Warwick Business School Makes A Big Push Into Sustainability And Business

When Amy King began the Online MBA program at Warwick Business School in 2014, online MBAs weren’t necessarily known yet for career pivots. Yet, that’s what King wanted to do. Specifically, she wanted to transition into the sustainability sector, using her MBA dissertation to study how businesses could act on climate change mitigation. 

She had the sustainability and environmental science chops. King earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental chemistry and followed it with a master’s of science in climate change and risk management. But this was also around 2007. when climate change wasn’t taken as seriously, and the global recession was impacting the job market. “Any career around climate change or any roles in the area were just pulled overnight,” King says.

King took roles at Barclays and Credit Suisse but felt like she was missing something. “I was missing the theoretical component of business,” she says. “I had this great science background, but I just didn’t have the confidence to talk in business terms.” So King decided an MBA was the path to try once again to merge business with sustainability and climate change. “I realized I need to go into business,” she says. “I needed to understand business.”

King wanted a distance learning program. She knew Warwick for its high rankings and reputation as a solid school. So, she applied, got accepted, and enrolled.

A STRONG BACKGROUND IN SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainability is strongly embedded in the culture and curriculum at Warwick Business School. It is embedded in all core modules across the school’s five MBA programs. The school offers a Social and Environmental Sustainability Specialism across all MBA programs, which focuses on sustainability transitions. And it recently joined the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME). 

“Teaching obviously is core and critical to what we do as a business school and in the university,” says Frederik Dahlmann. “And I think we’ve long recognized that sustainability is one of those topics that is not just unavoidable, but it’s really desirable. It’s highly important for our students and business leaders of the 21st century to make sense of the changing world in which we live in and therefore, we needed to make sure it’s included in our syllabus and curriculum.”

Dahlmann is an associate professor of Strategy and Sustainability at Warwick Business School. He has helped Warwick increase its curricular and research focus on sustainability. “We recognized that offering sustainability purely as an elective choice or as a nice-to-have if you have a bit of time at the end of your program was not consistent with what we know science is telling us,” Dahlmann, who has a background in construction engineering management, says. “And so we made a deliberate decision to ensure that across our core modules, there is an element of engagement with the topics of environmental and social sustainability.”

Dahlmann says about 20% of content across all core modules in all MBA programs touches on social and environmental sustainability. “We realize addressing both the social and the environmental dimension in conjunction is very critical,” Dahlmann explains. “Sometimes one or the other is pushed aside, but we think both are important to the wider discussion of the purpose of business.”

The MBA core modules are: Financial Management; Innovation and Strategic Entrepreneurship; LeadershipPlus; Corporate Reporting and Decision Making; Marketing; Operations Management; and Organizational Behavior.

USING AN ONLINE MBA TO PIVOT INTO SUSTAINABILITY

When King began planning her dissertation, which initially focused on key actions businesses could take to become more sustainable, she found Dahlmann, who was available to mentor and serve as King’s academic advisor for the project. “I couldn’t believe that Warwick had this academic who was writing deep articles and research in sustainability,” King says. “So I kind of honed in on him and he was very generous with his time and was very approachable and became my supervisor of sorts.”

A concern some future MBA students might have about an online MBA is access to faculty members. But that was not at all the case for King, who worked closely with Dahlmann throughout her online MBA program. When King visited campus, she says Dahlmann was always available for her to meet with, which was huge considering she wasn’t on campus very often. Since graduating, King says her and Dahlmann have kept in touch. “I pull him into initiatives that I’m running that need an academic viewpoint,” King says. “And, likewise, he pulls me onto panels when he needs somebody who’s got that real-world experience. So we’ve kind of helped compliment each other a little since I’ve graduated.”

For students considering an online MBA program, King advises to take advantage of their on-campus time and face-to-face modules. “Make sure you take the opportunity to connect with academics like Fred (Dahlmann) and others, who might not be necessarily teaching on your modules, but are doing groundbreaking research behind the scenes, and try and get that coffee with them,” King advises. “Because, for me, that dissertation was really the massive opportunity I had to transition from theory into the real world.”

OPTIMISM FOR THE FUTURE OF SUSTAINABILITY IN BUSINESS

Perhaps not surprisingly, both Dahlmann and King are optimistic about what businesses can do with an emphasis on sustainability. It’s a volatile time for policy, de-regulation, and sustainability, in general. “But the issues are not going away,” Dahlmann points out. “There will be direct physical consequences sooner or later. And those that acknowledge climate change and its impact on business will be better prepared.” Again, Dahlmann asks, what is the purpose of business in the 21st century? Making its stakeholders and the world a better place because of its existence, he says.

Overall, King says she’s “really hopeful” for the direction of sustainability and business. “Despite the narratives we’re hearing coming out in some places, when you look at some of the basics, climate change is one of the most pressing issues that business leaders are concerned about,” she says. “I think people get that the science is real now. And as things like solar and batters become cheaper, the market will just naturally move to cleaner energy. I think that’s for sure.”

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