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.
Main Activities of Centres
Sustainability centres, like centres in higher education in general, do not have ‘a set of rigid characteristics’ (Etzkowitz and Kemelgor 1998, p. 271; Stahler and Tash 1994). Our survey identified several trends in the operation and development of sustainability centres globally. Just over half of the centres (53%) in the survey were established in or after 2007 (the year the PRME was developed), whilst 2 centres were established as early as 1985. The survey results suggest that the purpose of the centres tends to be multi-functional, with research, teaching and outreach to external stakeholders all identified as key activities. Outreach is generally considered equally as important as research and teaching. Respondents were asked to rank their centre’s purpose on a 5-point scale ranging from not important (1) to extremely important (5), with multiple options possible. ‘Research’ achieved the highest average rating (4.22); followed by ‘outreach and external engagement’ (4.2) and ‘teaching and student experience’ (4.05). Given the possibility of centres adapting or developing their founding purpose, a question was also asked concerning their current core and secondary activities. The most common core activities mentioned include dissemination of information (76% of respondents), academic research (73%) and network building (66%). In terms of secondary activities, the most common activities were consultancy (40%) and provision of internships (31%) and research focused on policy or practitioner topics (33%). This shows that current achievements in centres reflect a strong blend of core academic activities with dissemination, networking building and general engagement with practice.
The majority of centres (67%) indicate that they have a multidisciplinary focus in their activities related to research, teaching and outreach. Other common disciplinary focuses mentioned were sustainability (67%) and management (59%). Notably, 33% of respondents indicate a transdisciplinary focus, which transgresses disciplinary paradigms altogether and involves scholarly engagement with practice in an effort to solve real-world problems that have practical and social significance (Hadorn et al. 2008). These characteristics reflect the multidisciplinary nature of sustainability centres, as well as their strong engagement with practice.
Three Types of Fit
The majority of centres seek to promote sustainable business education to a critical mass of students and staff. In order to achieve this goal, most centres we studied seek to ‘fit in’ with their internal environment. In a few cases, centres are content to exist more independently from general management education, especially if doing so enables them to provide a critical or interdisciplinary perspective in their business school. Even in these cases, it is recognised that some degree of fit with the rest of the school and/or the university needs to be in place in order to ensure the viability of the centre. Table 2 highlights the categories of fit for the centres as evidenced in the interview and report data.
Technical Fit
Technical fit relates to alignment with current organisational structures, capabilities and knowledge. Technical fit is evidenced by the functional integration of the sustainability topic into existing structures or clearly defined new structures. For example, in terms of teaching, sustainability can be addressed through existing structures as a new topic or case in the existing curriculum. It can also be addressed through new structures such as a new course or programme (Rusinko 2010, p. 509). Rasche et al. (2013) have pointed out that although many more sustainability courses are offered, the majority of these are electives and not integrated into the core curriculum offer. We find that incorporating sustainability into the core curriculum is a key area of focus for the majority of centres: ‘it’s the curriculum work that I think is the sign of success’ (Centre head, centre no 1). If technical fit is narrow, the devised structures for teaching may be clearly defined and functioning, but they stand somewhat apart from the rest of curriculum.
In ten years we have seen this huge uptake of students who are interested in sort of straddling that business and society line. And there aren’t, other than us, there just aren’t places within the school for students to find support to learn more about it and skill up professionally for it, to make the contacts that they need. (Centre Head, centre no 4).
Such narrowly defined, stand-alone courses may lead to a lack of integration of sustainable business education. We find that a broader technical fit means offering electives as well as integration into the core curriculum, to provide students an opportunity to engage with the topic according to their interest.
So what we’ve come to understand on the student front is that we can create the sort of concentric circles of engagement for students where the outer ring is everyone who comes through the School should get some dose of sustainability through infusion into core curriculum. If they want to go a little deeper they can come get a free lunch at this weekly lunch series or get involved with one of the clubs. If they want to go deeper they’ll take an elective class and if they want to go deeper they can pursue the certificate. (Centre head, centre no 5).
