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Citizenship and Sustainability in Organizations

BUSINESS SCHOOLS,
LEADERSHIP AND
THE SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT GOALS
THE FUTURE OF RESPONSIBLE
MANAGEMENT EDUCATION
Edited by
Lars Moratis and Frans Melissen
Business Schools, Leadership and
the Sustainable Development
Goals

Business Schools, Leadership and the Sustainable Development Goals: The Future of
Responsible Management Education is the second book in the series Citizenship
and Sustainability in Organizations: Exploring and Spanning the Boundaries.
It contains chapters from various scholars and practitioners in the field of
responsible management education (RME). Through introspection, through
celebrating successes and learning from failures (retrospection) and through
looking forward (prospection), it aims to inspire a future of management
education and leadership development that demonstrates its relevance to
sustainable development. In doing so, it touches upon the grand societal
challenges of our time, as illustrated by the United Nations Sustainable
Development Goals, and discusses how business schools, and other providers
of management education, could and should contribute to overcoming these
challenges. It argues that management education needs to educate future
leaders in a way that no longer hampers but truly accelerates the process of
sustainable development. This book offers a collection of thought-provoking
ideas, vivid stories (including personal accounts and experiences), and
appealing and engaged forecasts, visions and ideas about management
education and leadership development for sustainability. Hence, it is a
must-read for anyone interested in or involved in RME.

Lars Moratis is Professor of Sustainable Business at Antwerp Management

School and the Chair in Management Education for Sustainability, a joint
initiative of Antwerp Management School (Belgium) and Breda University
of Applied Sciences (the Netherlands).

Frans Melissen is Professor of Sustainable Experience Design at Breda

University of Applied Sciences and the Chair in Management Education
for Sustainability, a joint initiative of Antwerp Management School
(Belgium) and Breda University of Applied Sciences (the Netherlands).
Citizenship and Sustainability in Organizations
Series Editors: David F Murphy and Alison Marshall

Exploring how organisations and citizens respond to and influence current and
future global transformations, this book series publishes excellent, innovative, and
critical scholarship in the fields of citizenship, social responsibility, sustainability,
innovation, and place leadership in diverse organisational contexts. These contexts
include commercial businesses, social enterprises, public service organisations, in­
ternational organisations, faith-based organisations (FBOs), non-governmental or­
ganisations (NGOs), community groups, hybrids, and cross-sector partnerships. The
role of the individual as citizen may also be explored in relation to one or more of
these contexts, as could formal or informal networks, clusters, and organisational
ecosystems.

The Intelligent Nation: How to Organise a Country

John Beckford
Citizenship and Sustainability in Organizations
Exploring and Spanning the Boundaries
Edited by David F. Murphy and Alison Marshall
Knowledge Management and Sustainability
A Human-Centered Perspective on Research and Practice
Edited by David Israel Contreras-Medina, Julia Pérez Bravo and Elia Socorro Díaz Nieto
Corporate Citizenship and Family Business
Edited by Claire Seaman
Partnership and Transformation
The Promise of Multi-stakeholder Collaboration in Context
Leda Stott
Business Schools, Leadership and the Sustainable Development Goals
The Future of Responsible Management Education
Edited by Lars Moratis and Frans Melissen
Business Schools,
Leadership and the
Sustainable
Development Goals
The Future of Responsible
Management Education

Edited by Lars Moratis and

Frans Melissen
First published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Lars Moratis and Frans Melissen;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Lars Moratis and Frans Melissen to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.

ISBN: 978-1-032-15602-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-15604-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-24490-5 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003244905

Typeset in Bembo
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents

List of tables vii

List of figures viii
List the contributors ix
Preface xiv

Introduction 1
F RANS M ELISS E N AN D LA R S MOR A T I S

PART I
Visions and responses 9

1 The responsible management education paradox:

Applying the conceptual lens of Organisational
Ambidexterity 11
SIM ON M . SM I TH, HUG UE S S É RA P HI N , A N D K AREN CRIPPS

2 Emotional competency in the interdisciplinary

classroom: A systems thinking perspective 31
J OANNA C. CA RE Y AN D J AME S H UN T

3 Managing emotions in responsible management

education courses and promoting the leadership
of the Sustainable Development Goals 46
MUH AM MA D ATI F AN D E N R I C O FO N T A N A

4 Shaping sustainability leadership from the start:

Educating for sustainable development in undergraduate
business and management programmes 62
ALEX HOP E
vi Contents
PART II
Part II Critical and personal reflections 83

5 Balancing the scales: Changing perceptions of gender

stereotypes among students in a PRME champion
business school 85
ELAINE B ERKE R Y AN D N UA L A R Y AN

6 Between criticism and optimism: The derailment and

rehabilitation of business schools 100
GUÉNOLA AB O RD- HUG O N N O N ET , A FR ODI TA D OB REVA ,
AND LU C AS M EI J S

7 Reflections of an engaged marketing scholar:

An SDG-guided journey towards being a ‘called
professional’ 117
RANJ IT VOOL A

PART III
Creative pedagogies and assessments 137

8 The use of news articles as a pedagogical tool for

responsible management education 139
RU TH ARELI GA RC ÍA -L EÓ N

9 Supporting transformation towards sustainable

development: The use of Appreciative Inquiry in
responsible management education 160
MIRJ AM MIN DE RMA N

10 Applying authentic assessment to teaching the

Sustainable Development Goals 175
SA RAH WILLI AMS A N D DAV I D F. MUR PH Y

11 Matters of measuring: Student learning and success in

sustainability education 191
LAU REN V ER H E IJ E N

Index 208
Tables

1.1 Overview of Organisational Ambidexterity 15

1.2 Comparison of competencies within sustainability
frameworks 24
5.1 Analysis of variance of mean item ratings and intraclass
coefficients by cohort and gender of respondent 92
6.1 Comparison between current and proposed business school
models 105
11.1 The overlap and differences between the key sustainability
competencies 194
Figures

3.1 Key features of teachers’ and student’s emotions and the

management thereof 57
4.1 Blueprint for sustainability integration in management
education 65
4.2 Integrating ethics, CSR, and sustainability in management
education 69
4.3 SDG programme specification mapping 75
6.1 A visual representation of the set of definitions for
responsible management and factors that influence
responsible management 110
6.2 OECD Learning Compass ( OECD, 2019) 111
7.1 A narrative model of authoring an identity as a called
professional 120
7.2 Ikigai 125
7.3 Re-imagining a problem to an opportunity: Google
Scholar citation (until December 2021) and kidney
failure journey 128
11.1 Ten phases of transformative learning 195
Contributors

Guénola Abord-Hugon Nonet is Assistant Professor at Jönköping

International Business School (JIBS), where she teaches, researches, and
leads projects and teams to help accelerate the sustainability transition.
Guénola is the former United Global Compact PRME Chair for
Scandinavia. She is JIBS Champion for Responsibility in Action and has
also chaired Jönköping University Sustainability Network from 2019 to
2022. Her pioneering doctoral research from 2013 studied responsible
management education and the needed changes in management education
to co-create sustainable societies. Guénola is Board member of Jönköping
County Sustainability Board.
Ruth Areli García-León is a lecturer and researcher at Ostfalia University of
Applied Sciences and the University of Hamburg in Germany. Her research
interest focuses on sustainable consumption and Responsible Management
Education. After working in the marketing and communication fields in the
public and private sectors, Dr. García-León moved to academia where she
has occupied different management positions. She has accumulated more
than 20 years of experience lecturing communication, marketing, and
management courses for graduate and undergraduate students in Spanish,
English, and German at different universities in Latin America and
Europe. She is part of the steering committee of the PRME DACH
Chapter (Germany-Austria-Switzerland) and the steering committee of
the PRME Working Group on Climate Change and Environment.
She holds a Ph.D. in Education Sciences, a Master in Marketing, an
M.Sc. in Communication, a Licentiate in Communication Sciences,
and is a certified coach and trainer of cross-cultural competencies.
Muhammad Atif is an Associate Professor at EDC Paris Business School,
France, and leads the school initiatives in corporate social responsibility
and sustainability areas. He received his Ph.D. in Management Sciences
from the University of Paris Dauphine (France) and an MBA degree
from IBA, University of Punjab (Pakistan). His research work is focused
on corporate social responsibility and sustainability, with a special
interest in textile industry and developing economies. In addition to
x Contributors
his teaching and research experience, Dr. Atif has worked for over eight
years in the textile industry at managerial positions.
Elaine Berkery is a Lecturer in Management and a researcher at the
Kemmy Business School in the University of Limerick, Ireland. She
teaches on a wide range of programmes at both undergraduate and post-
graduate level in the area of management, international management
and strategic management across health, public, and tourism sectors.
Elaine’s main research interests are in the area of diversity and flexibility
in the workplace. These include gender in management; investigating
the use and benefits of flexible working arrangements; and the talent
management of international nurses and midwives. Elaine regularly
presents her research to international audiences and publishes her
research in International Journals such as European Management
Review, the European Management Journal, the Journal of Nursing
Management, and Gender in Management: An International Journal.
She is a Senior Associate Fellow of the Academy of World Business,
Marketing and Management Development, a member of the Irish
Academy of Management and British Academy of Management.
Joanna C. Carey is an Associate Professor of Earth & Environmental
Science at Babson College. Her research focuses on answering
fundamental questions regarding ecosystem processes in the context of
global change and she teaches courses related to ocean systems and
climate change, among other topics. Joanna received her Ph.D. in Earth
Science from Boston University (2013), her M.S. in Environmental
Science from Yale University (2007), and her B.S. in Environmental
Policy & Planning from Virginia Tech (2005). Before joining Babson in
2017, Joanna completed several post-doctoral fellowships, including an
NSF Earth Science Fellowship and a USGS Powell Center Fellowship,
both hosted at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.
Karen Cripps is Lecturer in Business Management in the Department of
Responsible Management at the University of Winchester Business
School. She has a role as PRME Champion and lectures and researches
in responsible management and education.
Afrodita Dobreva received her M.Sc. degree (cum laude) in International
Management/CEMS from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus
University in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Alongside her studies, she
was involved in research on non-profit management and responsible
management education. Currently, she works as an associate at a
management consultancy firm that focuses on helping executives
develop themselves, their teams, and their businesses.
Enrico Fontana is a Lecturer at Sasin School of Management (Thailand)
and an Affiliated Researcher at the Mistra Centre for Sustainable Markets
 Contributors xi
at Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden). He received his Ph.D. in
Business Administration from Stockholm School of Economics and
MBA degree from McGill University (Canada). His Ph.D. and current
work are focused on corporate social responsibility and corporate
sustainability, with a focus on South and Southeast Asia. Enrico has
published his work in multiple academic outlets, such as Journal of
Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research, and Business Strategy and the
Environment. Before embarking on his Ph.D. studies, Enrico has worked
for six years as market manager in the apparel industry in Asia and
Europe.
Alex Hope is Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor and Associate Professor of
Business Ethics at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University.
He is responsible for the strategic leadership of education across the
faculty and undertakes teaching, research, and consultancy across topics
such as education for sustainable development, responsible business,
business ethics, and the Sustainable Development Goals. Alongside his
work at Newcastle Business School Dr Hope is Co-Chair of the United
Nations Principles of Responsible Management Education (UN PRME)
Climate Change and Environment working group and past Vice-Chair
of the UN PRME UK and Ireland Chapter. He is a member of the
Chartered Association of Business Schools Learning and Teaching
Committee and sits on the Northeast board of Business in the
Community, the Prince of Wales Responsible Business Network. He
holds a Ph.D. in Sustainable development, an MA in Academic Practice
and B.Sc. (Hons) in Environmental Management.
James Hunt is an Associate Professor of Management at Babson College
where he teaches organisational behaviour and sustainability. James is the
co-author of two books, The Coaching Manager: Developing Top Talent in
Business (third edition), and The Coaching Organization: A Strategy for
Developing Leaders. James is a former Chair of the Management Division
at Babson. He is also a fine art and environmental photographer,
focusing on the interaction of humans and the environment.
Lucas Meijs is full professor of Strategic Philanthropy and volunteering at
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University in the
Netherlands. His research focuses on issues related to volunteer/non-
profit management. He has served for six years as the first non-North-
America editor of the journal Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, the
premier journal in the field and is a board member of several Dutch non-
profit organisations, including a corporate foundation fighting digital
exclusion.
Mirjam Minderman supports higher education for sustainable development
through strategy development and implementation, process facilitation,
training, education, and research. In her role as Policy Adviser & Lecturer
xii Contributors
Business and Society at TIAS School for Business and Society, Mirjam is
responsible for the integration of ‘Business and Society’ in the school’s
education. She designs and implements the TIAS strategy and policies in
this regard, based on the Business & Society Competency Framework that
she developed. This includes facilitating faculty to integrate the related
competencies and contents in their programs and courses, and designing and
delivering related courses. Several Appreciative Inquiry-related trainings
enable Mirjam to be more effective in her work. With a Master’s degree
in International Relations, Mirjam initially worked in the field of
microfinance, fair trade, and responsible investing. She gradually shifted
towards sustainable development and CSR – and specifically towards
training and education on these issues. She specialised in Higher Education
for Sustainable Development and worked with several Dutch higher
education institutions. Mirjam is active in various Dutch and international
networks related to CSR and RME.
David F. Murphy is Associate Professor of Sustainability and Collaborative
Leadership and the academic lead for the Initiative for Leadership &
Sustainability at the University of Cumbria. David has extensive
global-local experience working on multi-stakeholder engagement
and collaboration with senior leaders and change agents in business,
government, NGOs, and the UN system, including related consultancy
and academic work in teaching and applied research on responsible
business practice and partnerships for sustainable development.
Nuala Ryan is a lecturer and researcher in the Department of
Management and Marketing at the Kemmy Business School in the
University of Limerick. Her areas of focus include Strategic
Management, Leadership and Organisational Behaviour. She has
been a lecturer at the University College Cork, UCD Michael
Smurfit Graduate Business School, University College Dublin, The
National College of Ireland, NUI Galway and currently in University
of Limerick. Prior to becoming a full time lecturer Dr. Ryan has
worked in industry where her main responsibilities included HR
Business Management, Organisational Development, Team Development
and Learning Organisation Management. This experience has led to a
wide range of teaching, research and publication interests in the broad area
of gender, leadership development, strategic management, and general
organisational behaviour. She is currently carrying out research in the
healthcare sector in the area of leadership and strategic management.
Hugues Séraphin is Senior Lecturer in Event/Tourism Management
Studies and Marketing. He holds a PhD from the Université de Perpignan
Via Domitia (France) and joined The University of Winchester Business
School in 2012.
 Contributors xiii
Simon M. Smith is Principal Lecturer in Business, Management, and
Enterprise at Oxford Brookes University. He has expertise and interests
in leadership and management, responsible management, human
resource management, organisational behaviour, organisational analysis,
and international business. His current research interests encompass
Organisational Ambidexterity, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),
overtourism, global talent management, resilience, emerging-market
economies, and training and development. He has published in Human
Resource Management, International Journal of Human Resource Management,
Human Resource Management Review and Thunderbird International Business
Review.
Ranjit Voola is an Associate Professor in Marketing, at the University of
Sydney. He is passionate about engaging in Responsible Management
Education which is transformational in re-imagining the purpose of
business and marketing, where alleviating societal issues and making
profits are not mutually exclusive. He believes that the SDGs provide a
viable framework for re-imagining the purpose of business. He has
developed novel curricula relating to Marketing and the SDGs and
Poverty Alleviation and Profitability. His scholarly work challenges
marketing scholars to tackle critiques relating to its lack of relevance and
impact of scholarly marketing research by holistically, strategically, and
explicitly engaging with the SDGs.
Lauren Verheijen is a lecturer and researcher of Management Education
for Sustainable Development at Breda University of Applied Sciences.
Lauren holds a Masters in Global Business and Sustainability from
Erasmus University Rotterdam and a Research Masters in Arts and
Culture from Leiden University. Her interests lie in exploring the
intersection between sustainability transitions and culture, interpreting
individual and societal transformation to go hand-in-hand. Current
research focuses on the implementation of transformative learning in
higher education.
Sarah Williams is Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Sustainability at the
University of Cumbria. She leads the MBA module ‘Local-Global
Challenges in Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability’ and redesigned
the module from an on-campus residential to online during the Covid-
19 pandemic. Sarah has over 30 years’ experience of working with
business and public/voluntary sector partners, largely to develop and
support sustainability programs. She has a particular interest in personal
values and sensemaking.
Preface

