and agendas of individuals and dominant coalitions in an organisation (Ansari et al. 2014, p. 1316). Such political work can involve attempts at mobilising support through advocacy and social suasion in order to convince powerful factions of the value of new practices. It can also involve the design of rules that guide who gets to partake in the new practices and which parties get to share associated resources (Perkmann and Spicer 2008; Lawrence and Suddaby 2006). Whereas cultural work involves framing practices in such a way that they appeal to a wider set of organisational members, political work entails social persuasion directed at a limited set of powerful organisational actors (Perkmann and Spicer 2008). According to this stance, achieving political fit is likely to be the result of a top-down process that depends on the authority of dominant organisational actors and the resources that they control.²

The Findings section is divided into three sections. The first section describes the main activities and disciplinary focus of the sustainability centres that were surveyed. The second section draws on interview data to examine the three types of fit and the work that is being carried out, or purposefully avoided, by centres in order to achieve fit. The third and final section discusses the interconnections between the three types of fit.

Interconnections Between Different Types of Fit

Based on our findings, we theorise that the interconnections between the three types of fit for sustainability centres can be understood as involving legitimacy, resources and collaboration effects (see Fig. 1).

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Firstly, the interconnection between technical fit and cultural fit can be understood as involving collaboration effects. Shared values make it easier for colleagues to work together to achieve the integration of sustainable business education, and are strengthened by organisational synergies across a wide array of activities, including teaching in elective and core courses, and research and engagement activities that involve organisational members outside the centre. Moving from left to right at the bottom of Fig. 1, cultural fit entails the existence of shared values between the centre and organisational members, which enhances collaboration on integration of sustainable business education. Centres that have chosen to define sustainable business education in an inclusive way find it easier to collaborate with colleagues, for example, on an increasing number of courses offered to students:

So we’ve now got an undergraduate pathway and an MSc, but we’ve also got more elective courses through other MSc programmes. It has increased in profile; that’s not helped only by me but also […] just more people engaged with sustainability and naturally wanting to sort of develop courses around it (Centre Head, centre no 7).

For those centres that have historically developed an isolated position within schools, a lack of cultural fit can be a barrier to achieving technical fit, even if political fit exists. For example, one centre head describes his predecessor’s more vocal and critical stance against mainstream management as the ‘baggage’ he continues to be forced to carry when trying to convince colleagues of the value of integrating sustainability into the core curriculum. Interestingly, this problem persists years after the isolationist strategy was abandoned, despite the centre enjoying good support from the dean:

I’m running around and trying to convince people that we need mandatory courses and not electives. We have made some progress in the past but we definitely need to go one step further. There, I feel, they are really critical whether or not this is a good idea. That I would say is this is baggage I am carrying. (Centre Head, centre no 8).

In this example, the absence of established cultural fit hampers the achievement of technical fit. The strategy chosen to achieve cultural fit, and the resulting (lack of) alignment with the values of organisational members thus impacts on the possibility of achieving technical fit. Conversely, when alignment with current organisational structures, capabilities and knowledge can be achieved, there is a positive feedback loop to cultural fit. Moving from right to left at the bottom of Fig. 1, integration of sustainable business education reinforces the impression that values are shared. In schools and universities where structural barriers between different disciplines are low, cooperating on an interdisciplinary subject like sustainability will be more straightforward. This also increases the likelihood that attention to sustainability topics will be given in different courses and activities throughout the school. For example, in schools where structures for interdisciplinary degrees are in place there are likely to be more students that are being exposed to sustainability topics from different perspectives:

A student could bring up in a case discussion or strategy class the environmental or social implications of what they’re talking about. And at some schools where this stuff has a small minority of people interested in it or at least identified as being interested in it, the teacher may just say look, let’s just move on and there won’t be any pushback from the students. But here there is a critical mass [of students] whether a professor likes it or not. He or she is going to have to engage the topic.(Centre Head, centre no 3).

