Green Bag Lunch - on teaching sustainability that business needs

BI Norwegian Business School’s Centre for Sustainability and Energy hosts monthly 30-minute inspirational talks on "why" and "how" to teach sustainability and responsibility in business schools. BI professor Caroline Dale Ditlev-Simonsen hosts the talks.

Today, we welcome Maalfrid Brath, Regional Managing Director Nordics & Baltics at Manpower Group, a global company specializing on workforce competence solutions. She has previously been CEO in Manpower Norway for ten years and is an experienced business leader, who also serves in many Boards, such as NHO and Kitron and BI Board of Trustees. As a BI Alumni, she is also active in BI Alumni Advisory Board.

She will address the needed sustainability skills in the market today and where business school curriculums need to go, to be relevant in the future. Some questions to be discussed:

• Which sustainability skills do business leaders expect from graduates and employees, today and in the future?
• How can business schools collaborate better with business life to strengthen teaching and learning about sustainability, to meet the needs in business life?

The talk is relevant for all faculty in higher education and for business professionals.

Maalfrid Brath, Regional Managing Director Nordic & Baltics at ManpowerGroup

Caroline Ditlev-Simonsen, professor at BI Norwegian Business School, co-director for BI Centre for Sustainability and Energy and PRME-adviser to BI President

Why is this talk relevant?

To solve today’s dire societal challenges, we need leaders who are able to generate purpose, ethics, system-thinking, interdisciplinary innovations and societal impact. International businesses and global associations are urging management educators to transform programmes and courses to deliver the kind of leadership that the world needs.

Are business schools too slow to transform curriculum, pedagogies and incentive structures to develop our future leaders? If so, how can they speed up?

• BI has been committed to UN Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) since 2016. See BI Sustainability and Responsible Management Report to PRME 2022.
• See recording of previous Green Bag Lunch Talks on teaching sustainability:
  December - Hanken School of Economics and
  February - AACSB (accreditation organization)