This is exactly the book I would have liked to read when I started teaching
business school students about the role of business in society. The book is a
true gem of thought-provoking chapters that call educators to reflect,
examine taken-for-granted assumptions, and search for novel ways of
engaging our students to become those critically thinking responsible
leaders that the world needs. In other words, this book is about how to
create contexts for ‘student agency.’
The two book editors, Lars Moratis and Frans Melissen, are both
Professors of Responsible Management Education (RME). They are
world-leading scholars in the RME context and they are known among
peers to invite critical debates and enjoy a provocative discussion.
Personally, I have had the pleasure of working with both of them over
the past two years, as they have developed the PRME Responsible
Management Education Webinar Series and currently serve as Editors in
Chief of the PRME BLOG. The critical twist and the invitation to turn
around arguments and old routines is very much the spirit of this book.
Today business schools have a responsibility to educate business leaders
who are able to identify novel solutions to some of the world’s grandest
challenges, some of these are described in the United Nation’s Sustainable
Development Goals (SDG). It is no longer sufficient to train business school
students in the techniques to develop growth, consumption and
shareholder value and become what Harvard professor Khurana has called
‘mere craftsmen’ who know their mathematics and can calculate the return
on investment (Khurana, 2010). Today, there is a global need for a private
sector that is able to think beyond ‘do no harm’ and instead can rethink the
concept of economic growth and generate new business models. With the
development of the SDGs in 2015, the Secretary General of the United
Nations, Antonio Guterres, made it clear that businesses are part of the
solution to repair the world and create an inclusive and sustainable future
for all. Scientists have again and again supported this vision: the corporate
sector may be part of the problem but it is also a central part of the solution
to develop a sustainable world (Rockström, Steffen, Noon and Persson,
2009). To take on this responsibility, businesses need leaders who know
 Preface xv
how to rethink economic models and how to generate novel business
models that will mutually benefit the business and the world.
The book is set in a world of global ‘wicked problems’ of climate change
and rising inequalities where there are no predefined solutions to how
business leaders shall operate. The editors emphasise the modern business
school’s responsibility to educate business leaders, who not only have the
knowledge to address these problems but also importantly the skills to ‘learn
to learn,’ i.e., the capacity to ongoingly set goals in new complex situations,
critically reflect and responsibly act to help put the world on a better future
track.
There is a growing awareness and support by business school deans to
transform the curriculum and many business schools have already
significantly done so. Several of the business schools that have signed up
to PRME Principles have reviewed their entire curricula and insisted to
integrate sustainable development into all program across all management
disciplines. This is a key part of the journey.
However, much less focus has been given to the pedagogies with which
the curriculum is brought into the business school classrooms. The way to
engage students in innovation and critical thinking is not by ‘telling them’
what to do. It is rather to make them curious and to let them explore
themselves how to identify problems and novel solutions. Such curiosity is
not encouraged when the professor is simply ‘profess’ing,’ i.e., positioning
him/herself centrally in front of the students in the classroom, going
through the texts, that the students have already read, supported by a
PowerPoint presentation. Yet ‘profess’ing’ is still the pedagogical habitus
that is preferred among many professors when teaching the curriculum.
Because that is the way we were taught ourselves.
The recent OECD report ‘Student Agency for 2030’ defines student
agency as ‘the capacity to set a goal, reflect and act responsibly to effect
change. It is about acting rather than being acted upon; shaping rather than
being shaped; and making responsible decisions and choices rather than
accepting those determined by others’ (OECD, 2019: 2). The report refers
to studies that show how students, when they are agents in their learning
and they play an active part in what they learn and how they learn, they
show not only greater motivation and wish to pursue the objectives for
their learning, they become better at ‘learning how to learn.’
This book critically insists on turning old pedagogical habits upside-
down. Not by telling professors the best way to teach the future generation
of business leaders. But by bringing in a group of highly experienced and
skilled professors who have all reflected on their own pedagogies over many
years and who perseveres on the journey to engage students as active
learners. The book chapters are admirably inspiring in their different ways
of conceptualising successes and failures in engaging (or not) students and
The tone of the book is set on the very first page in the very first chapter
that asks: ‘Are we irresponsible in delivering responsible management
xvi Preface
education?’ This fundamental question engages a debate about our role as
educators to prepare students to navigate in a profit-focused capitalistic
society while at the same time engaging them to aspire to transform business
to achieve the SDGs. The authors are asking us as educators to self-critically
rethink how we try to balance such complexity in the classroom.
In that same spirit the other book chapters alert us as educators to rethink
how we engage our students to navigate with complexity, paradoxes, and
ambiguities. All the invited authors share the same ambition: to help ‘equip’
our business school students to become those change makers that will
develop make sustainable development the norm for new economic
thinking in the private sector and beyond.
As I read the book chapters, I began to imagine what business schools
would like if the examples and ideas from this book were actually brought
into the classroom as a pedagogical habitus. If business schools students were
actually invited to re-imagine themselves what the role of business in
society could be. And most importantly, how enjoyable it would be to be a
business school student invited to engage to reimagine positive social,
economic, and environmental impact.
It is a book like this that will contribute to the urgent need to train and
reward business school faculty for their pedagogical achievements. I am
very honoured to be invited to write the preface of this admirable book,
and I am convinced that this book will inspire not only professors to
become better teachers but also business school deans to rethink how to
give more emphasis and prestige to their professors’ pedagogical efforts and
achievements.
Mette Morsing
Head of PRME
United Nations Global Compact, New York
August 2022
Introduction
Frans Melissen and Lars Moratis

The future of management education is inextricably intertwined with the

grand challenges of our time. On the one hand, management education
has been instrumental ‘in the destruction that modern-day business and
economic thinking have brought upon the planet and the human and
non-human life inhabiting it’ (Moratis and Melissen, 2022a, p. 30)
through teaching and research activities that propagate the principles
on which our current socioeconomic system is founded. Consequently,
management education is anything but an innocent bystander when it
comes to the various crises that are threatening humanity. Obviously, this role
in the origin of today’s most acute and urgent threats comes with great re-
sponsibility – a moral responsibility to clean up the mess it helped make.
Simultaneously, business schools and other providers of management
education have long since claimed that they educate the leaders of the
future and help build tomorrow’s business world. Living up to this promise
against the background of the grand challenges of our time only reinforces
and amplifies this moral responsibility. However, as many have stated be-
fore us, this will require nothing short of a paradigm shift in the way sus-
tainability is addressed in management education (see e.g., Kelly et al.,
2022; Teerikangas et al., 2022) and a re-purposing of education in general
(see e.g., Stewart et al., 2022). It not only requires a complete rethinking of
teaching and research activities from a content perspective, but also from a
pedagogical-didactical perspective.
The relevance of the latter becomes painfully clear from recent research
that shows how young people suffer from anxiety, grief, fear, and anger,
and up to 45% of them reporting that negative emotions linked to climate
change (and other socioecological crises) impact their daily functioning
(Hickman et al., 2021; Dooley et al., 2021). Some of them are the very
same young people that management education providers aspire to teach
how to become the leaders of our common future. Just imagine the
emotional affect that comes with being educated to shape tomorrow’s
business world and wider society while worrying and hurting about
whether you will have any future at all. Educating these young people will
have to be a lot more and something very different than simply addressing
DOI: 10.4324/9781003244905-1
2 Frans Melissen and Lars Moratis
some sustainability aspects within the context of the very same curricula and
pedagogical-didactical approaches that contributed to creating the crises
that threaten their future in the first place.
Exploring what these curricula will have to look like and what
pedagogical-didactical approaches will do justice to management educa-
tion’s moral responsibility to not only shape a sustainable business world but
to truly facilitate today’s young people in taking leadership in shaping our
common future is the topic of this volume in the series ‘Citizenship and
Sustainability in Organizations’ and the chapters included in this edited
collection of perspectives on this key challenge of our time.

The role of the Sustainable Development Goals

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have now
become the ‘de facto sustainability standard’ (Moratis and Melissen,
2022b, p. 213) for addressing the grand challenges mentioned earlier and,
consequently, they also constitute an important guideline for rethinking
and redesigning management education. In essence, the SDGs represent a
blueprint for creating a sustainable and just socioeconomic system by
operationalising how to address poverty, inequality, climate change, en-
vironmental degradation, peace and justice (United Nations, n.d.), to
name just a few of the wicked problems that are included in this fra-
mework. Today, despite critiques (see e.g., Biermann et al., 2022), the
SDGs remain a central lever in the way companies and other organisa-
tions, together with their stakeholders and broader society, search for
effective responses to and solutions for these problems.
The SDGs and the challenges they represent, including the urgency to
address them, have certainly been helpful in pushing the envelope when it
comes to interpreting the concept of ‘sustainable business.’ Nowadays, com-
panies are increasingly expected to not only make their internal processes more
green and limit their environmental impacts, but to also develop products with a
societal purpose, consider if they want to become a B-corporation, and even
experiment with entirely new business models that rely on sustainable ways of
value creation (Moratis et al., 2018). Companies leading the sustainability re-
volution, such as Patagonia, are now even taking an activist stance towards
sustainability, aiming to further redefine conceptions of corporate sustainability
and showing and inspiring others what roles and responsibilities business can
take in making system change happen. These (fast) evolving conceptions of
(corporate) sustainability also highlight the need for a different approach to
leadership and point towards new types of leadership.
As such, the SDGs might prove helpful in doing the same for management
education – to assist in moving (far) away from reproducing harmful as-
sumptions about the creation and distribution of economic value and the
relationships between firms, their stakeholders, and wider society that are not
only incompatible with sustainability (Springett, 2005; Høgdal et al., 2019)
 Introduction 3
but have actually created the problems addressed in the SDGs in the first
place. Similarly, educating future leaders cannot be based on the values on
which our current socioeconomic system is founded; management education
will have to facilitate tomorrow’s leaders in adopting sustainability as a leading
value and acting on it (cf. Weybrecht, 2017). Taking the SDGs as its
dominant sustainability perspective and main context, this edited collection
therefore brings together examinations of academics and practitioners on
how (1) to develop visions of the roles and responsibilities of business schools
and other providers of management education, (2) to reflect critically on
responsible management education (RME) and the assumptions that guide it,
and (3) to share ideas for and experiences with creative applications of
management education and leadership development for sustainability, and
their implementation in practice.
The chapters providing these examinations present a variety of perspectives
on these visions, assumptions, and ideas. Together, they represent a rich
palette of interpretations of what management education’s curricula and
pedagogical-didactical approaches should look like, given the trade-offs,
tensions and paradoxes represented by the SDGs, the emotional affect that
comes with addressing them, and the systemic activism that is required to
realise them (Moratis and Melissen, 2022b). Similarly, through these inter-
pretations, these chapters also put forward important reference points for
critically reflecting on and further developing sectoral guidelines, such as the
Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), and the way
accreditation bodies deal with providers of management education and ac-
tually assessing them based on delivering on their promise to educate the
leaders of the future and help build tomorrow’s business world. Furthermore,
through a critical perspective on the SDGs themselves, some chapters might
also assist in redesigning management education into a sector that could in-
spire and assist others, including politics and the business world, to move
beyond the SDGs only having discursive impact and to start using them as
leverage for transformative impact (Biermann et al., 2022). The thought-
provoking ideas, vivid stories (including personal accounts and experiences),
and appealing and engaged forecasts that are included, turn this book into a
catalyst for taking stock and reflecting through introspection, through cele-
brating successes and learning from failures (retrospection) and through
looking forward (prospection). Together, these perspectives might prove
valuable in inspiring a future of management education and leadership de-
velopment that truly demonstrates its relevance to sustainable development of
wider society.

