Transforming Finance and Business Education: Part of the Problem

Abstract

Mankind faces the challenge of transforming the existing global production/consumption/wealth-distribution system from an unjust, unsustainable one into a more just system which the Earth’s resources can support. Current business education supports, enables, justifies, and intensifies the unsustainable aspects of the existing business system, and hence is “part of the problem” of global unsustainability. Although all people have opportunities to contribute to this transformation and are “called” to do so, professors in all disciplines have a special opportunity and obligation to heed such a call. This article is the first of three planned articles focusing on business education, and particularly on finance teaching within that education. It describes how business education, as currently conceived and delivered, is part of the problem and needs to be transformed. It then addresses how finance teaching, as a major contributor to business education, is in turn a “major part of the problem” and itself needs to be transformed.