Most centres also identify engagement as an important role, as they are often active in reaching out and engaging with stakeholders in the external environment, such as NGOs, businesses and government. The survey results show that engagement and outreach are considered almost as important as research and teaching activities for nearly all centres. Engagement with practice is conceptualised as part of the ‘raison d’être’ of being a centre that focuses on sustainability topics:
We are doing interesting stuff that has relevance. I think it would be, I don’t know, almost morally corrupt to just keep it to ourselves. We’ve got something to say, I think we should be out there saying it (Centre Head, centre no 7).
It seems that a clear template for sustainable business education has not appeared with regards to teaching and curriculum design, but a stronger consensus has been arrived at regarding the roles and responsibilities of centres in engagement activities. According to this stance, whilst centre staff might be able to continue research and teaching activities in the absence of the institutional and administrative support of centres, it would be impossible to carry out on-going engagement activities without a sustainability centre. Engagement activities are in principle aimed at individuals, groups and institutions outside the business school and university environment. But it is the very externally oriented nature of engagement work that enables centres, by playing a distinctive role as providers of high-profile engagement around sustainability, to gain visibility and recognition within their internal environment. This is especially so given the growing importance of research impact and socially beneficial objectives to universities at large.
Cultural Fit
Cultural fit involves alignment with the values, beliefs and identity of organisational members. Achieving cultural fit requires buy-in from members that do not have a direct technical role (Perkmann and Spicer 2008, p. 818) in sustainable business education, but that need to be convinced about the value of such practices in order to provide a wider support platform. One strategy for achieving greater cultural fit that is often employed by centres is to spend considerable effort on overcoming resistance among colleagues:
We managed to slowly–slowly convince a lot of resistant, hesitant study programme managers. You know, boost whatever they’re doing in this area, helping them to do so and inspiring them and so on. So it’s a slow process. … and I think we should remember also you know, for the many years a lot of colleagues thought CSR has got nothing to do with business. (Centre Head, centre no 9).
There are certain people in the school who never quite see Corporate Social Responsibility or sustainability as pressing issues for business or indeed for society. I suppose if every member of the school was persuaded on these things you wouldn’t need a centre. I think to some extent a centre is a point of expertise but it’s also a sort of internal agitator. (Centre Head, centre no 6).
In order to achieve greater buy-in and overcome resistance, the framing employed by some of centres (e.g. centre 1, 2, 6, 7, 9) is very inclusive and flexible. There is very little emphasis on a clear definition of sustainable business education, or the demarcation of ‘turf’ with respect to roles and responsibilities. Definitions of terms such as ‘sustainability’ and ‘CSR’ are often purposefully not predetermined and research themes are loosely interpreted to be inclusive towards colleagues with related research interests. Quite a few of our interview participants could not clearly identify which organisational members were affiliated with their centre for example, and were open to welcoming anyone who is interested in sustainability topics.
The legitimacy of the centre is partly bound up in who’s involved in it but also, much more so, in terms of what you actually do. And if you can do things that people find valuable to their work, then you’re more likely to be seen as legitimate. If the stuff that you do as a centre is not seen as relevant or interesting, or anything that people will get involved in, then I think that’s where it starts to lose its legitimacy as something that represents the school rather than represents a particular group of people. (Centre Head, centre no 2).
[Our research themes are defined] partly due to the people we’ve recruited but also other members of the department sort of verging towards sustainability as an issue and being comfortable to hang the work they do, sort of hang it on a sustainability label (Centre head, centre no 7).