Set-up and contents

The remainder of this book is organised around three themes. Part 1 –
Visions and responses (Chapters 1–4) – contains chapters that provide
perspectives on the roles and responsibilities of management education
4 Frans Melissen and Lars Moratis
within the context of the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges, as
well as (reflections on) strategies that business schools and other providers of
management education have followed to address the SDGs. Part 2 – Critical
and personal reflections (Chapters 5–7) – brings together critical views on
business schools’ role in society and how management education has ad-
dressed sustainability thus far. This part also includes critical reflections on
the SDGs themselves and potential consequences of the imperfections
of this framework for management education. Finally, Part 3 – Creative
pedagogies and assessments (Chapters 8–11) – contains descriptions of new
and original tools, methods, and learning strategies that management edu-
cators across our globe have used in practice, and that may inspire others to
adopt and adapt these for their own context and purposes.
Chapter 1, by Simon Smith, Hugues Séraphin, and Karen Cripps, explores
and discusses RME as a paradox. It contemplates whether it is actually ir-
responsible to deliver RME. The theory of Organisational Ambidexterity, a
theory pertaining to paradox, is applied as a lens to critically reflect on pro-
gress with respect to the PRME and the achievement of the SDGs. This
chapter discusses tensions that are hindering the impact of the PRME and the
SDGs and presents ambidextrous approaches as a potential solution for (re-
sponsible) management educators and business schools to move forward,
especially in relation to a deeper embedding of competencies for Education
for Sustainable Development (ESD).
In Chapter 2, Joanna Carey and James Hunt point out that we need to
explore a variety of educational approaches to help develop leaders who are
able to create and manage a sustainable world that is aligned with the SDGs.
They describe their experiences from a co-taught interdisciplinary elective
course on business-environment interactions offered to undergraduate
business majors. The chapter shows how they used a systems thinking fra-
mework for integrating earth science and management disciplines, which are
quite divergent in many respects but share a bias towards the development of
cognitive and analytic competencies. Therefore, they explore the important
opportunities that emerge from the emotional experiences generated by
addressing sustainability challenges and how these facilitate the development
of a more holistic approach to sustainability leadership. As such, this chapter
explores the development of empathy as a critical leadership competency and
presents lessons learned that can be of help in a variety of educational contexts
aimed at developing the leadership capabilities necessary to address the cur-
rent grand challenges facing society.
Chapter 3 addresses RME courses and why they are fundamental to
increasing students’ awareness of environmental and social challenges, and
to promote leadership that aligns with the SDGs. However, the authors,
Muhammed Atif and Enrico Fontana, conclude that these courses are often
characterised by a pedagogical-didactical approach that fails to address the
importance of emotions and how to manage them. Therefore, this chapter
presents an overview of the literature on emotions in the context of
 Introduction 5
teaching and learning and, against this backdrop, then explains how
managing emotions can help improve the quality of RME courses. By
offering some initial thoughts on how to manage emotions in the class-
room, the authors hope to encourage discussions among scholars and
managers interested in advancing the SDGs.
The final chapter of Part 1, Chapter 4, by Alex Hope, addresses the
challenge to develop effective RME that truly equips future leaders with
the capabilities needed to address the SDGs and engage in responsible
management practice. This chapter presents a blueprint for integrating
RME and sustainability leadership into business and management pro-
grammes. This blueprint was developed during work to deliver a new suite
of undergraduate business programmes recently launched at a large UK
public university, which were designed from the bottom up with the SDGs
and responsible leadership in mind. The author hopes that this blueprint
may act as a catalyst for other responsible management educators seeking to
develop study programmes that incorporate RME, the SDGs, and related
content, also by sharing some insights on how to overcome institutional
challenges and barriers to implementation.
Part 2 kicks off with Chapter 5, in which Elaine Berkery and Nuala
Ryan put forward that full and effective participation, as well as equal
opportunities for women in leadership positions and at all levels of decision
making in political, economic, and public life, can and, more importantly,
should be addressed by business schools and other providers of management
education. In fact, they state that business schools are in a unique position to
influence social change, providing guidance on how to empower women
in the workplace, marketplace, and community, by preparing future
graduates to enter the workforce ready to challenge and eliminate in-
equalities experienced by women globally. Guided by the results of a co-
hort study over a 10-year period at a PRME champion business school,
they discuss the roles and responsibilities of business schools in creating an
environment that allows learners to acquire the knowledge and skills
needed to promote gender equality through teaching of topical areas like
implicit bias, second-generation bias, and the double blind phenomenon.
The chapter could serve as a useful guideline to inform business schools’
engagement with stakeholders, such as learners, policy makers, and orga-
nisations in general.
In Chapter 6, Guénola Abord-Hugon Nonet, Afrodita Dobreva, and
Lucas Meijs question whether business schools are capable of reversing their
co-dependent relationship as obedient business servants who, so far, have
often blindly followed the corporate path. Will business schools be able to
shift their focus away from generating blind followers and confederates of
destructive industry practices and take the lead in shaping a new (and very
much needed) generation of business leaders that are able to achieve sus-
tainability targets? In order to answer this question, this chapter examines
current educational practices and compares the current (and outdated)
6 Frans Melissen and Lars Moratis
model to a new approach to education that seeks to encourage students
from the perspective of developing head, heart, hands and soul. The authors
argue that the multidisciplinary nature of business schools does indeed
equip them to take a leading role in this shift. However, to do so, they must
redefine their position in relation to the broader context. This chapter
concludes that, as is the case for the relationship between business and the
community, the first step for a business school should be to shift the focus
away from the individual student and towards an embedded view of the
student within multiple contexts of wellbeing: individual, collective, and
planetary.
Ranjit Voola’s learnings from his journey to find his calling as an SDG-
marketing scholar, as presented in Chapter 7, conclude Part 2 of this book.
In this chapter, Ranjit contends that scholars who reflect on their calling are
more likely to contribute to transformational RME because RME an-
chored in the SDGs requires a scholarly determination that challenges the
underlying assumptions of business-as-usual. As an illustration, he describes
his own journey of finding his calling, guided by the Narrative Model of
Authoring an Identity as a Called Professional by Bloom, Colbert, and
Nielsen. This description includes a reflection on lived experiences such as
the sacrifice demonstrated by Ranjit’s parents as doctors in an Indian
Christian missionary non-profit hospital, the kindness shown by his living
kidney donor, and his desire to do his best to tackle gender inequality, as
the father of two daughters. It also includes a reflection on crafting personal
authenticity by proactively reflecting on and constructing a compelling
narrative for becoming an SDG-marketing scholar. Finally, by detailing
how he created innovative SDG curricula and a call for marketing scholars
to engage with SDG research, proactively and strategically, Ranjit hopes to
encourage other scholars to reflect on their calling and engage in trans-
formational RME.
In the first chapter of Part 3, Chapter 8, Ruth Areli García-León concludes
that there is no consensus (yet) on the best way to integrate sustainable de-
velopment topics in the business and management school curriculum nor on
how they should be taught. Therefore, the author concludes, it is necessary to
develop new pedagogical-didactical tools to address these topics within
management courses. This chapter contributes to this by presenting a new
pedagogy based on using news articles as a tool to include sustainable de-
velopment issues in management course content. This proposal is grounded
in the educational social constructivist theory of learning, the collaborative
learning approach, and the author’s personal experience of more than eight
years of using news items as a pedagogical-didactical tool. The chapter details
how to prepare classroom activities, as well as the steps to follow during
classroom teaching, also based on two real-life examples. The chapter con-
cludes with recommendations for obtaining different final outcomes, insights
on the importance of the instructor as a designer of the activity, and high-
lighting the advantages of applying this tool.
 Introduction 7
Chapter 9, by Mirjam Minderman, describes how Appreciative Inquiry
(AI) can be used in support of RME and furthering the SDGs through
management education. RME provides current and future leaders with the
knowledge, skills, and attitude to develop pathways towards a sustainable
future. An essential part of this education is creating the awareness that in-
cremental change and a focus on eco-efficiency are not enough, and that
transformation is imperative for dealing with the world’s challenges as
summarised by the SDGs. Yet, the author argues, management education has
traditionally been shaped with concepts that are at odds with transformation,
such as risk management, control, and problem analysis. This chapter suggests
AI for strengthening management education with transformative methods
and pedagogies. First, AI is explained. Then its application in RME is dis-
cussed and illustrated with the example of AIM2Flourish in the fulltime MBA
program of TIAS School for Business and Society (the Netherlands). This
combination of theory and practice leads to several considerations and lessons
learned about how AI can strengthen RME and contribute to shaping sus-
tainability leadership.
Sarah Williams and David Murphy explore, in Chapter 10, how leaders in
business and other organisations from 180 different countries are engaging with
teaching and learning on the SDGs through an authentic assessment approach
that is aligned to the PRME. The vehicle for this is the online MBA module
‘Local-Global Challenges in Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability,’ which
uses the SDGs as a sustainability management education framework. The
authors report that in the academic years 2020–2021 and 2021–2022, more
than 1,000 leaders studying for one of eight specialist MBAs, delivered by
the University of Cumbria in partnership with Robert Kennedy College
(Switzerland), have made practical commitments to address selected SDGs.
With the students predominantly at senior manager or CEO level, the quality
of the organisational action plans developed through the teaching, and their
potential for making a difference, has been outstanding. At the same time, the
academic learning process continues to develop and refine the teaching of the
SDGs within an authentic and responsible management education and as-
sessment context. This innovative SDG-focused teaching and learning in-
itiative is described in full detail, as inspiration for management educators
seeking to advance PRME implementation and management education’s
contribution to realising the SDGs.
In the final chapter of this book, Chapter 11, Lauren Verheijen describes
how higher education has done well in establishing itself as the supplier of
business talents with stable markers of success that indicate when a student is
ready for the real world. However, Lauren argues, the role of education is
evolving, especially in relation to sustainable development, and this more
and more requires education to be holistic, transformative, and learner-
centred. This approach demands new forms of meaningful assessment that
emphasise learning over metrics. Therefore, this chapter explores learning
as conceived in RME and ESD, and the related function of assessment, to
8 Frans Melissen and Lars Moratis
articulate a research and practice agenda focused on exploring new forms of
assessment for management education that is truly relevant to sustainable
development of wider society.

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Grob, L., Kim, R.E., Kotzé, L.J., Nilsson, M., Llanos, A.O., Okereke, C., Pradhan, P.,
Raven, R., Sun, Y., Vijge, M.J., van Vuuren, D. and Wicke, B. (2022). ‘Scientific
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06/2022.
Dooley, L., Sheats, J., Hamilton, O., Chapman, D. and Karlin, B. (2021). Climate
Change and Youth Mental Health: Psychological Impacts, Resilience Resources, and Future
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Hickman, C., Marks, E., Pihkala, P., Clayton, S., Lewandowski, R.E., Mayall, E.E.,
Wray, B., Mellor, C. and van Susteren, L. (2021). ‘Climate anxiety in children and
young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change’, The
Lancet – Planetary Health, 5(12), pp. E863–E873.
Høgdal, C., Rasche, A., Schoeneborn, D. and Scotti, L. (2019). ‘Exploring the hidden
curriculum in responsible management education’, Academy of Management Proceedings,
2019(1).
Kelly, O., Illingworth, S., Butera, F., Steinberger, J., Blaise, M., Dawson, V., Huynen,
M., Martens, P., Bailey, S., Savage, G., White, P., Schuitema, G. and Cowman, S.
(2022). Tertiary Education in a Warming World, Reflections from the Field. Dublin:
University College Dublin Press.
Moratis, L. and Melissen, F. (2022a). ‘The future of business schools: Existential in-
novation of obsolescence?’, EFMD Global Focus, 2(16), pp. 28–35.
Moratis, L. and Melissen, F. (2022b). ‘Bolstering responsible management education
through the sustainable development goals: Three perspectives’, Management Learning,
53(2), pp. 212–222.
Moratis, L., Melissen, F. and Idowu, S. (eds.), 2018). Sustainable business models:
Principles, promise, practice. Berlin: Springer.
Springett, D. (2005). ‘‘Education for sustainability’ in the business studies curriculum: a
call for a critical agenda’, Business Strategy and the Environment, 14(3), pp. 146–159.
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for Sustainable Human Progress’, Frontiers in Sustainability, 3: 859393.
Teerikangas, S., Painter, M. and Matser, I. (2022). Transforming business education for sus-
tainability: The case for paradigm shifts in pedagogy and theory, April 2022. Online at:
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development-goals/ Accessed: 27/06/2022.
Weybrecht, G. (2017). ‘From challenge to opportunity – Management education’s
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Part I

Visions and responses

1 The responsible management
education paradox: Applying
the conceptual lens of
Organisational Ambidexterity
Simon M. Smith, Hugues Séraphin, and
Karen Cripps

Introduction
In this chapter, the core focus considers one overriding critical reflective
question for responsible management educators:

Are we irresponsible in delivering responsible management educa-

tion (RME)?

Crucially, we are discussing this question to draw out significant realities

within responsible management education (RME). For example, we will
discuss shortcomings in the delivery of the Principles for Responsible
Management Education (PRME) and the achievement of Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs). Yet, it is of course crucial that RME works,
has meaningful and lasting impact, and contributes to achieving the SDGs.
The aims and objectives of this chapter are three-fold. First, we want to
take a step back and honestly and critically reflect on where we are up to
within the RME journey (with a primary focus on PRME and the SDGs).
Second, we want to conceptualise and frame within a theory pertaining to
paradox why there are key tensions and barriers affecting the delivery of
PRME and achievement of the SDGs. Finally, we want to instil hope and
possibilities for moving forward and overcoming such tensions and barriers.
The critical perspectives offered and discussed here provide additional
depth and contrast some of the perspectives already presented in other
chapters. This then presents further contemplations within the leadership of
the SDGs and also draws out much needed critical reflection within RME.
For some, the overarching question will make the ‘blood boil’ and
question ‘what on earth’ we are trying to achieve in this writing. For others,
it may fall in line with reflective questions already being asked. Regardless
of where you are in the spectrum on this, we will certainly first explain the
premise for such a controversial question. The chapter then outlines PRME
and paints a picture of where we are in the journey of RME and the
achievement of the SDGs. Following this, the theory of organisation

DOI: 10.4324/9781003244905-3
12 Simon M. Smith et al.
ambidexterity, a theory pertaining to paradox, is introduced. With this
theory, greater meaning is provided within critical reflections and the diffi-
culties of implementing and delivering on PRME and the SDGs. A discus-
sion of other relevant areas is explored, namely the ‘Alpha’ Framework and a
competencies approach. Finally, suggestions for ways forward are offered in
an attempt to leave a more inspirational message for action to reinvigorate and
reenergise responsible management educators for the challenge ahead, pri-
marily focusing on approaches towards educational competencies.
We think it is wise to provide a note of caution to the reader of this chapter.
We, as authors, present a critical debate around PRME and the achievement of
the SDGs. However, this is not to say we are anti-PRME or anti-SDGs. In
fact, we are strong advocates of the need for models like PRME and the SDGs
to succeed. We want them to succeed. Importantly, we recognise and discuss
the difficulties around the journey to potential success, but with a view to
generating action and solutions – this is a crucial element within our message
portrayed. The theory of Organisational Ambidexterity presented provides an
alternative lens to contemplate action and solutions that could be crucial in
moving forward to greater success in achieving the SDGs.

The paradoxical premise

When providing an oxymoron like ‘Are we irresponsible in delivering RME?,’
it is perhaps essential to set out our intentions and meaning early on. In short,
we believe the delivery of RME is paradoxical by nature. This paradox can be
portrayed by a classic position versus a more modern-day position. For ex-
ample, the traditional argument by Friedman (1962, 1970) outlines ‘There is
one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources
and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.’ The other end of
this dichotomy, and arguably a more modern perspective, is a responsible
management position that balances sustainability (e.g., resources, the en-
vironment, climate change), responsibility (for all stakeholders) and moral
dilemmas (ethics) (Laasch and Conaway, 2015). In short, we argue the two
are mutually exclusive. We will later evolve this debate through the con-
ceptual lens of Organisational Ambidexterity and other related research. For
now, we want you to keep in mind that we are attributing this paradoxical
positioning as one reason for potential shortcomings in the delivery of
PRME and the achievement of the SDGs. Crucially, such a critical position
is seldom discussed within the literature. We feel it is essential to bringing
necessary criticality with a view of increasing SDG impact moving into the
coming years.

PRME
This discussion begins with PRME and an outline of what we aspire to in
RME. PRME is a United Nations-supported initiative designed to enhance
 The responsible management education paradox 13
the profile of sustainability in business and management schools around the
world, and inspire future leaders to balance economic and sustainability
goals (and this includes links to the SDGs) (PRME, 2021). On the surface
of the definition here, we can already see conflict emerge through this
‘balancing’ of economic and sustainability goals. For example, how far
would organisations (intentionally referring to an organisation as an entity
here) really go to sacrifice economic goals in favour of sustainability goals?
Despite the initial conflict, it is pertinent to start with the positives.
PRME is certainly engendering change within higher education. Within a
UK context, the authors of this chapter have both worked/are working
within a PRME Champion business school (note: since August 2021, the
first author now works in a university that is a PRME Signatory, but had
worked in a PRME Champion business school where the other authors
currently reside). In our careers, this means we have seen curriculum and
module contents change significantly to provide much greater focus on
sustainability. We see more academics than ever (including ourselves)
producing research and publications around sustainability. We would argue
that students are gaining values-based skills and toolkits to take into the
workplace after graduation. Thus, we can evidence educational impact
quite well, even though one might argue this is anecdotal evidence.

