Achieving Sustainable Development Goals: What a Management Faculty Can Do?

Mother earth has never faced a challenge as she is facing it today. The unmindful exploitation of mother nature, use of toxic systems and substances and relegation of our duty towards the mother nature has landed us in a very precarious situation. The negative impact today on mother earth and society is alarmingly high and has the potential to cause devastation to survival ecosystem in future. The earth has been inundated five times before – but all of them are due to massive geo-spatial shifts, extra- terrestrial activities and nature’s decisions to redress the anomalies through disruptive changes. There is a fear that the follow on devastation in future will be due to human race only as no other race has the power and ability to destroy the natural systems and get involved into unmindful exploitation of balances set by mother nature.

Are we handing over a safer, cleaner and sustainable world to the new generation? Have we made the world a safe place through our actions or have increased challenges for our next generation- challenges that are unmanageable even for next few generations? There is a concern to make the planet more sustainable in future. Currently the human race consumes 1.5 times of what mother earth can produce and it is apprehended this unmindful consumption will increase to 5 times of what mother earth can produce by 2050. So a pre-emotive strategy and practice is the call of the day so that we can avoid the uncalled for devastation that may wipe us out of the earth again. I may sound pessimistic in this article but if we can look at the way we consume and dispose of in post consumption scenario, one can realize that we are in a hurry to harm the earth like never before. This un-mindfulness is equipped with ignorance on emerging challenges and absence of opinion leadership among the intellectuals. The management professors should now start working towards achieving the set sustainable development goals as a personal and moral responsibility. What professors can do beyond class room teaching about achieving these sustainable development goals SDGs). It is important for professors to build awareness of sustainability issues among students.

Such kind of recognition and enhanced comprehension about sustainability issues will help management students to make ‘inclusive decisions’ where nature and ecological system can be a part of it and help them in building SDG sensitive decisions and actions through proper evaluation of both short term and long term issues covering all living beings. Professors need to focus on their individual sustainability actions than their research on sustainability. Advanced technologies focusing on sustainable actions can help us in reducing the emanating challenges due to worsening of the sustainable world order. Changes in public policy in developing eco-friendly consumption need to be propagated among students. There is always a tradeoff between increased consumption and eco-friendly technology. There is a growing concern that we need to keep our flying paths clean on sky and on the other there is an unprecedented rise in the demand for air transport. So students in innovation and technology classes need to understand this paradox of balancing the nature and satisfying the human greed.

Is there a need for cultural shift? The answer to this question is a sure ‘Yes”. People need to re-orient their consumption and practice mindful consumption. If the teachers can trigger the changes in the individual consumption pattern, this will lead to transformation in individual behavior. Research suggests that individual actions and decisions are important in matters related to climate change and other environmental and social sustainability issues.

Social learning theories can guide both professors and management students to adopt pro-environmental behavior. Earlier research posits that individuals can learn and acquire new behaviors either by engaging in actual experiences or by directly observing and imitating others actions, social norms are transmitted and can even emerge based on such observations and interactions (Bandura, 1977, Social Learning Theory, General Learning Process). Analysis of adoption of voluntary pro-environmental behavior by employees in the workplace proposes that supervisors are an important source of social norms regarding environmental behavior and the supervisory provision of these norms can lead to the powerful personal norms for such behavior (Lufs, R & Hahn, R (2013), European Management Review). This opens a research opportunity on faculty modelling of personal sustainability behavior and their impact on management students change in behavior towards sustainable practices.

Faculty members can have sustainability impact through (1) research, (2) service and (3) teaching. They can create special interest groups (SIGs) and initiate research on sustainability issues and through the research process itself students will be able to learn the consequences of unsustainable behavior.  Many faculties are already engaged with a wide range of their sustainability service responsibilities. They can advise students to be part of many diverse groups like NetImpact and learn pro=environmental behavior. Faculty members can undertake experiential learning activities as part of teaching pedagogy or/and conduct focus group research to present the impactful results of unsustainable practices during their classroom or on field sessions.

The Table-I indicates various ways by which faculty can contribute towards awareness and changes in behavior among students through teaching learning process (Kanasihra et al 2020). Students can also use the sustainability calculator to measure their carbon foot prints

Sustainability Footprint Calculator

There has been a common realization across the globe that sustainability goals cannot be attained just by policy decisions or initiatives taken by organizations and governments. Unless enlightened individuals lead in both thought process and practice and illustrate through their conduct and action- achieving sustainability will be a distant dream only. So any measurement method should focus on human action and signal success of achievement through identifiable actions. Following foot print calculators are available online.

• Global Foot Print Network (footprintnetwork.com). This platform calculates individual’s ecological and carbon footprints divided by consumption categories like food, shelter, mobility, consumption of physical goods and services.
• United States Environmental Protection Agency (epa.gov/carbon-footprint-calculator). This estimates individual carbon footprints by using the USA average values
• Water Footprint Network (waterfootprint.org). This calculates individual water foot print for different countries and also personal consumption patterns.
• Slavery Footprint (slaveryfootprint.org). This allows users to input select indices and data about consumer spending patterns which the builds a graphical footprint of users’ participation in modern day slavery.
• The Carbon Footprint (carbonfootprint.com) This calculates individual carbon footprint for different countries and suggests options for carbon offsetting.

Faculty Contribution to the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS)