Search results

The purpose of this paper is to identify the number of courses related to sustainability offered in bachelor degree programs of business administration in Brazilian federal universities.

An exploratory research was carried out based on a descriptive scope. The process of mapping federal universities in Brazil was carried out using data available in the Cadastro das Instituições de Educação Superior (General Register of Undergraduate Institutions), on the Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais – INEPE (National Institute for Educational Studies and Research) web site. Then, researchers collected business administration curricula from the universities' web sites. The present study was based on 40 of the 45 universities first considered, which represents 89 percent of the programs offered in Brazil. After data collection – performed from July to August 2009 – a qualitative analysis of the curriculum was carried out.

The inclusion of new courses that involve sustainability in business administration programs is still irregular and slow. Of the 40 universities investigated, only 13 (around 33 percent) offered courses related to the topic.

The nature of the research does not allow generalizations regarding other public or private undergraduate institutions.

Results denote a deficiency in relation to the adoption of required courses on sustainability. This gap in the curriculum may compromise the ability of business administration students – who are the future managers and strategists – to reflect on the role of organizations in society.

The present study is the first to examine the teaching of sustainability in Brazilian business education. It also contributes to monitoring the performance of Brazilian federal universities in the teaching of sustainability in business administration programs.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight how methodological and educational construction in the realm of higher education in management – which aims to meet the demands of current problems – depends on the recognition of open systems' dynamic complexity at their multiple levels, on the interdependence between ecosphere or ecosystem Earth and organizations and individuals, as well as on the integration of the neurocerebral system (as a complex unit of the whole) based on adaptive decision making as a feature that emerges from the system.

Having complexity as a background, this paper is based on post‐normal science and interdisciplinary practices to discuss the following points in an interrelated and non‐linear way: multidimensional organizations, decisions and strategies, teaching of strategic skills oriented towards adaptive decision making, metacognitive development and emotion/motivation.

The adaptive decision perspective adopted by post‐normal science encourages the incorporation of human characteristics and potentialities that are currently neglected in management sciences. Such characteristics and potentialities mean evolving from an understanding of the human mind as an automatic data processor to a logic that allows us to consider the interaction between emotion and cognition as well as between these two and their environment, thus connecting individual‐organization‐society. This paper suggests that teaching/learning strategic skills oriented to adaptive decision making depends on educators and students' metacognitive development and on identifying social and environmental conditions that are capable of promoting the emotional/motivational balance needed for such expression.

There is no empirical proof.

Management studies have been oversimplified by a pragmatic and deterministic orientation. This paper is a contribution to higher education management educators who wish to focus on new elements in these studies, thus preparing management students to act with more awareness and flexibility in an organizational environment that is increasingly complex and ever changing. This environment is beginning to be guided by competitiveness and sustainability in a dialogical way, thus creating complex relations between individuals‐organizations‐society.