Critically reflecting on PRME

The above shows a good start. But is this enough? Is RME transcending
into SDG achievement? Is all as it seems within the delivery of RME? Can
change be measured through PRME providers?
Séraphin et al.’s (2021b) research highlights that PRME uptake in
European higher education providers is not at a level where it can make
extensive inroads and necessary changes into the curriculums of a large
demographic of institutions. Their research also highlights that there does
not appear to be a correlation between PRME institutions who deliver
tourism education and then the performance of where the destinations
these institutions are based (particularly in terms of environmental sus-
tainability). Thus, the argument can be made that PRME does not yet
appear to be transcending from education into business practice (at least not
in local/regional form anyway). Of course, this study is limited to the field
of tourism, although the nature of this industry has allowed for some metric
comparisons to be made in this way and contemplate the measurement of
PRME post-education.
Related to the study above, Séraphin et al. (2022) conducted a global
study analysing PRME adoption and making comparisons with the Travel
and Tourism Competitiveness Index from the Travel and Tourism
Competitiveness Report 2019. Again, limitations were highlighted be-
tween PRME uptake and sustainability transitioning into the tourism in-
dustry within the same destinations. As a more focused example, Séraphin
14 Simon M. Smith et al.
et al.’s (2021a) research conducted with students at Kedge Business School
(Marseille, France) also reveals limitations between RME within a PRME
institution and related/transitioning impact on practice outside of the
educational context. What we can take from these studies is that more
needs to be done and the journey is far from complete.
Beyond the positive messages being derived via PRME, the evidence to
support educational transition into practice is still required and still building.
Thus, the connections to furthering the achievement of the SDGs is per-
haps lacking at this point. But, as a symbol of hope and a beacon of the-
oretical light, PRME currently gives us one of our best models of practice.
The challenge is moving that rhetoric into reality and impact. The fol-
lowing sections around Organisational Ambidexterity will consider this
dichotomy and contemplate how we can attempt to move further into
reality and impact. Crucially, it is positioning the conversation through an
alternative lens that hopefully gives rise and scope to considering different
approaches that will ultimately help to further achieve the SDGs (as well as
other necessary agendas in organisations).

What is Organisational Ambidexterity?

Organisational Ambidexterity is a theory pertaining to paradox. In other
words, because of its opposing and conflicting positions, it allows a dis-
cussion around potential paradox from two extreme points of considera-
tion. Then, when you contemplate maximising organisational performance
or practice from these two positions, it should provide alternative ap-
proaches in theory (see Table 1.1 for theoretical examples). It is worth
noting that this theory was not primarily designed for RME. Indeed, we are
mapping the theory/lens to this subject domain. The theory, importantly, is
robust enough to allow for that mapping.
Organisational Ambidexterity is built around two conceptual opposing
positions: exploitation and exploration (Birkinshaw and Gupta, 2013;
O’Reilly and Tushman, 2013; Raisch et al., 2009; Stokes et al., 2015;
Stokes et al., 2019). One end of this spectrum relates to exploitative ap-
proaches that are generally focused on what is known (underpinned by
convergent thinking) and centred on existing customers and markets. The
other end of this spectrum relates to explorative approaches that are generally
focused on moving beyond that existing knowledge into new knowledge
through embracing aspects like innovation, experimentation, flexibility,
and divergent thinking. With these polar opposites, Organisational
Ambidexterity can assist in presenting a complicated and potentially para-
doxical juxtaposition through this dichotomous framing.
To help visualise the framing above, Table 1.1 presents those basic con-
ventions relating to Organisational Ambidexterity. In addition, this table
helps to make other connections. For example, exploitation can be related in
some part to theoretical aspects within McDonaldization (Ritzer, 2008), cost
Table 1.1 Overview of Organisational Ambidexterity

Organisational Ambidexterity: Exploitation Exploration

the extremes

Common associations Existing customers and/or markets Focus on new knowledge and movements away
Efficiency from existing knowledge
Refinement Experimentation
Expanding what is generally known to the Flexibility
organisation Innovation
Divergent thinking
Theoretical links McDonaldization ( Ritzer, 2008; Smith, 2016) A focus on differentiation or differentiation focus
through: Efficiency, Calculability, Predictability, through Porter’s Generic Strategies ( Porter,
and Control 1980, 1985, 2004; Smith 2016)
Cost leadership or cost focus through Porter’s Generic Transformational Leadership ( Hater & Bass,
Strategies ( Porter, 1980, 1985, 2004; Smith, 2016) 1988; Smith, 2016)
Transactional Leadership ( Hater & Bass, 1988;
Smith, 2016)
Organisational examples McDonalds Apple
IKEA BMW
Ryanair Google
Primark Toyota
Examples of ambidextrous Netflix
organisations (i.e., both Amazon
exploitative and Xiaomi
explorative) Phantom
Geak
Tencent
The responsible management education paradox 15
16 Simon M. Smith et al.
leadership within Porter’s Generic Strategies (1980, 1985, 2004), and
Transactional Leadership (Hater and Bass, 1988). The emphasis here is the
mastery through which such efficiency, cost leadership, and so on is achieved.
For exploration, the obvious counter-theory is again related to Porter’s
Generic Strategies, whereby the emphasis is on mastery through differ-
entiation, as well as Transformational Leadership (Hater and Bass, 1988).
Organisational examples are then connected that are perhaps best known
within those theories. Then, to go one step further, we identify what could
arguably be presented as successful ambidextrous organisations.
To expand here though, we present Netflix as an ambidextrous orga-
nisation (e.g., Kohli and Mier, 2021). As a subscription-based streaming
service for films and TV, they are a global organisation that maintains re-
latively low subscription rates for customers which keeps competition at
bay (exploitation). The main difficulty for new competition comes at the
hands of innovation and investment in new products, notably new films
and TV (exploration). While this is a somewhat simplified example, it could
be argued that Netflix could quite easily raise their prices for goods and
services with all those premium products attached. Yet, they appear to hold
back. One reason could be that they make so much through global sub-
scription and having over 200 million customers. Another reason could
centre around ambidextrous practice. In other words, through maintaining
lower subscription rates but maximising investment in new products and
services, it truly makes Netflix very difficult to compete with. This is an
organisation that started out in the early guise of being a DVD rental service
via mail. Innovative, but ultimately the business approach did not cut it.
Yet, they have gone on to utilise technology and globalisation (e.g.,
economies of scale) in particular to achieve ambidexterity (whether done
consciously or not). Thus, it proves that an ambidextrous organisation can
be achieved and there are examples to compare and aspire to.
Plenty of literature (e.g., Raisch et al., 2009) will discuss how to ‘balance’
exploitative and explorative business practices. However, we will work from
the argument that the polar opposites identified through exploitation and
exploration can be reconsidered and positioned to work ‘paradoxically in
tandem’ (Smith, 2016, p. 12), which is to maximise each end of the
spectrum contained within the paradox. Although this may sound coun-
terintuitive and arguably impossible, we argue that organisations must
consider responsible management and sustainability in this way for any
chance to succeed through PRME or the SDGs. This is akin to accepting a
paradox and using it constructively (Poole and Van de Ven, 1989). In es-
sence, we cannot merely balance profit versus planet; they need to be (and
arguably are) mutually exclusive and we need to maximise both ends of this
particular spectrum. Instead of being stunted by the nature of the paradox,
the understanding and positioning around it creates a line of strategic
thinking to move forward by tackling those polar opposites simultaneously,
but without compromise at either end – it hence may be the only way to
 The responsible management education paradox 17
generate the purposeful change required. That general context here sur-
rounds the difficulty of implementation and delivery of responsible man-
agement principles, including the SDGs and PRME (i.e., values orientated;
new knowledge and practice) versus more traditional business approaches
(i.e., profit orientated; existing knowledge).
Although we presented the example of Netflix earlier as an ambidextrous
organisation, that example sits within, arguably, more normative business
practice, such as ‘people versus profit’ and surrounding organisational
conversations. For this chapter moving forwards, the focus will look more
like ‘people versus profit versus planet.’ The dichotomy almost becomes a
trichotomy when layering in RME in addition to those normative business
practices. This adds weight to the complexity of delivery and potential for
success for the SDGs. We delve further into this in the following section.

Applying the conceptual lens of Organisational

Ambidexterity to RME
In this section, we are going to focus on a number of tensions within RME.
These tensions will highlight through an Organisational Ambidexterity lens
why it is so challenging to achieve the SDGs through PRME. The para-
doxical elements outlined will serve to highlight why an ambidextrous
approach could be required for greater impact in the delivery of PRME and
greater success for the SDGs. As Hahn et al. (2018, p. 235) highlight, a
paradoxical perspective within sustainable development will embrace the
tensions to be discussed ‘to simultaneously accommodate competing yet
interrelated economic, environmental, and social concerns.’ Indeed,
Moratis and Melissen (2022) argue that when we address the SDGs,
this automatically comes with trade-offs, tensions and paradoxes. Following
this section, we move into discussing the hidden curriculum and the part it
plays for executing (or not) RME. Subsequently, we discuss a competencies
focus for RME and how this could act as a catalyst for greater impact
moving forward.

Tension 1: Shareholders versus stakeholders versus sustainable

development
There is a traditional positioning whereby shareholders sit in potential
opposition to other stakeholders. Stakeholder theory effectively highlights
how many potential relationships could be intertwined into business, in-
cluding governmental bodies, political groups, trade associations, trade
unions, communities, financiers, suppliers, employees, customers, and even
competitors (Freeman, 2015). We could consider profit orientation and
maximisation (exploitation) versus the considering of all other stakeholders
where it is potentially costly to address them all (explorative). This is chal-
lenging enough and comes with many complications due to the vast and
18 Simon M. Smith et al.
diverse nature of those stakeholder relationships. Yet, to go further and deal
with something such as climate change, becoming carbon neutral, and
other sustainable development aspects, we arguably need to go beyond just
visualising stakeholders and reacting to their presence, because there are
aspects like the natural environment to consider and generally going much
deeper into issues raised (i.e., like the SDGs outline).
To truly achieve the SDGs then, organisations may need to radically alter
their business practices, and this is likely to be costly in the first instance.
Thus, perhaps organisations will just maintain this paradoxical situation and
status quo, which we can perhaps label as profit- and shareholder-driven
(exploitative) versus sustainable development action- and stakeholder-driven
(explorative). Quite rightly, the former could be seen as the simpler and
more secure option for a business, so could go a long way in explaining
why organisations are slow to react and reluctant to make necessary
changes. To effectively achieve the SDGs, however, the need for explorative
approaches is theoretically clear; organisations need to be doing con-
siderably more and embracing this need for change. If such change is re-
sisted, contributions to the SDGs could be minimalist, tokenistic and fall
considerably short of what is required.
So how can the above be done simultaneously, ‘paradoxically in tandem’
(Smith, 2016, p. 12)? One approach commonly suggested is finding cost
efficiency through sustainable practices. This is arguably applying exploita-
tion, because of the efficiency element, but also requires exploration to
generate the new practices needed. This is perhaps where we are currently
falling short in achieving the SDGs. If we can build this ambidextrous
approach in more organisations, then arguably profit orientation and the
SDGs can be simultaneously achieved? One aspect of this tension is clear. If
the majority of organisations persist in resisting the application of necessary
explorative practices, and therefore persist in being slow to change, this will
only lead to limited achievement of the SDGs. But how can such change be
achieved, at the rate that is required to meet the SDGs by 2030, within a
fundamentally capitalist paradigm?

Tension 2: Transactional leadership versus transformational leadership

versus responsible leadership
Leadership is another great area to highlight tension and potential paradox.
To build that discussion here, we will highlight some very basic connec-
tions to leadership theory. The discussion could go a lot deeper, but we
only want to introduce the debate to reflect on the subject matter within
this chapter.
Transactional Leadership is commonly characterised through rewards
in accordance to contracts and efforts exerted, and an avoidance of new
direction when old practice fulfils performance goals (exploitative) (Hater
and Bass, 1988; Smith, 2016). In contrast, Transformational Leadership is
 The responsible management education paradox 19
commonly characterised through an ability to instil pride, faith, respect
and a sense of mission; an ability to delegate, teach, and coach; and an
encouragement to think and act in new and creative ways (explorative)
(Hater and Bass, 1988; Smith, 2016). This is perhaps the common tension
often discussed in leadership literature. However, these are somewhat
internalised and focused upon the organisation being worked for.
There is certainly greater emphasis on elements external to the organi-
sation when considering responsible leadership, which can bring in areas of
ethics, values, an emphasis on all stakeholders, serving and caring for others,
trust and emotional intelligence (Maak and Pless, 2006; Pless, 2007;
Tronto, 1993; Voegtlin et al., 2012). Thus, although explorative practices
may clearly be needed here to focus on sustainable development, it is
important to realise it is potentially an extra dimension of leadership cap-
ability. This intensifies the tension and the potential for paradox and even
highlights further the need for practice that embraces various aspects of
leadership approaches. The link between responsible leadership and
achieving the SDGs becomes clear here: if PRME and the SDGs are ex-
ternalised, it could become difficult for managers/leaders to even consider,
never mind operationalise, relevant action to respond to these challenges.

Tension 3: Traditional education versus RME

A capitalism-related tension needs to be highlighted here as it has such a
profound impact upon RME. If society accepts that we live in and prosper
around a capitalist economy, then profit sits at the heart of this (Hirsch,
2021). Arguably then, to be effective at business in society, we need to be
effectively trained in universities on profiteering and profit maximising.
Society almost dictates this. As a result, the tension comes why trying to
radically alter the minds of future business leaders (explorative) and bring in
something potentially counterintuitive to that profit-focused training (ex-
ploitative), which is RME. General dimensions might include sustainability
(triple bottom line), responsibility (stakeholder value) and ethics (moral
excellence) (Laasch and Conaway, 2015). Despite criticisms that business
schools need to become more socially responsible and grow beyond criti-
cisms that they are ‘brainwashing institutions educating their graduates only
in relatively narrow shareholder value ideology’ (Matten and Moon, 2004,
p. 323), the tension and potential paradox will remain if society is generally
built in such a capitalistic manner. This tension is further discussed through
the hidden curriculum section that follows.
As academic educators, as the opening question highlights, we could be
irresponsible in delivering RME if we are not successfully preparing
graduates for a profit-focused capitalistic society. This is a real source of
potential paradox/tension and one that is not discussed and explored en-
ough amongst academics. Worse still, could it potentially mean that RME
teachings become potentially tokenistic if graduates revert to business
20 Simon M. Smith et al.
practices more akin to those traditional capitalistic teachings? In other
words, it is all very well hearing about the importance of the SDGs and
responsible management, but it would be devastating for impact if little
action were to follow.

