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Special issue for the 2013 EFMD annual conference: promising directions in management education and new prospects
Edited by Howard Thomas, Eric Cornuel and Stephano Harney
1. The need for an alternative future of management education
Some suggest that the world is at a turning point and that we are approaching the great disruption, a moment when "both mother nature and father greed hit the wall at once" ([24] Gilding, 2011). As environmental thresholds are breached, our collective actions are triggering tipping points that may represent irreversible damage to both ecosystems and societies ([77] Rockström et al. , 2009; [71] Raworth, 2012; [94] Whiteman et al. , 2013). Recent estimations of humanity's global footprint suggest that we are using the resources of one and a half planets ([100] WWF et al. , 2012). The global middle class is projected to triple reaching 4.9 billion by 2030 with an additional 2.7 billion middle class consumers in Asia alone ([98] World Economic Forum and Accenture, 2012). WWF estimates that this will increase our global footprint to reach a bio-capacity need of two planets by 2030.
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) recognizes in its Vision 2050 - "nine billion people living well and within the limits of the planet" - that the demands of a growing and more demanding population have to be met within the capacity of the existing planet. This requires both a significant reduction of the ecological footprint and an improved bio-capacity ([96] WBCSD, 2010, p. 36). Moving to a sustainable world in 2050 implies rebuilding the economy with new rules, decoupling economic growth from resource consumption and ecosystem degradation, moving markets toward true-value pricing and long-term value creation, and for business to make sustainability an easier choice for consumers and companies themselves ([96] WBCSD, 2010, p. 10). The sheer scale of this task is rarely acknowledged ([87] UN Secretary General, 2012). In a world of nine billion people all aspiring to western lifestyles, the carbon intensity of every dollar of output must be at least 130 times lower in 2050 than it is today. And by the end of the century, economic activity will need to take carbon out of the atmosphere rather than adding to it ([32] Jackson 2011, p. 187)....