The recursive interconnection between cultural fit and technical fit means that a ‘responsive audience’ (Centre Head, centre no 3) is created, so that when students bring up a sustainability topic in a course not directly related or managed by sustainability centres, staff will engage with them. On the other hand, it is clear that a tightly defined disciplinary framing by centres may hamper the creation of this positive feedback loop. When wider cultural support is lacking, technical fit may be more difficult to achieve, and consequently sustainable business education may remain a specialised topic in teaching and research activities.

Secondly, the interconnection between cultural fit and political fit can be understood as involving legitimacy effects. Moving upwards on the left side of Fig. 1, approval of organisational members (cultural fit) signals to leaders that their own power will be enhanced by supporting a sustainability centre (political fit). Thus, an additional reason for framing the mission of sustainable business education in an inclusive way, which we found to be the favoured approach of some centres, is that inclusivity can also be used to enhance political fit. In other words, if a sustainability centre manages to align sustainable business education with the prevailing values and beliefs of staff, so that practices become ‘enthused in the life of this place’ (Centre head, centre no 5), then key organisational actors can derive legitimacy and power by supporting such practices. In one case, the connection between cultural and political fit raised the possibility that a centre could even be held up as an example to other schools:

If we can show how we have been successful in embedding sustainability into the educational life at [our school], maybe that could be an example for other departments around [our university]. (Centre head, centre no 5).

The broader support platform obtained through cultural fit can also mean a more secure future for the centre. The more that colleagues are convinced of the value of sustainable business education, the more likely that a centre devoted to these issues may persist even if political support diminishes due to changes in organisational leaders or their interests and agendas.

Moving down on the left side of Fig. 1, and considering “legitimacy effects” from the other direction, we would argue that support from senior organisational actors (political fit) signals to organisational members that a sustainability centre upholds university-wide shared values (cultural fit). All centre heads we interviewed mentioned either having support from their Dean or using strategic positioning to pursue greater political support, which seems particularly key in the early stages of centre development. Indeed, increasing demands from external stakeholders, including accreditation agencies, for greater emphasis on sustainability topics, enhance the potential to create a positive recursive connection between political fit and cultural fit. Administrators who see sustainability education as an institutional selling point have a clear incentive for highlighting ways in which centres may be a good fit for the existing university culture:

The external environment, changes around PRME and also the accreditation bodies - EQUIS for example has got something about ensuring sustainability related issues are on the curriculum - and AQUIS, AMBA; so all of that I’ve kind of ruthlessly used to help promote sustainability in the school (Centre head, centre no 7).

Political support, reinforced by messages from external organisations such as accreditation agencies about the value of sustainable business education, may thus convince colleagues that the topic should be taken seriously. However, given the great degree of autonomy of business school faculty (Rasche and Gilbert 2015, p. 244), this is not always the case. For example, one centre head recounts how she had secured the support of the dean of education for integrating a course in the core bachelor programmes. However, the colleagues in charge of the programmes still refused: ‘they did not want to be messed around by being told from the top to do something differently’ (Centre Head, centre no 9). Clearly, whilst political fit may create favourable conditions for cultural fit, the latter does not follow automatically from the former. Rather, significant efforts need to be made in order to convince colleagues and overcome resistance.

Thirdly, the interconnection between technical fit and political fit can be understood as involving resource effects. Moving downwards on the right side of Fig. 1, political support provides resources to enhance technical fit. Political fit, which ensures support from key organisational actors, generally ensures that resources are provided to undertake sustainable business education activities, including centre start-up costs, and support for research and teaching. Centres may be set up through external (private) grants, endowments or funded chair positions, which will all require political support. Sustainability centres often choose to set up specialist teaching programmes as a first step. Moving beyond those specialised programmes often requires another input of political support and associated resources:

We’ve got to figure out a way to impact more students, touch more students, we’ve got to find a way for all the MBAs coming out of this building to be exposed to sustainability. The reach and the throw have to be bigger and it can’t stay in this programme or it will die. But that has a very political element to it that you’ve got to get the rest of the School to go along with that expansion and you’ve got to find a donor who wants to kick in for that. (Centre Head, centre no 3).