The difficulty of implementing and delivering on

responsible management principles
The tensions identified and discussed in the previous section perhaps
highlight the absence of an ‘Alpha’ (leader) in the RME system. Indeed, an
inadequate structure for an organisation and an absence of positive synergy
amongst members of a system are barriers to the sustainability of this system
(Sun et al., 2013; Todd et al., 2017).
The ‘Alpha’ framework is used to discuss interactions amongst members
of a system (Ek and Larson, 2017). This framework stipulates that a system
must be spearheaded by an ‘Alpha,’ taking the role to make decisions for the
entire group (Mech, 1999), as this person or organisation has been iden-
tified as the most capable to lead, but with the support of others (Mirjalili
et al., 2014). Amongst these are the ‘Beta,’ who have a secondary role as
part of its remits is to reinforce instructions from the ‘Alpha,’ as well as
advising and providing feedback. The ‘Beta’ is/are the second in line if
the ‘Alpha’ is not capable of performing relevant duties. The ‘Omega’ is at
the bottom of the hierarchy as they are only required to obey orders, and
serve as a scapegoat to vent frustrations and tensions. All the others below
the ‘Omega’ are referred as ‘Delta.’ They are subordinates and do not have
any specific role (Mirjalili et al., 2014).
With the above said, it is also worth mentioning the fact that the ‘Alpha,’
known to be strong, authoritative, and well-accomplished individuals or
lead organisations, are also being perceived as weak, as their strengths are
also their weaknesses (Ludeman and Erlandson, 2006). The concept of the
‘Alpha’ is ambidextrous by nature, because, and linking a Janusian thinking
approach, there is a need to contemplate and consider simultaneously op-
posing operational strategies and implementations (Rothenberg, 1996;
Sanchez and Adams, 2008; Vo-Thanh et al., 2020). This is almost a sine qua
non condition for success. The ambidextrous ‘Alpha’ can be seen as both a
hero who can save a group, but also as a villain who can harm this group
(Mirjalili et al., 2014; Mkono et al., 2020). This is all the more important
for complex systems, as these types of systems can lead to innovation
(Rouard and Schegg, 2019) and, more importantly, improvement
(Fragnière and Simon, 2019).
The context of RME is, based on previous discussions, a complex system
that could benefit from ambidextrous approaches. Thus, for RME delivery
it is important to determine the role (‘Alpha,’ ‘Beta,’ ‘Omega,’ and ‘Delta’)
of each party involved in the system. Based on the tensions previously
discussed, an ‘Alpha’ is certainly needed, but there is also an important role
 The responsible management education paradox 21
for an ‘Omega.’ At the moment, the related ‘Alpha’ role within RME
institutions is not really performing effectively enough due to the fact that
there is a disconnection between academia and industry when it comes to
research related to sustainability and outcomes expected (Belmonte-Urena
et al., 2021). This create tensions (like those previously mentioned).
Graduates could arguably play the role of the ‘Omega,’ providing they
manage to demonstrate their ability to simultaneously help an organisation
to grow and offer sustainable and responsible strategies. For this to become
effective as a transition from education to industry, it is also important to
adopt a suitable type of structure for RME to work.
Organisations involved in collaboration schemes are organisations which
have either a centralised structure based on hierarchy, an autonomous
structure or a hybrid structure (Fragnière and Simon, 2019). Organisations
based on a centralised structure are very efficient in terms of decision-
making. However, when the hub of this centralised structure is negatively
impacted by an issue, the entire network collapses and none of dependent
satellites of the network can takeover. As for organisations based on an
autonomous structure, the hub does not have a leading role and this makes
these organisations difficult to manage. However, if the hub of the network
collapses, a dependent satellite of the network can takeover. Finally, or-
ganisations based on hybrid structure are a mixture of the two previous one.
This structure is quite dynamic, but also requires all satellites of the network
to work very closely (Fragnière and Simon, 2019).
As ambidexterity has been underpinning much of the discussion in this
chapter, a hybrid structure seems to be the most suitable when im-
plementing and delivering RME. The centralised (‘Alpha’) role could be
played by a leading PRME school (based on sustainability performance) in
each country, which will play an advisory role to all other schools (‘Delta’)
in the country. The schools will have some degree of autonomy in terms of
how they implement PRME. However, because of the competitive nature
of and between schools in terms of attracting students and positioning in
leagues table, for instance. (Harker et al., 2016), this might be difficult to
implement, even if a change in leadership approach is important for sus-
tainability (Visser, 2016). Yet, when it comes to sustainability, and therefore
RME, it appears that despite all stakeholders and shareholders being aware
that change needs to happen, there is a reluctance to create radical changes
in the way they operate (Mkono et al., 2020). This once again reveals
ambidextrous/paradoxical tensions.

Competencies – an enabling tool for ambidextrous

responsible management learning
By adopting a position that ‘The purpose of business is to produce prof-
itable solutions to the problems of people and planet, and not to profit from
producing problems for people and planet’ (Mayer and Roche, 2021, p.11),
22 Simon M. Smith et al.
then, by extension, ambidextrous leaders are needed to address the goals of
people and planet and profit. Paradoxically, transformational educational
approaches also require transformational business approaches, since, in
seeking innovative pedagogies, educators also need to focus on the em-
ployability competencies required by business. It would be irresponsible for
business schools not to prepare graduates for workforce employability,
while, at the same time, it can also be considered irresponsible for business
schools not to prepare graduates to address the so-called ‘wicked’ problems
of sustainability that businesses are, at the very least, answerable to. Thus,
the following section considers how competencies can be embedded into
education to equip graduates to seek profitable solutions (through ex-
ploitative efficiencies) to the problems of people and planet (through ex-
plorative innovative behaviours).
To analyse the potential impact of competencies as a tool for RME, it is
helpful to first consider the application of competencies within an orga-
nisational context. While recognising there is extensive literature on
varying definitions of competence versus competency/competencies, this
chapter draws on early academic commentators such as Sparrow (1995) and
leading practitioner bodies such as ‘The Chartered Institute of Personnel
and Development’ (CIPD, 2020) in defining competencies as attitudes,
skills and behaviours required for effective job performance. The sub-
sequent section on the educational context will similarly define compe-
tencies as dimensions of Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes/behaviours
(KSA). Implications for responsible management analysis and action from
an ambidexterity perspective will be considered across both organisational
and educational competencies.

Organisational context
Competencies fall under the umbrella of contingency theories relating to
performance management, whereby maximum performance is achieved
when competencies are aligned with role requirements and organisational
context (Boyatzis and Boyatzis, 2008). They are essentially talent man-
agement tools in recruiting, training, and evaluating performance. The
CIPD (2020) advises that ‘competency frameworks, when done well, can
increase clarity around performance expectations and establish a clear link
between individual and organizational performance.’ The inherent para-
doxes of competency frameworks are apparent here in that while they are
descriptive tools in specifying desirable performance behaviours, at the same
time, they are normative tools in terms of what people should do (Bolden
et al., 2006). The suggestion that individual and organisational performance
is benefitted ‘when done well’ can be juxtaposed with individual and or-
ganisational outcomes when they are not done well. Paradoxically, there-
fore, it might be said that while they are designed to benefit individual and
organisational performance, they can potentially also constrain and inhibit
 The responsible management education paradox 23
effective behaviours. The same of course applies to their effective appli-
cation in educational settings.
The multi-functional use of competency frameworks means they are ap-
plicable to Organisational Ambidexterity. This can serve as tools for both
exploitation (for example, in selective recruitment processes or in defining
the daily job roles in a realistic way) and exploration (for example, in perfor-
mance development when they need to be applicable to as many people as
possible or in defining the daily job roles as an aspirational guide for beha-
viour). There is a significant body of literature which details the limitations of
competency frameworks effectively synthesised by Bolden and Gosling
(2006) as being reductionist in a fragmented approach to what are often
complex roles; generic without considering context; backward rather than
forward looking; too focused on measurable behaviours rather than more
subtle qualities; and mechanistic which results in a ‘criteria compliance’
(exploitative) rather than encouraging innovative and risk-taking behaviours
that might not ‘tick’ within the competency ‘box’ (explorative).
Hollenbeck et al. (2006, p. 412) contend that although competency
frameworks may appear to be reductionist and generic, they ‘can be used
and applied in complex ways’ and that they ‘are a useful attempt to help
leaders learn a broader range of competencies and, in the process, learn how
to use them differentially and effectively across different situations.’ This
view is helpful to inform an analysis of pedagogical approaches to em-
bedding competencies for responsible management, in which they are
flexibly and creatively applied, rather than restrictive and constraining to
effective behaviours and learning. While it is straightforward to accept that
they should not be used as a ‘one size fits all’ measuring instrument,
whether in an organisational or educational context (in which they would
be used exploitatively), it is perhaps less straightforward to ensure they are
applied flexibly according to situational differences (i.e., explorative). The
key, of course, is that they are both explorative and exploitative.

Embedding RME
University education represents a significant opportunity to influence so-
ciety and business, and it is the purpose of PRME to shape the skills and
behaviours of current and future business leaders. This section details some
of the major areas of study into competencies for Education for Sustainable
Development (ESD). This is an evolving field, which capture approaches,
such as Rieckmann (2018), in informing educational pedagogy linking the
SDGs to 12 ESD competencies (A Rounder Sense of Purpose, undated)
through to the business discipline. For instance, building on Wiek et al.
(2011), Laasch and Moosmayer (2016) provide a systematic literature re-
view which underpins the competencies needed for the ‘professionalisation’
of responsible business management. This analyses competency literature
according to KSA (Knowledge, Skills, Attitude) dimensions, which are also
24 Simon M. Smith et al.
adopted in five competencies of the ‘Competency Assessment for
Responsible Leadership’ (CARL, 2021; Muff et al., 2020).
At a broader level, UNESCO (2017, 2020) identified eight ‘cross-cutting
competencies for achieving the SDGs.’ These link the competencies to the
cognitive domain (Knowledge), behavioural domain (Skills) and socio-
emotional domain (Attitudes). UNESCO’s competencies have been
adopted by The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA, 2021) which manages
standards of higher education in the UK. The KSA dimensions provide a
helpful framework for informing educators understanding of learning
outcomes and activities. Table 1.2 compares the UNESCO (2017) com-
petencies to those of the CARL framework. This is not intended as a
definitive comparison and it is relevant to note that the CARL framework
literature does not refer directly to UNESCO competencies. The purpose
here is to demonstrate the alignment between mainstream sustainability and
responsible management competencies.
As a result, we are calling for ambidextrous university education, which
simultaneously develops graduates’ commercial acumen as part of the more
predictable (exploitative) expectations of a programme alongside main-
streaming responsible management which can be seen as riskier (explorative).
This represents a paradigm shift away from ‘shoe-horning’ the SDGs into
modules, towards strategically embedding the principles from the top down,
such as in programme revalidation design. The broader university context is
fundamental in shaping students lived experiences and operationalising any
definitions of sustainability/responsible management-focused competencies,
in the same way as organisational contexts influence employee attitudes and
behaviours. Therefore, competencies for sustainable education are useful in
scrutiny of both formal learning and the ‘hidden curriculum’ (Blasco, 2011),
which refers to the wider university experiences of campus life that can act to
positively reinforce or undermine formal curriculum learning.
There is huge potential for graduates to enter the workforce with a
mindset for transformative business action, filling the void identified by

Table 1.2 Comparison of competencies within sustainability frameworks (based on

UNESCO (2017), CARL (2021) and Muff et al. (2020))

UNESCO/QAA Competencies for Competency Assessment for Responsible

Achieving the SDGs Leadership (CARL)

Systems thinking Systems thinking

Normative Ethics and values
Strategic Change and Innovation
Collaboration Stakeholder relations
Self-awareness Self-awareness
Integrated problem-solving
Anticipatory
Critical thinking
 The responsible management education paradox 25
Gosling and Grodecki (2020, p. 251) that ‘there is little to say that leaders
should be willing to initiate transformative responses to injustice, ecocide
and inequality. The world of management competences has yet to catch on
to calls for radical changes to (or of) capitalism.’ University is arguably the
ideal base for developing students’ competencies to develop the organisa-
tional competency frameworks needed for a new, ambidextrous responsible
business paradigm. As set out by Redman et al. (2020), it is now necessary
to consider how competencies can most effectively be assessed in educa-
tional contexts, linking to the same limitations of organisational contexts
where Stokes and Oiry (2012) observe that competencies can be assessed in
‘variable and unreliable’ ways. The challenge for both business and edu-
cation is to move from rhetoric to action.

Final reflections
It has been shown that while there is an understanding of the competencies
required to address the so-called wicked problems of sustainability, it re-
quires an urgent imperative for organisations to integrate responsible
management competencies (capturing ethical, environmental, and social
behaviours) into existing management competency frameworks. It is po-
sitive that competencies are being integrated into advice for ‘Education for
Sustainable Development 2030’ as part of the SDGs, but if universities are
to avoid the criticisms of businesses whereby frameworks are backwards
rather than forward looking, it is vital for a common language of responsible
management competencies to be developed between business and educa-
tion. Within education, programmes need to consider paradoxical tensions
in how responsible management competencies are featured across modules
and programmes and use this to develop ambidextrous thinking, alongside
how competencies are reinforced or possibly decoupled by the informal
curriculum.
Returning to the initial question, ‘Are we irresponsible in delivering
RME?,’ we hope the reader can see that the paradox and tensions explored
make it a complicated answer. Yet, we strive for the answer to be a ‘no’ if
we can tackle the paradox and tensions using Organisational Ambidexterity.
By understanding the challenges under a different lens, we perhaps give
ourselves a better chance of working towards effective change for the future
that will support PRME and work towards greater achievement of the
SDGs while maintaining some of the status quo related to society ideals, for
instance a desire to make a significant profit in business. This offers greater
depth of thought when considering the leadership of the SDGs, the role of
business schools and this whole book overall. This chapter has explored
RME under a different microscope/lens and this should build on the
wealth of perspectives throughout the different chapters. We hope the
journey through this chapter has been emotive, engaging, and forward
thinking. It might have provoked some discomfort, but also a chance to
26 Simon M. Smith et al.
self-reflect and be inspired. Responsible management educators are essential
and important actors and it is crucial we are constantly pushing ourselves
and our approaches to help businesses and students with their future
working practices. Contemplating and embracing paradoxical practices
could be an important way to assist in this development.

Where next?
Case studies demonstrating how responsible management competencies can
most effectively be embedded into the formal and informal curriculum are
needed, since to focus on the dimensions of KSA requires additional
planning by educators, and additional focus by students. Such case examples
should build on debates around the most effective ways of embedding
competencies into explorative curriculums, within potentially exploitative
contexts based on restrictive resourcing.
Research is needed into how embedding competencies into RME links
to changes in business behaviours and attitudes. As stated at the beginning
of this chapter, it would be devastating if educational inputs were not linked
to positive industry impacts in effectively managing the paradox of people
versus profit versus planet.
In terms of the paradoxical situations, we could argue there is a need to
accept that such realities exist. Instead of trying to fix or resolve this, we
could instead find practices that embrace the nature of paradox. Applying
Organisational Ambidexterity, and even ambidextrous leadership ap-
proaches, could assist in finding workable solutions rather than being lost in
the frustrations of complex paradoxical realities. For business schools and
responsible management educators, applying critical reflection and then
making effective change could be assisted by the lens of thinking offered
here. In essence, we should not accept the norms and limitations of RME,
but should seek to advance its delivery and impact.

