Sustainability-driven entrepreneurship: round table on a new joint master curriculum (original) (raw)
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Internationalisierung der Curricula an Hochschulen. Konzepte, Initiativen, Maßnahmen, 2017
The EU project “CASE – Competencies for a sustainable socio-economic development ” is developing a Master’s programme on sustainability-driven entrepreneurship. In a needs analysis, interviews were conducted with entrepreneurs and university teachers from five European countries to analyse the competencies to be developed by students in the future Master’s programme. The results were further developed into a curriculum in multi-stakeholder workshops. The paper concludes with reflections on the possible implementation of the programme and an outlook on the further transfer of the project knowledge into practice. The project shows that understanding the internationalisation of curricula as an empowering process that fosters collaboration between universities and society may be a valuable starting point to develop further international and sustainability-oriented curricula.
2016
Starting with the results of a needs analysis, we initiated a multi-stakeholder process with five workshops in three European countries to develop modules for a joint European master program on Sustainability-driven Entrepreneurship. This process was supported by literature reviews concerning relevant content fields and adequate teaching and learning approaches. The master program will be explicitly competence-, not only knowledge-oriented. Therefore, we were looking for teaching and learning methods that foster sustainability and entrepreneurial competencies like anticipatory thinking, creativity, opportunity-detection, strategic action competence and interpersonal, communication skills. As entrepreneurs, students will address complex real-world sustainability problems within a business setting. The results are now published in this report that outlines the master program concerning content, methods and a possible course structure.
2017
The transformation of current economic systems towards sustainable development requires innovative sustainability-driven enterprises with competent owners, managers and staff members. These people should see sustainable development as of primary value and as an opportunity for strategic renewal of their enterprise as well as being important to society in general. Higher education for sustainability-driven entrepreneurship aims at developing the individual competencies which are required in this context. For creating learning settings in which these competencies can be developed, particular teaching-learning approaches and methods are needed. To date, there is no comprehensive literature review dealing with teaching-learning approaches and methods of higher education for sustainability-driven entrepreneurship. Against this backdrop, a systematic literature review has been carried out to examine the state of the art concerning teaching-learning approaches and methods for sustainability-driven entrepreneurship in higher education. The results form a basis for further structuring the debate on approaches and methods of teaching and learning related to higher education for sustainability-driven entrepreneurship and for identifying future research needs in this area.
Transformational Sustainability Entrepreneurship: Encouraging Students to Become Real Change Agents
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Entrepreneurial Education needs to be transformed. Our seminar called Transformational Sustainability Entrepreneurship aims at meeting this need by guiding students to become change agents for tackling the grand societal challenges of our time. In this chapter, we explain the five fundamental aspects in which this seminar is designed for students’ transformational learning experience. The seminar itself is divided into three phases: Understanding, Creative Thinking, and Pitching with an overarching reflection process. We introduce the concept, which we have been using for four years at two different universities, for others to apply and use in their own teaching activities.
2018
Integrating Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in higher education curricula requires innovative ideas and approaches how to combine educational, sustainability and disciplinary knowledge, skills, experiences, and motivations. Curriculum developers are challenged to be open to new concepts in their discipline regarding what should be taught and how it can be taught to facilitate learning processes to prepare students for shaping a sustainable future. The European project ‘Competencies for A Sustainable socio-Economic development’ (CASE) follows a participatory, inter- and transdisciplinary approach to design a Master’s program on sustainability-driven entrepreneurship. This study presents an analysis of the social learning process that has taken place in the interdisciplinary, intercultural CASE team during the participatory development process of the new Master’s program. The methodological design of the study is based on qualitative, participative evaluation research. The process of learning is discussed based on how the group reflected on and developed their “action theories” on how to design a supportive learning environment in which a Master’s program with innovative scopes and goals can be created. The findings highlight the importance of sharing and processing the experiences, mental models and interpretations concerning concepts, ideas, perspectives and new input within the group. This seems crucial for developing the capacity of the group to bring together diverse knowledge and perspectives for innovative, feasible solutions and ideas as well as to cooperate and collaborate effectively as a team. The implications of a culture of dialogue, participation and learning in diverse teams as important principles for developing innovative ESD-based curricula in different disciplines are discussed. It is emphasized that not only students, but also curriculum developers have to acquire the corresponding ESD-related competencies.
