Critical Thinking in Sustainable Business: Examining Pragmatic and Ethical Issues for Supporting Biodiversity (Eco-centrism) in Business Education

This research aims to examine the case for mainstreaming the positioning of ecocentric perspectives in university business school settings. We argue for an urgent need to reorient anthropocentric normative framings of sustainability in business and management education to ecocentric ontologies and epistemologies within pedagogical praxes of design and delivery. We draw upon two examples from university business schools’ sustainability programmes in Africa and The United Kingdom as comparative cases to illuminate the commonalities and differences in ontological and epistemological characteristics. Uganda and England are contextually different, whether it be geography, economy(ies), or how these contexts, in turn, shape/influence pedagogical approaches and practices in each of those business schools. Findings show that Education for Sustainable Development Goals (ESDGs) increasingly feature within courses across ‘sustainable’ management-centric pedagogies such as ‘sustainable marketing’ and ‘sustainable supply chain management’. However, these normative framings of sustainability pedagogies were found to potentially negate the inclusion of ‘deep green’ rooted concepts, ontologies and epistemologies in business and management education. In contrast to these normative approaches, we present and analyse opportunities for critically evaluating sustainability education that centres on biodiversity through ecopedagogy and eco-literacy.