In other centres, framing around sustainable business education is more explicit, taking for example a critical perspective or a perspective informed by an interdisciplinary focus. This leads to a clearer identification of who is involved with sustainable business education, but also, crucially, a degree of isolation. For example, a longstanding centre historically framed its purpose around business ethics, with an emphasis on criticising and questioning the role of business in society. The centre director describes the centre’s functioning in these years as a ‘beautiful island’ (Centre Head, Centre no 8) amidst the more mainstream business school departments, whilst not being interested in close cooperation or in-depth integration of the sustainability topic across the business school. A narrowly defined framing of the themes, perspectives or disciplines employed to study sustainability can lead to strong identification of staff members with a centre, whilst at the same time alienating organisational constituents in the wider internal environment.
Political Fit
Political fit entails alignment with the agendas and interests of key organisational actors. A higher degree of political fit is evidenced by the support of powerful members in the internal environment, which can be used to promote sustainable business education practices. Deans or vice-chancellors often play an important role in the inception of the centre, and continue to be important over the lifespan of the centre. Indeed, signatories of the PRME need to provide evidence of the support ‘by the highest executive of the organisation’ (PRME 2017) in their reporting on implementation of the principles. Once the support of powerful actors is secured, political fit can also ensure that resources (e.g. funding, staff recruitment, offices, administrative support) are provided to support the promotion of sustainable business education. These resources may be used to support teaching activities or provide funding for research and engagement activities on sustainability topics. If these resources are shared with colleagues outside the centre, this may promote more attention to sustainability topics and aid integration of sustainable business education, including research activities:
In trying to normalise us and integrate us we offered some of our gold to the colleagues by offering a research grant. Minor little research grants for other people outside the centre who wanted to engage in CSR research … Again it was a way of trying to make the centre a creature of the School rather than something hanging off the edge which would have been disastrous (Centre Head, centre no 6).
We found an important strategy for achieving political fit that entails the careful positioning of the centre so that it is seen to strengthen the mission of the school or university in which it operates. For example, in a business school that distinguishes itself from competitors through its international campuses, the activities of the sustainability centre are explicitly international in focus, offering scholarships to international students, for example, and embedding international perspectives into sustainability research. In another school where innovation is a key subject, ‘innovation for sustainability’ is the differentiating theme. Building on key existing themes and orientations within the internal environment not only differentiates the activities of sustainability centres from competitors, it also serves to align sustainable business education with the existing internal interests and agendas that have political significance.
You are part of the environment you live in, so you will reflect the school that you’re a part of and you will reflect the interests of the director and the staff (Centre Head, centre no 3).
Another, related strategy that leading centres use to achieve political fit is the exploitation of the external demands for sustainable business education to frame the contribution of centres to the overall brand of their school. For example, initiatives such as PRME, backed by the United Nations, help to place sustainability on the agenda of senior management in business schools. In schools where sustainability centres were established before these changes in the external environment took place, the activities of sustainability centres are framed as forming part of the schools’ sustainability ‘branding’ that can help to address increasing demand and pressures to provide a responsible business education.
We’re the kind of brand leader, if you like, for responsible business in the school, but we are reflecting what’s happening in the school, not reflecting what’s happening in one corner of the school… And that’s what we’re aiming at, I suppose, in that the centre enables the school to achieve certain goals, and we’ve become the kind of brand leader, if you like, around that responsible business theme. (Centre Head, centre no 2).
Heads of school can point to the work of the sustainability centres to address demands for sustainable business education by students, international initiatives like the PRME, and accreditation bodies. Conversely, sustainability centres can use these demands to justify and legitimise their activities within the school, achieving greater political fit in the course of doing so.
Whilst we have to be careful in generalising trends from our small interview sample, we found some differences in experiences of fit between different geographical locations. In particular, the North American centre heads seem to experience less political fit, whilst in Europe political support seems stronger. European centre heads drew more explicitly on support from external organisations including PRME and accreditation agencies, which they linked to receiving support from their respective deans. These differences are also reflected in membership of the PRME initiative; 34% of signatories come from Europe, whilst 18% stem from North America (PRME 2017b).
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).
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.