Challenging economic development

What is it about?

Exploring how business students react to ideas evoked by literature criticising economic growth and film Schooling the World

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Why is it important?

Economic growth is rarely challenged in business schools. This article presents a case of critical teaching in business context, discussing questions of sustainability, development, and self-reliance in developing countries. These questions will be raised in this course: Can poverty reduction be decoupled from economic growth and increase in consumption of natural resources? What factors should be accounted for to create a good assessment of quality of life? If the alternative path to economic development cannot be found, how can rising the standard of the living for developing countries’ people avoid potentially catastrophic impacts on the global ecosystem? What are ecocentric scholars concerned about in regard to natural resources? Since the future generations are not born yet and non-human species cannot speak for themselves, how can intergenerational justice and biospheric egalitarianism be addressed in democratic systems? What are the greatest sustainability challenges and how can they be overcome? The course presented in this article explores interdisciplinary approaches to biodiversity conservation, sustainability and human development, considering alternatives to conventional sustainability approaches and ecologically benign models of production, including Cradle to Cradle and circular economy.

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