MBAs Increasingly Turning To Jobs In Tech

MBAs With Environmental Specialties Will Become More In Demand

Some of America’s biggest corporations have collectively pledged to fight climate change as President Trump attempts to undo environmental regulations put in place by the Obama administration.

In March, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft signed a joint statement supporting the fight against climate change, according to Bloomberg.

“We believe that strong clean energy and climate policies, like the Clean Power Plan, can make renewable energy supplies more robust and address the serious threat of climate change while also supporting American competitiveness, innovation, and job growth,” the statement reads.

For Mirabelle Muûls, lecturer at the Grantham Institute and assistant professor in economics at the Imperial College Business School, change starts at the educational level. Muûls recently published a Financial Times article arguing that graduates with a strategic understanding of climate change serve as an asset to businesses. Fighting climate change, Muûls says, isn’t an option. It’s necessary.

“For businesses, cutting carbon footprint is a headache, but the process presents opportunities,” he says. “Any business must be sustainable in the long term, otherwise it has no future.”

Lack of information

Yet, not every company knows how to cut its carbon footprint. Muûls says there is a lack of information. “Companies do not know what type of investments they could make to become more energy efficient,” he says. “They are not sure what areas they should be looking at: supply chain, products or operations? We do not yet know the policies governments might choose when implementing the Paris climate agreement. All this creates uncertainty.”

This is where an MBA student with environmental expertise comes in.

“An MBA student with a strategic understanding of this interdisciplinary area — the risks, the potential solutions, and importantly the opportunities around climate change — can be a big asset to a company,” Muûls says. “Undoubtedly the government will introduce legislation in the coming years, but the biggest opportunities for innovation will come from the private sector.”

Increased demand in environmental expertise

According to Muûls, the Imperial College Business School is seeing increased interest in its MBA students from the financial sector, specifically from companies that are linked to green and sustainable investment. “This includes the whole ecosystem of finance, from asset managers to private equity, pension and insurance companies through to impact investment,” he says. “Start-ups linked to green innovation and new technologies also welcome MBA students, whose expertise and broad perspective can be a huge bonus as new ventures are launched.”

Of course, change will also come from government regulation. But Muûls says it’s a combination of both regulation and commercial pressure.

“For a market-based solution to climate change to be possible, companies need first to measure and disclose their climate-related risks,” he says. “New policies must be introduced and managed subtly.”

For business students, environmental expertise is going to become even more in demand as companies continue to look for future sustainability.

“Any business student will need to know and understand these are issues if they want to drive the corporate world of the future,” Muûls says. “They need to ask what kind of company they want to work for and understand that the limits of our resources is at the core of our economy and society.”

Sources: Financial Times, Bloomberg