Competency Based Business Education with the Focus on Sustainability and Ethics

In light of recent economic and financial crisis as well as major ecological catastrophes (BP Deep Water horizon oil spill in 2010, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster) the current model of traditional business education faces the overwhelming criticism based on the fact that business schools and business universities failed in educating responsible business leaders capable of taking sustainable and ethical business decisions. Nobody doubts that the current approach to the teaching of business must change dramatically from the profit-oriented to society-oriented. This article discusses the competency based education with the focus on sustainability and ethics as the possible solution.

The main tendency in higher learning in the last decade is the move from knowledge-based education, where the role of an educator was to provide a student with a certain level of knowledge, to competency based education where the main focus of attention is the development of personal and professional competencies necessary for successful performance of a professional activity by a graduating student.

Nowadays the curriculum development at business universities and business schools in Europe and around the world is primarily focusing on managerial competencies which are considered as important by professional managerial practice. The assumption is that the curricula should represent an institution´s best attempt to capture the most essential content relevant to managerial work. These competencies include managerial decision making, leadership, communication, creative thinking and initiative, analytical and holistic thinking and problem-solving. Which all together is a big and positive move from the so-called “hard skills” or technical skills to more interpersonal and “soft skills”. However, the recent circumstances, particularly the global economic crisis and ecological catastrophes, demand from business schools the integration into their curriculum of a new dimension – sustainability and ethics.

How can ethics and sustainability be taught? The mere awareness of the issues is not automatically transmitted to the behavior of an individual when he or she faces a complex real-life situation. With this in mind, it is suggested that ethics and sustainability should be seen as an additional professional competency developed at all stages of business education: through Bachelor of Business Administration programs to postgraduate studies such as MBA and Masters degree programs.

Professional competency is a problematic term which characterizes the articulation of knowledge in different situations by mean of its mobilization, integration and transferring to socio-professional contexts. The analysis of different studies concerning the competency based education reveals the following two main components of a professional competency: personal attributes and personal attributes related to the professional working context. The first include capacities, motives, personal characteristics, attitudes, values, and personal resources and the second are comprised of knowledge, behavior and personal and professional experience. In summary, professional competencies can be described as holistic and integrating – they integrate internal demands and personal attributes to the relevant context; contextual – when the competency refers not to what one possesses but to the way one behaves in different situations to perform different tasks; transferable – when the competency is characterized by the capacity to transfer the experience or knowledge acquired in one situation to another situation; and reflexive and creative – when the experience or knowledge is transferred not in automatic, mechanical way but creatively.

The framework characterizing any professional competency already incorporates the notion that personal values and attributes have a significant place in one´s behavior. And this is where the educators can and must intervene when pursing an objective of developing the competencies of ethics and sustainability in students attending business schools today. Teaching of ethics and sustainability should be approached from the competency based education perspective which includes such pedagogical methods as experiential learning, team-working, the motivating role of professors and the organizational culture of business schools which should reflect the core values aimed to be transmitted to the students. In other words, competency based education is not about accumulating knowledge about the issues of ethics and sustainability but about knowing, learning and applying.

The approach to developing ethics and sustainability oriented competencies can be seen in the pedagogical experience at our business school in Barcelona. The practice at our sustainable business school in Spain consists in educating responsible business managers starting at undergraduate level, during Bachelor of Business Administration studies. At the same time, sustainability elements are not only included in the curriculum with courses such as Ethical Dimensions of International Business and Global Environmental Science but represent the culture of the international business school in general: from the policy on environmentally friendly campus (organizational culture) to experiential learning methods such as participation in the voluntary sustainability projects, games involving ethical-decision making, questions and practical tasks outside the comfort zones of students which involve deep thinking. Global Business School Barcelona claims to be the first business school in Barcelona with true focus on the world, and thus sustainability and ethical issues are embraced as well in the global approach to education which includes respecting each member of the diversified international community of the business school, learning to understand different cultures and their values, knowing that doing business globally today will bring more benefits when it considers first of all the benefits of the global society. As one of the sustainable international business schools in Europe, Global Business School Barcelona took on educating future business leaders who are aware of ethical and environmental issues via competency based education.

The financial crisis made business schools in Europe and worldwide be more introspective about what they are teaching and today Bachelor of Business Administration, MBA and other business programs are featuring more social, sustainable and ethical content than ever. However and as this article has demonstrated, the mere inclusion of the ethics and sustainability oriented courses is not enough for the development of the responsible business leaders. The teaching of ethics and sustainability should be based on the competency oriented approach so that our students can feel, sense and practice these complex issues in real-life situations.