Environmental Education in Indian B-Schools

Environmental education in India's B-schools has not been very effective due to several reasons, including lack of appropriate material, low levels of student and faculty interest and even poor institutional support. A few B-schools in India have attempted to introduce environmental courses into their curriculum. Notable pioneers among these are the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) at Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Kozhikode, TA Pai Management Institute (TAPMI), Business schools under Bombay University and the Central University at Hyderabad. There are also courses in specialist schools such as IIFM, which however have a strong sectoral focus.

In contrast B-schools abroad have attempted to capitalize on the growing concerns about environmental issues with several top B-schools in US and Europe have integrated environmental courses into their regular curriculum. These include Harvard, Wharton, Sloan, and Keenan-Flagler in the US and several other European B-schools. Some B-schools such as Keenan-Flagler (North Carolina) and University of Lund have gone a step further and are attempting to use their strong focus on environment and business issues as a brand differentiator.

Objectives

This site is created with the support of the Ministry of Environment and Forests and will wok towards promoting the integration of environmental issues into business school.

• Strengthening Institutional Capacity:
  Efforts at building institutional capacity, in terms of faculty skills, access to financial and non-financial resources, and creation of a critical mass of interested faculty within each b-school need to be initiated.
  
  
• Building a Resource Base for Teaching Materials:
  While copious material exists on business and environment in a developed country context there is very little on issues that concern firms in developing countries such as India. Most material available in the Indian context is written from an engineering/pollution control perspective and hence unsuitable for use in a business school. Even the material that exists in different institutions have not been inventoried so far and thus remains unavailable to the vast majority of teachers. It is necessary to inventorize the teaching material with an India/developing country focus available in the area of business and environment published by faculty from schools in India and abroad.
  
  
• Networking Initiatives:
  Networking motivated faculty to quickly transplant successful experiences between b-schools and help evolve collaborative curriculum development, case writing and research efforts.
  
  
• Facilitating Industry Interactions:
  The ultimate success of any environmental sensitization programme is greatly dependent on the participation of the industry. The industry associations such as Assocham, FICCI and CII also currently have several programmes for sensitizing the industry on environment and social responsibility.
  
  
• Networking Between Indian International Institutions and Faculty:
  Recognizing the fact that b-schools abroad have a good amount of progress in integrating environmental issues into business schools MoEF proposes to consult eminent faculty from these schools on a continued basis though the forums on this site.