Encapsulating this trend is the demand for courses in social entrepreneurship. Courses that didn’t even exist in many schools five years ago are now some of the most popular in curricula the world over. According to Rachida Justo, Proffessor of Entrepreneurship at Instituto de Empresa, Madrid, “Education in social entrepreneurship has grown dramatically since the first course was taught at Harvard University…in the mid 1990’s”

And the trend seems to be driven by demand. The new generation of business students are exhibiting a strong sense of social justice, or at least there has been a shift in consciousness and certainly a stepping away from the traditional bottom line of Milton Freidman’s brand of capitalism, in which business owed allegiance to shareholders alone. The tripple bottom line – profit, people, planet - appears to be the way of the future. In a joint study published in March by Net Impact and the Aspen Institute, it was shown that 88 percent of MBAs believe that the for-profit sector should play a role in addressing social and environmental issues and 77 percent believed that corporate social responsibility (CSR) leads to profits.

The trend is being mirrored in the corporate world – companies are embracing responsible and sustainable business like never before and there is a scramble to recruit people who can display business savvy alongside a clear understanding of environmental and social issues. According to experts, the job market for the socially minded MBA is growing, even in a slow job market, and credible businesses want graduates with integrated education.

While this new breed of MBA is undoubtedly becoming more sought after, one of the main challenges that needs to be overcome is the lack of available faculty to teach such programmes.

“Because the field is new, it is also relatively small. It is still rare to have many colleagues at the same institution or in the same geographic area who share a serious interest in social entrepreneurship.’ Justo says.

Although there is now a much greater body of research available. Johanna Mair, an expert on social entrepreneurship from IESE business school in Barcelona says “What helps schools and faculty offering courses is clearly that we have now a lot more teaching material available on a global scale.”

But its more than that – school management needs to back the trend. If business is going to be the key driver to solving environmental issues then MBA programmes have to provide the expertise. “Business schools must fully support faculty who act as champions of ethics and corporate responsibility. They can make a huge impact on tomorrow’s leaders all over the world” says Frank Brown, Dean of INSEAD.

Keeping tabs on all this is the Aspen Institute, a non-profit research institute that works to foster forward thinking leadership. The institute has developed an alternative MBA ranking – beyond grey pinstripes – that aims to identify the top 100 business schools for the integration of social and environmental stewardship. Its goals are manifold, but principal among them is to challenge business schools to incorporate environmental management into curricula and provide information to corporate recruiters on which schools are providing the best training.

Some business schools are now even being founded on the principle of an integrated business education, such as The Presidio School of Management in San Francisco. But how much of this is bandwagon buy-in? Recently there has been a trend to develop MBA oaths to encourage managers to commit to a code of ethics. Della Bradshaw, business education editor of the Financial Times is cynical. “These pledges strike me as acts of sentimentality rather than considered action.”

It certainly begs the question as to why managers would need such an incentive to ‘do good’. But then again, you could say the same about the whole trend to greening the MBA. There is now tangible pressure on business to step up and take responsibility for some of the social and environmental pickles the world now finds itself in, and that pressure extends itself to educators. Della Bradshaw said it best, stating the obvious: “Why had they never considered teaching it before?”

Bonnie Flaws
Producer
CNBC