Conversely, moving upwards on the right side of Fig. 1, technical fit can provide additional resources to achieve political fit. This is because, once technical fit is established, sustainable business education activities may enhance the ‘brand’ of the school as a key player in sustainable business education. Integration of sustainable business education throughout the curriculum, for example, ensures that deans can ‘walk their talk’ regarding sustainability topics (Rasche and Gilbert 2015). In an environment of rising demand, such a position can help attract additional funding, students and other sources of income for the school as a whole.

The two-way direction of the interconnections between the three types of fit suggests that a mutually reinforcing cycle can be created in an ideal scenario. None of the centre representatives we spoke to felt confident that a complete alignment was established in all three areas of fit. However in those centres where a good degree of fit existed in two or more areas, or where active efforts were made to work towards fit in more than one area, there was a clearer sense of the purpose and future viability of sustainability centres. In these cases, directors felt that these centres had a purpose that transcended the individuals associated with them, so that future political headwinds such as a lack of interest from senior management could be countered: ‘I can’t imagine that the centre would be disbanded; it’s hard to imagine what reason there could be for that’ (Centre Head, centre no 2). Conversely, those centres which experienced a severe lack of fit in one area, or a pronounced lack of fit in two or more areas, felt more vulnerable to potential future changes in programme structures, agendas of senior management or turn-over of staff associated with the centre.

In response to calls for a better understanding of the organisational and strategic dynamics that guide business school sustainability integration (e.g. Hommel and Thomas 2014), this article examines how sustainability centres achieve technical, cultural and political fit between sustainable business education practices and their internal environment. Our conceptualisation draws on the literature on fit (Ansari et al. 2010) and the literature on institutional work (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006). In doing so, we provide insights into the consequences of the three types of fit for the integration of sustainable business education and provide a dynamic conceptualisation of fit. In this section, we first discuss the significance of our findings in each of these areas. We close by considering the underlying question of the desirability of integration with respect to sustainable business education.

We build on the multidimensional idea of fit (Zajac et al. 2000; Venkatraman 1989) to provide a detailed analysis of the strategies for achieving fit in sustainable business education. Our findings suggest that achieving political fit represents a top-down forceful approach to integration. If political fit exists in the absence of cultural and technical fit, the result can be superficial or symbolic implementation of sustainable business education practices. Such a superficial implementation of sustainability education can damage the reputation of business schools if and when it is exposed. By extension, centres that do not frame their approach strategically may lack political support from others in the school and the university, and therefore have access to limited resources. An absence of powerful patrons in turn could inhibit attempts to create better cooperation across the school by ‘sharing the gold’ (Centre head, centre no 6). In comparison to political fit, achieving cultural fit requires a much more cooperative approach to the integration of sustainable business education. To the extent that cultural fit is not achieved, this can lead to isolation of sustainable business education practices due to a lack of buy-in from organisational constituents. The result may be a temporary approach that disappears if and when key proponents of sustainable business education move to other institutions. Moreover, a lack of cultural fit means it will be difficult to cooperate, for example, in core curriculum teaching or in joint research activities, even when the resources and political support exist. Finally, achieving technical fit is an approach that favours ‘bricolage’ (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006) of existing structures and new practices. In other words, in order to achieve technical fit, successful centres introduce novel networks and programmes that draw on existing university structures as well as introducing new elements. When technical fit is not achieved, these newly developed structures may not work optimally. For example, sustainability education may become isolated, resulting in siloed ways of working, the potential duplication of efforts and wastage of resources. In the absence of technical fit, reinforcement of values becomes more difficult, and creating an integrated approach that can become the ‘brand’ of a school will be less effective. In sum, different types of misfit lead to distinct problems that in turn give rise to distinctive integration and organisational consequences.

Based on our findings, we note the importance of examining these elements and barriers separately, as well as taking a further step of analysing how and whether the challenges are interrelated. In doing so, we provide an explanation for why political fit (e.g. support from deans) alone need not have sufficient relevance or force in the long term in the absence of some level of technical and/or cultural fit. Future research must thus focus in more detail on elements of cultural integration, technical alignment and the interconnections between these and political fit in sustainable business education. Taking the technical and cultural fit elements of integration more seriously in sustainable business guidance documents and monitoring, evaluation and accreditation mechanisms, along with an appropriate school-level flexibility, can go some way to addressing concerns about superficial or merely symbolic integration of sustainability business education. The challenge, of course, will be that much of this work will be school-specific and difficult to inform from above or by external institutions.

