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With more than 332 signatories, the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) is probably the most solid initiative to inspire and champion responsible business education globally. The purpose of this paper is to examine the activities undertaken by the first intake of signatories – universities and business schools – with regard to each of the six principles (offering a systematic analysis and “distilled” categorization of those initiatives). It also aims to evaluate the difficulties and tensions that may be entailed in integrating PRME in both the strategic intent and daily operations of educational institutions, and how to overcome some of these. Finally, it aims to offer a critical reflection on the “non‐compliance and non regulatory/measurement” nature of PRME (the initiative assumes that signatories act on the basis of principled pragmatism), offering suggestions for improving the reporting mechanism on which the whole initiative is based.

The authors analyze the first 100 “Sharing Information on Progress” (SIP) reports uploaded to the PRME web site. These reports are the main mechanism established by the PRME Secretariat to build learning and accountability and allow signatories to communicate their progress. Elements from grounded theory and other qualitative analytical approaches were used to allow themes to emerge from within the (often messy and irregular) data from the reports. Graphical representations are also used.

Activities undertaken by PRME signatories are portrayed for each of the six principles: principle 1 on purpose (capabilities of students); principle 2 on values (incorporated in curriculum and academic activities); principle 3 on learning approaches; principle 4 on research (with sustainable, social, environmental and economic value); principle 5 on partnership (interaction with business managers); and principle 6 on dialogue (among key stakeholders). Tensions regarding ideology, integration and implementation are also identified, as well as possible weaknesses, e.g. on integrity, quality and reporting policies, in the current “SIP” framework.

This paper is the first scholarly work depicting comprehensively the activities of PRME signatories worldwide.

The collapse of world economic systems brought the interconnectedness between business and global events sharply into focus. As Starkey points out: “leading business schools need to overcome their fascination with a particular form of finance and economics […] to broaden their intellectual horizons […] (and to) look at the lessons of history and other disciplines”. The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence from three years of research on the Aston MBA suggesting that an emphasis on developing capabilities within a far broader, connected and reflexive business curriculum is what business students and practitioners now recognise as an essential way forward for responsible management education.

This research paper examines the reflective accounts of 300 MBA students undertaking a transdisciplinary Business Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability core module.

As Klein argues, transdisciplinarity is simultaneously an attitude and a form of action. The student reflections provide powerful discourses of individual learning and report a range of outcomes from finding “the vocabulary or the confidence” to raise issues to acting as “change agents” in the workplace.

As responsibility and sustainability requires learners, researchers and educators to engage with real world complexity, uncertainty and risk, conventional disciplinary study, especially within business, often proves inadequate and partial. This paper demonstrates that creative and exploratory frames need to be developed to facilitate the development of more connected knowledge – informed by multiple stakeholders, able to contribute heterogeneous skills, perspectives and expertise.

Universities’ unique position within society means they have an important role to contribute to sustainability and to help achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs), which are one of the most widely recognised articulations of sustainability. This study aims to look at the integration of the SDGs in education, specifically, in the Bachelor of Design (B-DES) “pathways” at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Interviews with pathway coordinators and a survey of all 45 core subjects were used to understand the current degree of integration and the benefits, constraints and opportunities of deeper integration.

Sustainability is deeply incorporated into B-DES curricula, but the SDGs are not. Most teachers, but particularly pathway coordinators, see value in deeper incorporation. Issues that constrain this include some students’ fatigue with the idea of “sustainability”, a crowded curriculum and some teachers’ scepticism, even disdain for the SDGs, which they see as contradictory, too broad or overly political.

This study sheds light on the extent of integration and reveals several possible pedagogical approaches: analysing what industries need to do to make a proportionate contribution to achieving the SDGs, critical review of industries’ use of and alignment with the SDGs, comparing and contrasting the SDGs with disciplines’ theoretical frameworks and critiquing the SDGs’ ambition with reference to the capabilities and technologies of a discipline. Provided they are done with due consideration of the SDGs’ limitations, these methods of integration have the potential to better prepare students as global citizens and for international employment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the issues involved in designing appropriate problems or scenarios suitable for sustainable development (SD) education, in the context of problem‐based learning (PBL) and experiential learning. Manchester's PBL approach to interdisciplinary Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been well reported, for example, in papers at the Educating Engineers in Sustainable Development conference in 2008. This paper poses the question: to achieve transformational education, is design of student problems for ESD itself a wicked problem? The design process that has been used to generate ESD projects for one PBL unit is reflected upon, to share good practices and highlight points of ongoing contention.

Working from the background to the original pilot project to develop an inter‐disciplinary course to heighten student skills in sustainability and change management, the paper looks at some of the theoretical approaches taken to the design of PBL scenarios and tries to place these in the context of education for SD.

The initial project found that using inter‐disciplinary, problem‐based approaches to embedding SD in the curriculum is not only practicable but also desirable. However, the approach to design of problem scenarios has to be adjusted to the nature of the “wickedness” of sustainability issues and be appropriate to the student cohort and institution.

The approaches are felt to be applicable to a much wider range of situations than is demonstrated in the paper but, clearly, the findings can only be grounded on the particular situation of the project.

The 2006 curriculum development action research project was intended to help other institutions to replicate the process but, much of the external attention since that time has focussed, inappropriately, on simply re‐using the scenarios that were described in the initial project rather than applying the design process that has been developed in order to devise new scenarios more appropriate to another course or institution.

Numerous policy announcements and articles have been produced over the past 20 years calling for higher education institutions to give greater focus to social, cultural, economic and environmental sustainability in their curriculum, research, engagement activities and operations. However, there has been much less attention given to establishing how to ensure these desired developments are successfully initiated, implemented and sustained. It is to these key areas of effective change management, leadership, support and governance for embedding sustainability into the core activities of higher education institutions through transformation that this special issue of Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal (SAMPJ) gives focus. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper brings together a consolidated analysis of the existing empirical literature on effective change management and leadership in higher education transformation with particular focus on the results of a recent international empirical study of 188 experienced leaders of sustainability in universities in Australia, the UK, the European Mainland, North America and South Africa.

The paper brings together the case for action in the sector, identifies an integrating framework for addressing sustainable development in the university curriculum, research, engagement activities and operations consistently, comprehensively through a whole institutional approach and identifies the key challenges and lessons on effective change management and leadership for sustainability transformation initiatives in universities and colleges.

Higher education institutions often give more attention to discussing what should change in their provision than to ensuring that desired transformations are actually put into practice effectively, sustainably and with positive impact. This paper and the articles which follow seek to address this gap.