References
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2 Emotional competency in the
interdisciplinary classroom: A
systems thinking perspective
Joanna C. Carey and James Hunt

Introduction
There is consensus that higher education must help prepare students to
address grand social and environmental challenges, as exemplified by the
UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Leadership and political will
are essential in addressing the SDGs (United Nations, 2016) and as such,
leadership development should be a critical component of sustainability
education. We need leaders who have both the emotional and intellectual
maturity to deal with the complexity of sustainability challenges, leaders
who can create empathetic and fact-based arguments.
Traditionally, education in sustainability has focused largely on building
students’ cognitive understanding of sustainability-related issues (Montiel
et al., 2018). Shrivastava (2010), however, has argued for a more holistic
approach to management education for sustainability, incorporating emo-
tional and spiritual perspectives, in addition to the cognitive. An important
goal of such an approach is to help build a passion for change, which is
thought to be a key component of leadership effectiveness. However, we
ask, do students really need help building a passion for sustainability?
Evidence suggests that many Gen Z and Millenial Americans are already
passionate about sustainability; survey findings from the Pew Research
Center point to a very high level of commitment for taking action on
climate change from this age group. Students frequently describe business
and government as doing too little to deal with sustainability-related issues,
especially climate change, and in turn, they are willing to take action – even
if such actions negatively impact their financial wellbeing (Tyson et al.,
2021). Such evidence, and our own anecdotal experience, suggests that
emotions are running high among students concerned about sustainability.
Is that a problem? The answer is likely yes, and no. As stated above,
passion is a major driver of leadership action (Shrivastava, 2010). At the
same time, powerful emotions by themselves are not always helpful to a
leader. Research on emotional intelligence and leadership development,
suggests that leaders need to be able to harness their emotions without
being overwhelmed by them (Goleman and Boyatzis, 2017). The central

DOI: 10.4324/9781003244905-4
32 Joanna C. Carey and James Hunt
question we raise here is: how can we help our passionately committed students
further their development as sustainability leaders in light of the inherent emotional
nature of the challenges before us?
We recently completed a two-year launch of an interdisciplinary co-
taught elective course, Unintended Consequences: At the interface of Business
and the Environment, taught by an earth science professor and a management
professor. All enrolled students were business majors, many of whom de-
monstrated a passion for sustainability. We designed our course using a
systems thinking framework (Meadows, 2008) as a way to unite the dis-
ciplines and examine sustainability-related problems from multiple per-
spectives. We quickly learned that, in addition to divergent disciplinary
perspectives, we also had to address the divergence between the cognitive
and the emotional challenges provoked by the issues and students’ concerns.
Below we provide a brief review of sustainability leadership development
in order to provide broader context for our observations and suggestions.
We then describe the course, including details of reflective writing as-
signments in which students discussed sustainability from a personal per-
spective. These assignments provided the students and faculty a view of the
emotional and cognitive challenges associated with sustainability leadership.
We explore the themes that emerged from student written reflections and
then discuss lessons learned from our experience that may be useful to other
educators. Our experiences points to a number of pedagogical approaches
that may help students integrate their commitment to change in a way that
promotes their effectiveness as leaders.

Evolving perspectives on sustainability leadership

Who is a sustainability leader? What role do they play? What skills are
required?
Simply put, sustainability leaders are those who take up the cause of
sustainability in an effort to address long-term needs of individuals, social
systems, and the environment (Ferdig, 2007). Such leaders may be formal
or informal, in that they may or may not have an organisationally defined
leadership role. The sustainability leader does not need one to be to be the
most knowledgeable or most capable regarding the issue at hand; the leader
can be anyone who advocates for change and engages others in the process.
However, taking an advocacy position is not necessarily easy or even
effective from a change agent perspective. For example, a study of graduates
of a sustainability-informed construction program found that they did not
feel prepared to advocate for change, and when they did so, they were not
successful, despite having a solid technical knowledge of the sustainability
issues in their industry (Thomas et al., 2020). The array of structural factors
in their workplace (e.g., norms, roles, traditions and the market) likely
make it difficult for even knowledgeable graduates to effect change. These
authors suggest that ‘their educational institutions would need to develop
 A systems thinking perspective 33
curriculum to help students resist the opposing influences of the workplace
(e.g., market/end user, clients and colleagues)’ (Thomas et al., 2020,
p. 1211; italics is ours).
Such interpretations of sustainability leadership (Ferdig, 2007; Thomas
et al., 2020) take an individual agency perspective on the part of the sus-
tainability leader. The leader advocates and when necessary, resists. Such an
individualistic perspective has been described by some scholars as ‘heroic’
(Bradford and Cohen, 2007). The notion of the heroic leader is deeply
embedded in Western culture and is widespread in the media, past and
present. Such heroic imagery implies that leaders can make change happen
on their own, if they are sufficiently skilled and courageous (Heizmann and
Liu, 2017). This perspective has also supported a management development
industry that focuses on building individual level competencies, such as
influence, team building, and conflict management.
The heroic mental model of leadership puts responsibility on the
shoulders of the individuals who care, resulting in the linear assumption that
we need a hero who can save us. Individual agency begets assumptions of
individual agency. Not only does this reflect a linear – and perhaps in-
accurate – model of leadership and change, it creates the potential for
blame, guilt, and anger. As educators, we find reoccurring instances of
student anger regarding society’s failure to respond effectively to social and
environmental needs. While we often share that anger, we question the
productivity of this limiting, emotionally driven idea of leadership.
Leadership scholarship has evolved considerably over the past several
decades to encompass a social view of leadership, one with less of a focus on
individual agency and more on collective agency (Raelin, 2016, Bradford
and Cohen, 2007, Pearce et al., 2013). In this view, leaders are relationship
builders, bringing people together around a shared vision. That shared
vision cannot be the leader’s alone, but reflects the aspirations of all of those
involved. Leaders and followers are not necessarily bound by organisational
structures, but rather by aspirations. Leaders are implicitly in the business of
finding shared visions among people who may not necessarily be allies
outright.

Linking the collective agency leadership model with

systems thinking
Collective models of leadership acknowledge that change takes place in the
context of complex systems, a notion quite familiar to systems thinkers.
However, differing systems frameworks yield very different approaches to
sustainability leadership, and the distinction between individual and collective
agency leadership is mirrored in the distinction between the functional and
the complex adaptive systems frameworks (Porter and Cordoba, 2009).
The functional perspective relies on a comprehensive traditional system
model. That model holds that system components, and the relationships
Other documents randomly have
different content
parts, I mean the affections of many other dogs; at last, there was
given him a piece of bread, wherein, as was saide, was poison,
having vertue to procure a dead sleepe, which he received and
swallowed; and presently, after the eating thereof, he began to reele
and stagger too and fro like a drunken man, and fell downe to the
ground, as if he had bin dead, and so laie a good space, not stirring
foot nor lim, being drawne uppe and downe by divers persons,
according as the gesture of the play he acted did require, but when
he perceived by the time, and other signes that it was requisite to
arise, he first opened his eies, and lift up his head a little, then
stretched forth himself, like as one doth when he riseth from sleepe;
at last he geteth up, and runneth to him to whom that part
belonged, not without the joy, and good content of Cæsar and all
other beholders.

“To this may be added another story of a certaine Italian about the
yeare 1403, called Andrew, who had a red Dog with him, of strange
feats, and yet he was blind. For standing in the Market place
compassed about with a circle of many people, there were brought 152
by the standers by, many Rings, Jewels, bracelets, and peeces of
gold and silver, and these, within the circle were covered with earth,
then the dog was bid to seeke them out, who with his nose and feet
did presently find and discover them, then was hee also
commaunded to give to every one his owne Ring, Jewell, Bracelet,
or money, which the blind dog did performe directly without stay or
doubt. Afterward, the standers by, gave unto him divers pieces of
coine, stamped with the images of sundry princes, and then one of
them called for a piece of English money, and the Dog delivered him
a piece; another for the Emperor’s coine, and the dog delivered him
a piece thereof; and so consequently, every princes coine by name,
till all was restored; and this story is recorded by Abbas
Urspergensis, where upon the common people said, the dog was a
divell, or else possessed with some pythonicall spirit.”
It is curious to note some of the remedies against hydrophobia—and
I only give a portion of the long list.

“For the outward compound remedies, a plaister made of Opponax

and Pitch, is much commended, which Menippus used, taking a
pound of Pitch of Brutias, and foure ounces of Opponax, adding
withall, that the Opponax must be dissolved in vinegar, and
afterwards the Pitch and the vinegar must be boiled together, and
when the vinegar is consumed, then put in the Opponax, and of
both together make like taynters or splints, and thrust them into the
wound, so let them remaine many dayes together, and in the meane
time drinke an antidot of sea crabs and vineger, (for vineger is alway
pretious in this confection). Other use Basilica, Onyons, Rue, Salt,
Rust of Iron, white bread, seedes of hore hound, and triacle: but 153
the
other plaister is most forcible to be applyed outwardly, above al
medicines in the world.

“For the simple or uncompounded medicines to be taken against this

sore, are many: As Goose-grease, the roote of Wilde roses drunke;
bitter Almonds, leaves of Chickweed, or Pimpernell, the old skinne of
a snake pounded with a male sea Crab, Betony, Cabbage-leaves, or
stalkes, with Persneps and vineger, lime and sewet, poulder of Sea-
Crabs with Hony; poulder of the shels of Sea-Crabs, the haires of a
Dog layed on the wound, the head of the Dog which did bite, mixed
with a little Euphorbium; the haire of a man with vineger, dung of
Goates with wine, Walnuts with Hony and salte, poulder of fig tree in
a sear cloth, Fitches in wine, Euphorbium, warme horse-dung, raw
beanes chewed in the mouth, fig tree leaves, greene figs with
vineger, fennel stalkes, Gentians, dung of pullen, the Lyver of a
Buck-goate, young swallowes, burned to poulder, also their dung;
the urine of a man, an Hyæna’s skin, flower de luce with honey, a
Sea hearb called Kakille, Silphum with salt, the flesh and shels of
snayles, leeke seeds with salt, mints, the taile of a field mouse cut
off from her alive, and she suffered to live, rootes of Burres, with
salt of the Sea plantaine, the tongue of a Ramme with salt, the flesh
of al Sea-fishes, the fat of a sea-Calfe and Vervine, besides many
other superstitious amulets which are used to be bound to the
Armes, neckes, and brests, as the Canine tooth bound up in a leafe,
and tyed to the Arme. A worme bred in the dung of Dogges, hanged
about the necke, the roots of Gentian in an Hyæna’s skin, or young
Wolfe’s Skin, and such like; whereof I know no reason beside the
opinion of men.”

Let us now see what medicinal properties exist in dogs themselves; 154
and, here again, I must very much curtail the recital of their benefits
to mankind.

“The vertues of a Dog’s head made into poulder, are both many and
unspeakable, by it is the biting of mad dogs cured, it cureth spots,
and bunches in the head, and a plaister thereof made with Oyle of
Roses, healeth the running in the head. The poulder of the teeth of
Dogges, maketh Children’s teeth to come forth with speed and easie,
and, if their gums be rub’d with a dog’s tooth, it maketh them to
have the sharper teeth; and the poulder of these Dogs teeth rubbed
upon the Gummes of young or olde, easeth toothache, and abateth
swelling in the gummes. The tongue of a Dogge, is most wholesome
both for the curing of his owne wounds by licking, as also of any
other creature. The rennet of a Puppy drunke with Wine, dissolveth
the Collicke in the same houre wherein it was drunke,” &c., &c., &c.

The Cat.
Aldrovandus gives us a picture of a curly-legged Cat, but, beyond
saying that it was so afflicted (or ornamented) from its birth, he
gives no particulars. Topsell, too, is singularly silent on the merits of
Cats; but yet he mentions some interesting particulars respecting
them:—“To keepe Cats from hunting of Hens, they use to tie a little
wild rew under their wings, and so likewise from Dove-coates, if they
set it in the windowes, they dare not approach unto it for some
secret in nature. Some have said that cats will fight with Serpentes,
and Toads, and kill them, and, perceiving that she is hurt by them,
she presently drinketh water, and is cured: but I cannot consent
unto this opinion.... Ponzettus sheweth by experience that cats and155
Serpents love one another, for there was (sayth he) in a certain
Monastery, a Cat norished by the Monkes, and suddenly the most
part of the Monkes which used to play with the Cat, fell sicke;
whereof the Physitians could find no cause, but some secret poyson,
and al of them were assured that they never tasted any: at the last
a poore laboring man came unto them, affirming that he saw the
Abbey-Cat playing with a Serpent, which the Physitians
understanding, presently conceived that the Serpent had emptied
some of her poyson upon the Cat, which brought the same to the
Monkes, and they by stroking and handeling the Cat, were infected
therewith; and whereas there remained one difficulty, namely, how it
came to passe the Cat herself was not poisoned thereby, it was
resolved, that, forasmuch as the Serpentes poison came from him
but in playe and sporte, and not in malice and wrath, that therefore
the venom thereof being lost in play, neither harmed the Cat at al,156
nor much endangered the Monkes; and the very like is observed of
Myce that will play with Serpents....
“Those which will keepe their Cattes within doores, and from hunting
Birds abroad, must cut off their eares, for they cannot endure to
have drops of raine distil into them, and therefore keep themselves
in harbor.... They cannot abide the savour of oyntments, but fall
madde thereby; they are sometimes infected with the falling evill,
but are cured with Gobium.”

The Lion.
Of the great Cat, the Lion, the ancients give many wonderful stories,
some of them not altogether redounding to his character for
bravery:—“A serpent, or snake doth easily kill a lion, where of
Ambrosius writeth very elegantly. Eximia leonis pulchritudo, per
comantes cervicis toros excutitur, cum subito a serpente os pectore
tenus attolitur, itaque Coluber cervum fugit sed Leonem interficit.
The splendant beautie of a lion in his long curled mane is quickly
abated, and allayed, when the serpent doth but lift up his head to
his brest. For such is the ordinance of God, that the Snake, which
runneth from a fearefull Hart, should without all feare kill a
courageous Lyon; and the writer of Saint Marcellus life, How much
more will he feare a great Dragon, against whom he hath not power
to lift up his taile. And Aristotle writeth that the Lyon is afraid of the
Swine, and Rasis affirmeth as much of the mouse.

“The Cocke also both seene and heard for his voice and combe, is a
terror to the Lion and Basiliske, and the Lyon runneth from him
when he seeth him, especially from a white cocke, and the reason157
hereof, is because they are both partakers of the Sunnes qualities in
a high degree, and therefore the greater body feareth the lesser,
because there is a more eminent and predominant sunny propertie
in the Cocke, than in the Lion. Lucretius describes this terrour
notably, affirming that, in the morning, when the Cocke croweth, the
lions betake themselves to flight, because there are certain seedes in
the body of Cockes, which when they are sent, and appeare to the
eyes of Lions, they vexe their pupils and apples, and make them,
against Nature, become gentle and quiet.”

The Leontophonus—The Pegasus—The Crocotta.

The Lion has a dreadful enemy, according to Pliny, who says:—“We
have heard speak of a small animal to which the name of
Leontophonus [36] has been given, and which is said to exist only in
those countries where the Lion is produced. If its flesh is only tasted
by the Lion, so intensely venomous is its nature, that this lord of the
other quadrupeds instantly expires. Hence it is that the hunters of
the Lion burn its body to ashes, and sprinkle a piece of flesh with
the powder, and so kill the Lion by means of its ashes even—so fatal
to it is this poison! The Lion, therefore, not without reason, hates
the Leontophonus, and, after destroying its sight, kills it without
inflicting a bite: the animal, on the other hand, sprinkles the Lion
with its urine, being well aware that this, too, is fatal to it.”