When examining political, technical and cultural fit simultaneously, it becomes clear that the tensions between the different requirements posed by the three areas of fit form a source of dynamism that, to our knowledge, has received little attention in the literature on fit until now. For example, a practice that is tightly defined, with clear boundaries and associated roles and responsibilities, may be attractive to practice experts within organisations, but fail to attract alignment with the identity, values and norms of broader organisational constituents, defined as cultural fit. One consequence of a lack of cultural fit could be that only a narrow technical fit can be achieved, with limited linkages to wider structures and integration into practices that span the organisation as a whole. Conversely, both political and cultural fit seem to be necessary conditions for achieving the goal of broad technical fit. In this case, cultural fit is often achieved through inclusive framing of the practice, which incorporates the many interests of organisational constituents without a clear demarcation of boundaries and rules surrounding membership. Political fit in turn works as a precondition to technical fit insofar as a minimum threshold of hierarchical support and access to resources can transform isolated efforts towards achieving institutional bricolage.

Thus, when examining the three areas of fit simultaneously, the strategies that are employed may run counter to those identified in the literature for each individual type of fit. For example, clear definitions of practices and demarcation of the ‘right’ to speak on a particular issue (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006) may be a sufficient condition for achieving cultural fit but not a necessary one. This in turn suggests that a holistic perspective of fit has implications for research and practice, which might be overlooked when focussing on an individual aspect of fit in isolation. Further research might explore such implications not just for sustainability centres but for other academic centres, such as those that focus on entrepreneurship (Zahra et al. 2011). This line of inquiry could examine, for example, whether barriers to integration stem mainly from the specific topic or institutional form of sustainability centres or are related to the broader phenomenon of centres in higher education (Stahler and Tash 1994). Further research could also examine the integration of sustainability practices in other types of settings, for example, in responsible investment practices, where this topic has been actively debated (OECD 2017).

Whilst the traditional perspective on fit assumes a positive relationship with performance, dissenting voices highlight the need for misfit in order to foster innovation and radical change (Voelpel et al. 2006). It is clear from our findings that sustainability centres that are focused on achieving fit with their internal environment do not generally seek radical change. Rather, their focus is on incremental change through social suasion and small steps towards integration. They take the current state of business education as given, whilst promoting incremental change from within current structures and practices. Even centres that had historically taken a more critical or even radical stance have recognised the need for integration of sustainability topics into the core curriculum taught in business schools in order to achieve a critical mass of students and gain access to resources. Furthermore, those centre directors that perceived a lack of fit (whether unintentional or purposefully created) between their centres and their business schools, felt more vulnerable to future developments that could impair their current achievements, such as the departure of key staff or a change in political support.

“Is” does not imply “ought”, however, and our findings leave open the question of whether sustainable business education might be better served by an approach to integration that emphasises the importance of pressing for genuinely transformative change (Benn et al. 2014). Partisans of this position might see centres as falling short, were they to settle for anything less than a complete re-evaluation of business school values, mission and practices. Indeed, whilst initiatives such as PRME directly call for integration as a straightforward positive agenda, others disagree on the merits of integration. Evans et al. (2006, p. 279) note, for instance, that integration is difficult to monitor, whilst the danger exists that students may receive only fragmented approaches instead of an overarching ethical perspective.

On a still more fundamental level, it can be argued that the radical nature of the idea of sustainability, and the existential environmental and social problems that today’s business students must consider, are not necessarily well served when centres prioritise ‘fitting in’ over ‘standing up’ for a unique point of view (Sharma and Hart 2014). Theorists writing in this vein might caution that current work—such as the present paper—on sustainability education risks smuggling in the normative premise that fit is a feasible and desirable goal for sustainability centres. Once this premise has been accepted, researchers might simply fail to consider whether business schools—by virtue of their service to, and to an extent their dependency upon, the private sector—are even capable of supporting research, pedagogy and advocacy around sustainability in a more than superficial way (for a recent broadside see Conn 2018).