A New Course on Sustainable Entrepreneurship
2008
Entrepreneurship typically focuses on identifying opportunities for creating value for customers, ultimately yielding a profit for the founders and investors. Entrepreneurship courses and texts share this focus. Sustainability entrepreneurship takes a slightly different perspective, however, by emphasizing the additional goal of promoting sustainable living, in terms of social equity and environmental improvement. From an entrepreneurial perspective, such an emphasis presents opportunities in the form of innovative products, services, and production processes that alleviate social or environmental conditions, make more efficient use of energy and natural resources, and harness renewable resources that save costs, lower risks, and are less harmful to society in the long- run. At present, there is no suitable text on the subject. This paper proposes a framework, learning objectives, course outline, and content for a "Sustainability Entrepreneurship" course for graduate and u...
The International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 2019
This paper explores the work performance of sustainability-driven entrepreneurs in order to be able to provide better learning settings in higher education for sustainability-driven entrepreneurship. Sustainability-driven entrepreneurs are actors who initiate and successfully implement sustainable innovations in pursuit of social and ecological objectives in addition to economic ones as the basis of their organisational strategy. Sustainability-driven entrepreneurship suggests an action-oriented process view and emphasizes the nexus of individuals and opportunities. This paper argues that competencies but also deeper levels of knowledge regarding values and worldviews are key dimensions constituting sustainability-driven entrepreneurship. For the implementation of sustainable action strategies, key competencies but also opportunities are essential for enabling work performance. For this qualitative-explorative study, forty-eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with entrepreneurs and managers from enterprises and non-profit organisations pursuing sustainable strategies and activities in their economic ventures in five European regions: Vienna, Gothenburg, Brno, Bolzano and Vechta. The findings have a number of implications for study programmes in higher education institutions aiming at developing student competencies, deeper levels of knowledge regarding values and worldviews, and fostering performance for sustainability-driven entrepreneurship.
Fostering Sustainable Development and Entrepreneurship: The New Role of University
Management Dynamics in the Knowledge Economy, 2017
Sustainable development is a global objective to overcome the economic, environment and society crises worldwide. The research aims are twofold: (i) Explores the proactive and dynamic model of the university's education system, focusing on the new role played by the School of Economics in the promotion of economic, social and environmental sustainability, and how this goes beyond, in stimulating bottom-up social entrepreneurship ideas through students engagement; (ii) Provides a descriptive analysis of innovative laboratories modules, by studying and mapping the best project proposals initiated by the student. Finally, it presents a case study analysis on waste management (UniRecycling) project, scaling up objectives, stakeholder mapping, activities and the expected results. The findings show the new role played by School of Economics, along with other partner institutions, in supporting the student's engagement in practice-oriented workshops that enable the transfer of knowledge, skills, and self-development. The implications of the research to be developed show that a dynamic bottom-up model of learning and dissemination of sustainable and entrepreneurial should aim to sensitise students to be active and create project ideas for social and environmental entrepreneurship and build and strengthen the local territorial networks, to contribute to the creation of a system of services attentive to responsible and sustainable entrepreneurial development.
An objective of the European Unionís Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan is to address high levels of youth unemployment in Europe by promoting entrepreneurship. Implementing entrepreneurship education in schools, colleges and universities is one of three strategic interventions proposed by the Action Plan. Sustainable entrepreneurship is a recognised branch of the wider field of entrepreneurship and the literature on sustainable entrepreneurship sees it as a means of addressing some of the sustainability challenges of the 21 st century. This article compares the pedagogical approaches and the competences of ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) with those of entrepreneurship education to identify how ESD might influence entrepreneurship education in order to develop entrepreneurs that contribute to a sustainable future. This comparison is placed in the context of the broader debate on the need to transform the dominant neo-liberal economic systems as part of the precondition fo...