We have read, in the Romances of Chivalry, how that Guy, Earl of

Warwick, having seen a Lion and a Dragon fighting, went to the 158
assistance of the former, and, having killed its opponent, the Lion
meekly trotted after him, and ever after, until its death, was his
constant companion. How, in the absence of Sir Bevis of Hampton,
two lions having killed the Steward Boniface, and his horse, laid their
heads in the fair Josian’s lap. The old romancists held that a lion
would always respect a virgin, and Spenser has immortalised this in
his character of Una. Most of us remember the story given by Aulus
Gellius and Ælian, of Androcles, who earned a lion’s gratitude by
extracting a thorn from its paw, and Pliny gives similar instances:—

“Mentor, a native of Syracuse, was met in Syria by a lion, who rolled

before him in a suppliant manner; though smitten with fear, and
desirous to escape, the wild beast on every side opposed his flight,
and licked his feet with a fawning air. Upon this, Mentor observed on
the paw of the lion, a swelling and a wound; from which, after
extracting a splinter, he relieved the creature’s pain.

“In the same manner, too, Elpis, a native of Samos, on landing from
a vessel on the coast of Africa, observed a lion near the beach,
opening his mouth in a threatening manner; upon which he climbed
a tree, in the hope of escaping, while, at the same time, he invoked
the aid of Father Liber (Bacchus); for it is the appropriate time for
invocations where there is no room left for hope. The wild beast did
not pursue him when he fled, although he might easily have done
so; but, lying down at the foot of the tree, by the open mouth which
had caused so much terror, tried to excite his compassion. A bone,
while he was devouring his food with too great avidity, had stuck
fast between his teeth, and he was perishing with hunger; such 159
being the punishment inflicted upon him by his own weapons, every
now and then he would look up, and supplicate him, as it were, with
mute entreaties. Elpis, not wishing to risk trusting himself to so
formidable a beast, remained stationary for some time, more at last
from astonishment than from fear. At length, however, he descended
from the tree, and extracted the bone, the lion, in the meanwhile,
extending his head, and aiding in the operation as far as it was
necessary for him to do. The story goes on to say, that as long as
the vessel remained off that coast, the lion shewed his sense of
gratitude by bringing whatever he had chanced to procure in the
chase.”

The same author mentions two curious animals, the Leucrocotta,

and the Eale, which are noticeable among other wonders:
—“Æthiopia produces the lynx in abundance, and the sphinx, which
has brown hair and two mammæ on the breast, as well as many
monstrous kinds of a similar nature; horses with wings, and armed
with horns, which are called pegasi: the Crocotta, an animal which
looks as though it had been produced by the union of the wolf and
the dog, for it can break anything with its teeth, and instantly, on
swallowing it, it digests it with the stomach; monkeys, too, with
black heads, the hair of the ass, and a voice quite unlike that of any
other animal.”

The Leucrocotta—The Eale—Cattle Feeding Backwards.

“There are oxen, too, like that of India, some with one horn, and
others with three; the leucrocotta, a wild beast of extraordinary
swiftness, the size of the wild ass, with the legs of a Stag, the neck,
tail, and breast of a lion, the head of a badger, a cloven hoof, the 160
mouth slit up as far as the ears, and one continuous bone instead of
teeth; it is said, too, that this animal can imitate the human voice.
“Among the same people there is found an animal called the eale; it
is the size of the river-horse, has the tail of the elephant, and is of a
black or tawny colour. It has, also, the jaws of the wild boar and
horns that are moveable, and more than a cubit in length, so that, in
fighting, it can employ them alternately, and vary their position by
presenting them directly, or obliquely, according as necessity may
dictate.”

The Eale, with its movable horns, is run hard by the Cattle of the
Lotophagi, which are thus described by Herodotus:—“From the
Augilæ at the end of another ten days’ journey is another hill of salt
and water, and many fruit-bearing palm trees, as also in other
places; and men inhabit it, who are called Gavamantes, a very
powerful nation; they lay earth upon the salt, and then sow their
ground. From these to the Lotophagi, the shortest route is a journey
of thirty days: amongst them the kine that feed backwards are met
with; they feed backwards for this reason. They have horns that are
bent forward, therefore they draw back as they feed; for they are
unable to go forward, because their horns would stick in the ground.
They differ from other kine in no other respect than this, except that
their hide is thicker and harder.”

Animal Medicine.
We have already seen some of the wonderfully curative properties of
animals—let us learn something of their own medical attainments— 161
as described by Pliny. “The hippopotamus has even been our
instructor in one of the operations of medicine. When the animal has
become too bulky, by continued overfeeding, it goes down to the
banks of the river, and examines the reeds which have been newly
cut; as soon as it has found a stump that is very sharp, it presses its
body against it, and so wounds one of the veins in the thigh; and by
the flow of blood thus produced, the body, which would otherwise
have fallen into a morbid state, is relieved; after which, it covers up
the wound with mud.

“The bird, also, which is called the Ibis, a native of the same country
of Egypt, has shewn us some things of a similar nature. By means of
its hooked beak, it laves the body through that part by which it is
especially necessary for health, that the residuous food should be
discharged. Nor, indeed, are these the only inventions which have
been borrowed from animals to prove of use to man. The power of
the herb dittany, in extracting arrows, was first disclosed to us by
stags that had been struck by that weapon; the weapon being
discharged on their feeding upon this plant. The same animals, too,
when they happen to have been wounded by the phalangium, a
species of spider, or by any insect of a similar nature, cure
themselves by eating crabs. One of the very best remedies for the
bite of the serpent, is the plant with which lizards treat their wounds
when injured in fighting with each other. The swallow has shown us
that the chelidonia is very serviceable to the sight, by the fact of its
employing it for the cure of its young, when their eyes are affected.
The tortoise recruits its powers of effectually resisting serpents by
eating the plant which is known as cunile bubula; and the weasel 162
feeds on rue, when it fights with the serpent in pursuit of mice. The
Stork cures itself of its diseases, with wild marjoram, and the wild
boar with ivy, as also by eating crabs, and, more particularly, those
that have been thrown up by the sea.

“The snake, when the membrane which covers its body, has been
contracted by the cold of winter, throws it off in the spring, by the
aid of the juices of fennel, and thus becomes sleek and youthful in
appearance. First of all it disengages the head, and then it takes no
less than a day and a night in working itself out, and divesting itself
of the membrane in which it has been enclosed. The same animal,
too, on finding its sight weakened during its winter retreat, anoints
and refreshes its eyes by rubbing itself on the plant called fennel, or
marathrum; but, if any of the scales are slow in coming off, it rubs
itself against the thorns of the juniper. The dragon relieves the
nausea which affects it in spring, with the juices of the lettuce. The
barbarous nations go to hunt the panther, provided with meat that
has been rubbed with Aconite, which is a poison. Immediately on
eating it, compression of the throat overtakes them, from which
circumstance it is, that the plant has received the name of
pardalianches (pard-strangler). The animal, however, has found an
antidote against this poison in human excrements; besides which, it
is so eager to get at them, that the shepherds purposely suspend
them in a vessel, placed so high, that the animal cannot reach them,
even by leaping, when it endeavours to get at them; accordingly, it
continues to leap, until it has quite exhausted itself, and at last
expires: otherwise, it is so tenacious of life that it will continue to
fight, long after its intestines have been dragged out of its body.
163
“When an elephant has happened to devour a chameleon, which is
of the same colour with the herbage, it counteracts this poison by
means of the wild olive. Bears, when they have eaten of the fruit of
the Mandrake, lick up numbers of Ants. The Stag counteracts the
effect of poisonous plants by eating the artichoke. Wood pigeons,
jackdaws, blackbirds, and partridges, purge themselves once a year
by eating bay leaves; pigeons, turtle-doves, and poultry, with wall
pellitory, or helxine; ducks, geese, and other aquatic birds of a
similar nature, with the bulrush. The raven, when it has killed a
chameleon, a contest in which even the conqueror suffers,
counteracts the poison by means of laurel.”

The Su.
Topsell mentions a fearful beast called the Su. “There is a region in
the new-found world, called Gigantes, and the inhabitants thereof,
are called Patagones; now, because their country is cold, being far in
the South, they cloath themselves with the skins of a beast called in
their owne toong Su, for by reason that this beast liveth for the most
part neere the waters, therefore they cal it by the name of Su, which
signifieth water. The true image thereof, as it was taken by
Thenestus, I have heere inserted, for it is of a very deformed shape,
and monstrous presence, a great ravener, and an untamable wilde
beast.

“When the hunters that desire her skinne, set upon her, she flyeth
very swift, carrying her yong ones upon her back, and covering them
with her broad taile; now, for so much as no dogge or man dareth to
approach neere unto her, (because such is the wrath thereof, that in
the pursuit she killeth all that commeth near her:) The hunters digge
severall pittes or great holes in the earth, which they cover with 164
boughes, sticks, and earth, so weakly, that if the beast chance at
any time to come upon it, she, and her young ones fall down into
the pit, and are taken.
“This cruell, untamable, impatient, violent, ravening, and bloody
beast, perceiving that her natural strength cannot deliver her from
the wit and policy of men, her hunters, (for being inclosed, she can
never get out againe) the hunters being at hand to watch her
downfall, and worke her overthrowe, first of all to save her young
ones from taking and taming, she destroyeth them all with her own
teeth; for there was never any of them taken alive, and when she
seeth the hunters come about her, she roareth, cryeth, howleth,
brayeth, and uttereth such a fearefull, noysome, and terrible clamor,
that the men which watch to kill her, are not thereby a little amazed;
but, at last, being animated, because there can be no resistance, 165
they approach, and with their darts and speares, wound her to
death, and then take off her skin, and leave the Carcasse in the
earth. And this is all that I finde recorded of this most strange
beast.”
 The Lamb-Tree.
As a change from this awful animal, let us examine the Planta
Tartarica Borometz—which was so graphically delineated by Joannes
Zahn in 1696. Although this is by no means the first picture of it, yet
it is the best of any I have seen.

A most interesting book [37] on the “Vegetable Lamb of Tartary” has

been written by the late Henry Lee, Esq., at one time Naturalist of
the Brighton Aquarium, and I am much indebted to it for matter on
the subject, which I could not otherwise have obtained.
The word Borometz is supposed to be derived from a Tartar word
signifying a lamb, and this plant-animal was thoroughly believed in,
many centuries ago—but there seem to have been two distinct
varieties of plant, that on which little lambs were found in pods, and
that as represented by Zahn, with a living lamb attached by its navel
to a short stem. This stalk was flexible, and allowed the lamb to
graze, within its limits; but when it had consumed all the grass 166
within its reach, or if the stalk was severed, it died. This lamb was
said to have the actual body, blood, and bones of a young sheep,
and wolves were very fond of it—but, luckily for the lamb-tree, these
were the only carnivorous animals that would attack it.

In his “Histoire Admirable des Plantes” (1605) Claude Duret, of

Moulins, treats of the Borometz, and says: “I remember to have read
some time ago, in a very ancient Hebrew book entitled in Latin the
Talmud Ierosolimitanum, and written by a Jewish Rabbi Jochanan,
assisted by others, in the year of Salvation 436, that a certain
personage named Moses Chusensis (he being a native of Ethiopia)
affirmed, on the authority of Rabbi Simeon, that there was a certain
country of the earth which bore a zoophyte, or plant-animal, called
in the Hebrew Jeduah. It was in form like a lamb, and from its navel,
grew a stem or root by which this Zoophyte, or plant-animal, was
fixed attached, like a gourd, to the soil below the surface of the
ground, and, according to the length of its stem or root, it devoured
all the herbage which it was able to reach within the circle of its
tether. The hunters who went in search of this creature were unable
to capture, or remove it, until they had succeeded in cutting the
stem by well-aimed arrows, or darts, when the animal immediately
fell prostrate to the earth, and died. Its bones being placed with
certain ceremonies and incantations in the mouth of one desiring to
foretell the future, he was instantly seized with a spirit of divination,
and endowed with the gift of prophecy.”
Mr. Lee then says: “As I was unable to find in the Latin translation of
the Talmud of Jerusalem, the passage mentioned by Claude Duret,
and was anxious to ascertain whether any reference to this curious 167
legend existed in the Talmudical books, I sought the assistance of
learned members of the Jewish community, and, amongst them, of
the Rev. Dr. Hermann Adler, Chief Rabbi Delegate of the United
Congregations of the British Empire. He most kindly interested
himself in the matter, and wrote to me as follows: ‘It affords me
much gratification to give you the information you desire on the
Borametz. In the Mishna Kilaim, chap. viii. § 5 (a portion of the
Talmud), the passage occurs: “Creatures called Adne Hasadeh
(literally ‘lords of the field’) are regarded as beasts.” There is a
variant reading, Abne Hasadeh (stones of the field). A commentator,
Rabbi Simeon, of Sens (died about 1235), writes as follows, on this
passage: ‘It is stated in the Jerusalem Talmud that this is a human
being of the mountains: it lives by means of its navel: if its navel be
cut, it cannot live. I have heard in the name of Rabbi Meir, the son of
Kallonymos of Speyer, that this is the animal called Jeduah. This is
the Jedoui mentioned in Scripture (lit. wizard, Lev. xix. 31); with its
bones witchcraft is practised. A kind of large stem issues from a root
in the earth on which this animal, called Jadua, grows, just as
gourds and melons. Only the Jadua has, in all respects, a human
shape, in face, body, hands, and feet. By its navel it is joined to the
stem that issues from the root. No creature can approach within the
tether of the stem, for it seizes and kills them. Within the tether of
the stem it devours the herbage all around. When they want to
capture it, no man dares approach it, but they tear at the stem until
it is ruptured, whereupon the animal dies.’ Another commentator,
Rabbi Obadja, of Berbinoro, gives the same explanation, only 168
substituting ‘They aim arrows at the stem until it is ruptured,’ &c.

“The author of an ancient Hebrew work, Maase Tobia (Venice,

1705), gives an interesting description of this animal. In Part IV.
c. 10, page 786, he mentions the Borametz found in Great Tartary.
He repeats the description of Rabbi Simeon, and adds, that he has
found, in ‘A New Work on Geography,’ namely, that ‘the Africans (sic)
in Great Tartary, in the province of Sambulala, are enriched by
means of seeds, like the seeds of gourds, only shorter in size, which
grow and blossom like a stem to the navel of an animal which is
called Borametz in their language, i.e. lamb, on account of its
resembling a lamb in all its limbs, from head to foot; its hoofs are
cloven, its skin is soft, its wool is adapted for clothing, but it has no
horns, only the hairs of its head, which grow, and are intertwined
like horns. Its height is half a cubit and more. According to those
who speak of this wondrous thing, its taste is like the flesh of fish,
its blood as sweet as honey, and it lives as long as there is herbage
within reach of the stem, from which it derives its life. If the herbage
is destroyed or perishes, the animal also dies away. It has rest from
all beasts and birds of prey, except the wolf, which seeks to destroy
it.’ The author concludes by expressing his belief that this account of
the animal having the shape of a lamb is more likely to be true than
it is of human form.”