In light of these kinds of concerns, the question might well be asked: What are the appropriate strategies for sustainability centres in business schools whose technical, cultural and political orientations are simply antithetical to sustainability, and are therefore, in some sense, ‘beyond fit’? It might be conjectured that such circumstances are unlikely to occur frequently, as business schools would presumably not facilitate the formation of sustainability centres if there were no anticipation of some sort of fit. But it is also true that business schools and universities change, and not necessarily in the direction of becoming more amenable to the concept of sustainability. In such a situation, where the overarching institutional environment appears ‘beyond fit’, what should the leadership of sustainability centres do?

Given the nature of our data, it is beyond the scope of this paper to offer a definite answer to the question of whether pressing for radical transformation, as opposed to fit-friendly incremental evolution, may represent a more suitable goal for sustainability centres operating within distinctly non-ideal institutional conditions. Future research might find it productive to purposively sample successful sustainability actors who are more radical in their outlook, in particular those responding to academic structures that seem ‘beyond fit’, in order to understand the leadership skills necessary to achieve political, cultural and technical fit without compromising essential values. Or, future studies might look at leadership strategies that permit centres to avoid having to achieve fit in the service of transformative change.⁷

But we would also submit that the contemporary leadership literature may already, within touchstone debates on “transformational” and “transactional” leadership, offer important conceptual tools for addressing this dilemma (Burns 1978; Bass 1985). Transformational and transactional leadership have sometimes been portrayed as opposites, the former involving a visionary re-setting of frameworks and norms, the latter focused more on managing followers in pursuit of near-term organisational goals (Du et al. 2013; Waldeman et al. 2006). Where sustainability centres are concerned, however, we would point to research that shows that transformational and transactional strategies can support one other, within the same organisation and even the same individual director. Bass, for instance, argues that transformational and transactional do not represent opposing ends of a continuum, and are instead exhibited simultaneously by the best leaders (1985). In Rao and Sivakumar’s (1999) investigation of the establishment of investor relations departments in leading corporations, the transformational (what the authors term ‘coercive’) strategies of presenting new frameworks for investor rights were conducted by social movements. These radical demands were then made to ‘fit’ the otherwise resistant corporations by finance professionals using metrics of organisational and managerial performance more characteristic of conventional transactional methods. And Davis and White’s (2015) advice to business students who want to be more effective change agents within the corporate world is essentially to bring social movement strategies inside the organisation. They write: ‘Reading the organization’s climate to know when the time was right for an innovation, using language and stories that positively disposed people toward the idea, recruiting the right allies and avoiding blockers, and using forums that allowed the group to work together effectively, were common to both [social movements and the corporate world]’ (Davis and White 2015).

What emerges from studies such as these is the notion that even in the most invidious circumstances, sustainability centres may find ways of exploiting ‘beyond fit’ demands on business schools, by designing responses that enable ambitious sustainability agendas to serve the organisations’ institutional objectives. This hybrid approach does not deny the possibility of circumstances that appear ‘beyond fit’. Rather it suggests that recognising and diagnosing ‘non-fit’—in particular, where the existing impacts and purposes of business schools seem to beg wholesale re-thinking—may nonetheless be complemented by searches for ‘fit’. This can be true even for institutional environments where sustainability, like other radical social innovations, may seem a distant hope.

As sustainability centres grow and become more successful in carrying out their research and teaching aspirations in business schools, it may be argued that their raison d’être is disappearing. According to this line of argument (Baxter 2012; Mohin 2012), one mark of successful integration might be for sustainability centres themselves to disappear. However, whilst educators might work themselves out of a job if their sole concern were embedding and legitimising sustainability within business schools, the barriers to legitimising sustainability outside universities are even more challenging. Given the myriad global sustainability issues faced by external stakeholders such as corporations, NGOs and governments, it seems certain that sustainability centres—even and perhaps especially in situations that appear ‘beyond fit’—will have important work to do for many years to come.