As I have said, there are several delineations of this Borametz or

Borometz, but there is one, a frontispiece to the 1656 edition of the
Paridisi in Sole—Paradisus Terrestris, of John Parkinson, Apothecary
of London, in which, together with Adam and Eve, the lamb-tree is
shown as flourishing in the Garden of Eden; and Du Bartas, in “His 169
divine Weekes And Workes” in his poem of Eden, (the first day of the
second week), makes Adam to take a tour of Eden, and describes
his wonder at what he sees, especially at the “lamb-plant.”
 “Musing, anon through crooked Walks he wanders,
Round-winding rings, and intricate Meanders,
Fals-guiding paths, doubtfull beguiling strays,
And right-wrong errors of an end-less Maze:
Not simply hedged with a single border
Of Rosemary, cut-out with curious order,
In Satyrs, Centaurs, Whales, and half-men-Horses,
And thousand other counterfaited corses;
But with true Beasts, fast in the ground still sticking,
Feeding on grass, and th’ airy moisture licking:
Such as those Bonarets, in Scythia bred
Of slender seeds, and with green fodder fed;
Although their bodies, noses, mouthes and eys,
Of new-yean’d Lambs have full the form and guise;
And should be very Lambs, save that (for foot)
Within the ground they fix a living root,
Which at their navell growes, and dies that day
That they have brouz’d the neighbour grass away.
O wondrous vertue of God onely good!
The Beast hath root, the Plant hath flesh and blood
The nimble Plant can turn it to and fro;
The nummed Beast can neither stir nor go:
The Plant is leaf-less, branch-less, void of fruit;
The Beast is lust-less, sex-less, fire-less, mute;
The Plant with Plants his hungry panch doth feed;
Th’ admired Beast is sowen a slender seed.”

Of the other kind of “lamb-tree,” that which bears lambs in pods, we

have an account, in Sir John Maundeville’s Travels. “Whoso goeth
from Cathay to Inde, the high and the low, he shal go through a
Kingdom that men call Cadissen, and it is a great lande, there
groweth a manner of fruite as it were gourdes, and when it is ripe
men cut it a sonder, and men fynde therein a beast as it were of 170
fleshe and bone and bloud, as it were a lyttle lambe without wolle,
and men eate the beaste and fruite also, and sure it seemeth very
strange.”

And in the “Journall of Frier Odoricus,” which I have incorporated in

my edition of “The Voiage and Travayle of Syr John Maundeville,
Knight,” he says: “I was informed also by certaine credible persons
of another miraculous thing, namely, that in a certaine Kingdome of
the sayd Can, wherein stand the mountains called Kapsei (the
Kingdomes name is Kalor) there groweth great Gourds or Pompions,
(pumpkins) which being ripe, doe open at the tops, and within them
is found a little beast like unto a yong lambe.”

The Chimæra.

Aldrovandus gives us the accompanying illustration of a Chimæra, a

fabulous Classical monster, said to possess three heads, those of a171
lion, a goat, and a dragon. It used so to be pictorially treated, but in
more modern times as Aldrovandus represents. The mountain
Chimæra, now called Yanar, is in ancient Lycia, in Asia Minor, and
was a burning mountain, which, according to Spratt, is caused by a
stream of inflammable gas, issuing from a crevice. This monster is
easily explained, if we can believe Servius, the Commentator of
Virgil, who says that flames issue from the top of the mountain, and
that there are lions in the vicinity; the middle part abounds in goats,
and the lower part with serpents.

The Harpy and Siren.

The conjunction of the human form with birds is very easy, wings
172
being fitted to it, as in the case of angels—and as applied to beasts,
this treatment is very ancient, vide the winged bulls of Assyria, and
the classical Pegasus, or winged horse. With birds, the best form in
which it is treated in Mythology is the Harpy. This is taken from
Aldrovandus, and fully illustrates the mixture of bird and woman,
described by Shakespeare in Pericles (iv. 3):—

“Cleon.
Thou’rt like the harpy,
Which to betray, dost, with thine angel’s face,
Seize with thine eagle’s talons.”
Then, also, we have the Siren, shown by this illustration, taken from
Pompeii. These Sea Nymphs were like the Harpies, depicted as a
compound of bird and woman. Like them also, there were three of 173
them; but, unlike them, they had such lovely voices, and were so
beautiful, that they lured seamen to their destruction, they having
no power to combat the allurements of the Sirens; whilst the Harpies
emitted an infectious smell, and spoiled whatever they touched, with
their filth, and excrements.

Licetus, writing in 1634, and Zahn, in 1696, give the accompanying

picture of a monster born at Ravenna in 1511 or 1512. It had a horn 174
on the top of its head, two wings, was without arms, and only one
leg like that of a bird of prey. It had an eye in its knee, and was of
both sexes. It had the face and body of a man, except in the lower
part, which was covered with feathers.

Marcellus Palonius Romanus made some Latin verses upon this

prodigy, which may be thus rendered into English:—
 A Monster strange in fable, and deform
Still more in fact; sailing with swiftest wing,
He threatens double slaughter, and converts
To thy fell ruin, flames of living fire.
Of double sex, it spares no sex, alike
With kindred blood it fills th’ Æmathian plain;
Its corpses strew alike both street and sea.
There hoary Thetis and the Nereids
Swim shudd’ring through the waves, while floating wide
The fish replete on human bodies——. Such,
Ravenna, was the Monster which foretold
Thy fall, which brings thee now such bitter woe,
Tho’ boasting in thy image triumph-crowned.

The Barnacle Goose.

Of all extraordinary beliefs, that in the Barnacle Goose, which
obtained credence from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries, is
as wonderful as any. The then accepted fact that the Barnacle Goose
was generated on trees, and dropped alive in the water, dates back
a hundred years before Gerald de Barri. Otherwise Giraldus
Cambrensis wrote in 1187, about these birds, the following being a
translation:—

“There are here many birds which are called Bernacæ, which nature
produces in a manner contrary to nature, and very wonderful. They
are like marsh-geese, but smaller. They are produced from fir timber 175
tossed about at sea, and are at first like geese upon it. Afterwards
they hang down by their beaks, as if from a sea-weed attached to
the wood, and are enclosed in shells that they may grow the more
freely. Having thus, in course of time, been clothed with a strong
covering of feathers, they either fall into the water, or seek their
liberty in the air by flight. The embryo geese derive their growth and
nutriment from the moisture of the wood or of the sea, in a secret
and most marvellous manner. I have seen with my own eyes more
than a thousand minute bodies of these birds hanging from one
piece of timber on the shore, enclosed in shells, and already formed.
The eggs are not impregnated in coitu, like those of other birds, nor
does the bird sit upon its eggs to hatch them, and in no corner of
the world have they been known to build a nest. Hence the bishops
and clergy in some parts of Ireland are in the habit of partaking of
these birds, on fast days, without scruple. But in doing so they are
led into sin. For, if any one were to eat of the leg of our first parent,
although he (Adam) was not born of flesh, that person could not be
adjudged innocent of eating flesh.”

We see here, that Giraldus speaks of these barnacles being

developed on wreckage in the sea, but does not mention their
growing upon trees, which was the commoner belief. I have quoted
both Sir John Maundeville, and Odoricus, about the lamb-tree, which
neither seem to consider very wonderful, for Sir John says:
“Neverthelesse I sayd to them that I held yt for no marvayle, for I
sayd that in my countrey are trees yt beare fruit, yt become byrds
flying, and they are good to eate, and that that falleth on the water,
liveth, and that that falleth on earth, dyeth, and they marvailed 176
much thereat.” And the Friar, in continuation of his story of the
Borometz, says: “Even as I my selfe have heard reported that there
stand certaine trees upon the shore of the Irish Sea, bearing fruit
like unto a gourd, which at a certaine time of the yeere doe fall into
the water, and become birds called Bernacles, and this is most true.”
Olaus Magnus, in speaking of the breeding of Ducks in Scotland,
says: “Moreover, another Scotch Historian, who diligently sets down
the secret of things, saith that in the Orcades, (the Orkneys) Ducks
breed of a certain Fruit falling in the Sea; and these shortly after, 177
get
wings, and fly to the tame or wild ducks.” And, whilst discoursing on
Geese, he affirms that “some breed from Trees, as I said of Scotland
Ducks in the former Chapter.” Sebastian Müenster, from whom I
have taken the preceding illustration, says in his Cosmographia
Universalis:—“In Scotland there are trees which produce fruit,
conglomerated of their leaves; and this fruit, when, in due time, it
falls into the water beneath it, is endowed with new life, and is
converted into a living bird, which they call the ‘tree goose.’ This tree
grows in the Island of Pomonia, which is not far from Scotland,
towards the North. Several old Cosmographers, especially Saxo
Grammaticus, mention the tree, and it must not be regarded as
fictitious, as some new writers suppose.”

In Camden’s “Britannia” (translated by Edmund Gibson, Bishop of

London) he says, speaking of Buchan:—“It is hardly worth while to
mention the clayks, a sort of geese; which are believed by some,
(with great admiration) to grow upon the trees on this coast and in
other places, and, when they are ripe, to fall down into the sea;
because neither their nests nor eggs can anywhere be found. But
they who saw the ship, in which Sir Francis Drake sailed round the
world, when it was laid up in the river Thames, could testify, that
little birds breed in the old rotten keels of ships; since a great
number of such, without life and feathers, stuck close to the outside
of the keel of that ship; yet I should think, that the generation of
these birds was not from the logs of wood, but from the sea, termed
by the poets ‘the parent of all things.’”
In “Purchas, his Pilgrimage,” is the voyage of Gerat de Veer to China,
&c., in 1569—and he speaks of the Barnacle goose thus:—“Those178
geese were of a perfit red colour, such as come to Holland about
Weiringen, and every yeere are there taken in abundance, but till
this time, it was never knowne where they hatcht their egges, so
that some men have taken upon them to write that they sit upon
trees in Scotland, that hang over the water, and such eggs that fall
from them downe into the water, become young geese, and swim
there out of the water: but those that fall upon the land, burst
179
asunder, and are lost; but that is now found to be contrary, that no
man could tell where they breed their egges, for that no man that
ever wee knew, had ever beene under 80°; nor that land under 80°
was never set downe in any card, much lesse the red geese that
breede therein.” He and his sailors declared that they had seen these
birds sitting on their eggs, and hatching them, on the coasts of Nova
Zembla.

Du Bartas thus mentions this goose:—

“So, slowe Boötes underneath him sees,

In th’ ycie iles, those goslings hatcht of trees;
Whose fruitfull leaves, falling into the water,
Are turned, (they say) to living fowls soon after.
So, rotten sides of broken ships do change
To barnacles; O transformation strange!
’Twas first a green tree, then a gallant hull,
Lately a mushroom, now a flying gull.”

I could multiply quotations on this subject. Gesner and every other

naturalist believed in the curious birth of the Barnacle goose—and so
even did Aldrovandus, writing at the close of the seventeenth
century, for from him I take this illustration. But enough has been
said upon the subject.

Remarkable Egg.
No wonder that a credulous age, which could see nothing
extraordinary in the Barnacle goose, could also, metaphorically,
swallow such an egg, as Licetus, first of all, and Aldrovandus, after
him, gives us in the accompanying true picture. The latter says that180
a goose’s egg was found in France, (he leaves a liberal margin for
locality,) which on being broken appeared exactly as in the picture.
Comment thereon is useless.

Moon Woman.
One would have imagined that this Egg would be sufficient to test
the credulity of most people, but Aldrovandus was equal to the
occasion, and he gives us a “Moon Woman,” who lays eggs, sits
upon them, and hatches Giants; and he gives this on the authority of
Lycosthenes and Ravisius Textor.

The Griffin.
There always has been a tradition of birds being existent, of far
greater size than those usually visible.
181
The Maoris aver that at times they still hear the gigantic Moa in the
scrub—and, even, if extinct, we know, by the state of the bones
found, that its extinction must have been of comparatively recent
date. But no one credits the Moa with the power of flight, whilst the
Griffin, which must not be confounded with the gold-loving
Arimaspian Gryphon, was a noble bird. Mandeville knew him:—“In
this land (Bactria) are many gryffons, more than in other places, and
some say they have the body before as an Egle, and behinde as a
Lyon, and it is trouth, for they be made so; but the Griffen hath a
body greater than viii Lyons, and stall worthier (stouter, braver) than
a hundred Egles. For certainly he wyl beare to his nest flying, a
horse and a man upon his back, or two Oxen yoked togither as they
go at plowgh, for he hath longe nayles on hys fete, as great as it
were hornes of Oxen, and of those they make Cups there to drynke
of, and of his rybes they make bowes to shoote with.”

182
Olaus Magnus says they live in the far Northern mountains, that they
prey upon horses and men, and that of their nails drinking-cups
were made, as large as ostrich eggs. These enormous birds
correspond in many points to the Eastern Ruc or Rukh, or the Rok of
the “Arabian Nights,” of whose mighty powers of flight Sindbad took
advantage.
Ser Marco Polo, speaking of Madagascar, says:—“’Tis said that in
those other Islands to the south, which the ships are unable to visit
because this strong current prevents their return, is found the bird
Gryphon, which appears there at certain seasons. The description
given of it is, however, entirely different from what our stories and
pictures make it. For persons who had been there and had seen it,
told Messer Marco Polo that it was for all the world like an eagle, but
one indeed of enormous size; so big in fact, that its wings covered
an extent of 30 paces, and its quills were 12 paces long, and thick in
proportion. And it is so strong that it will seize an Elephant in its
talons, and carry him high into the air, and drop him so that he is
smashed to pieces: having so killed him, the bird gryphon swoops
down on him, and eats him at leisure. The people of those isles call
the bird Ruc, and it has no other name. So I wot not if this be the
real gryphon, or if there be another manner of bird as great. But this
I can tell you for certain, that they are not half lion and half bird, as
our stories do relate; but, enormous as they be, they are fashioned
just like an eagle.

“The Great Kaan sent to those parts to enquire about these curious
matters, and the story was told by those who went thither. He also
sent to procure the release of an envoy of his who had been
despatched thither, and had been detained; so both those envoys
had many wonderful things to tell the Great Kaan about those 183
strange islands, and about the birds I have mentioned. They brought
(as I heard) to the Great Kaan, a feather of the said Ruc, which was
stated to measure 90 Spans, whilst the quill part was two palms in
circumference, a marvellous object! The Great Kaan was delighted
with it, and gave great presents to those who brought it.”

This quill seems rather large; other travellers, however, perhaps not
so truthful as Ser Marco, speak of these enormous quills. The Moa of
New Zealand (Dinornis giganteus) is supposed to have been the
largest bird in Creation—and next to that is the Æpyornis maximus—
whose bones and egg have been found in Madagascar. An egg is in
the British Museum, and it has a liquid capacity of 2.35 gallons, but,
alas, for the quill story—this bird was wingless.

The Condor has been put forward as the real and veritable Ruc, but
no living specimens will compare with this bird as it has been
described—especially if we take the picture of it in Lane’s “Arabian
Nights,” where it is represented as taking up three elephants, one in
its beak, and one in each of its claws.

The Japanese have a legend of a great bird which carried off men—
and there is a very graphic picture now on view at the White Wing of
the British Museum, where one of these birds, having seized a man,
frightens, very naturally, the whole community.

The Phœnix.
Pliny says of the Phœnix:—“Æthiopia and India, more especially
produce birds of diversified plumage, and such as quite surpass all184
description. In the front rank of these is the Phœnix, that famous
bird of Arabia; though I am not sure that its existence is not a fable.

“It is said that there is only one in existence in the whole world, and
that that one has not been seen very often. We are told that this
bird is of the size of an eagle, and has a brilliant golden plumage
around the neck, whilst the rest of the body is a purple colour;
except the tail, which is azure, with long feathers intermingled, of a
roseate hue; the throat is adorned with a crest, and the head with a
tuft of feathers. The first Roman who described this bird, and who
has done so with great exactness, was the Senator Manilius, so
famous for his learning; which he owed, too, to the instructions of
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