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B usiness schools have lost their way . Students are schooled in a system that, having raised the standard of living for millions of people over centuries, is now facing systemic failures in both the environmental and social domains—failures that market forces cause and, as presently structured, cannot address.

As a result, newly minted MBAs entering the business world have learned a good number of outmoded, even discredited ideas , and they graduate ill-equipped to face the challenges of management in a world where business must be an integral player in solving humanity’s biggest problems.

Government policies can spur the market and individual choices can feed it. But with its extraordinary powers of ideation, production, and distribution, business is best positioned to bring the change we need at the scale to which we need it. Without leaders who are willing to challenge norms and conceive of a new vision for the corporation, business on its own will stick with the status quo.

And that’s where business education needs to come in, creating tomorrow’s business leaders with the tools, knowledge, and, importantly, judgment and wisdom to run successful businesses and create value for society. Based on over 30 years of research and teaching on business and its impact on the environment and society, here is my assessment of what needs to change, along with six specific recommendations for business education institutions to implement these changes.

Where business education falls short

Students who want to make a difference in the world are increasingly turning to schools of business and bringing with them a desire to explore a new sense of the economic, social, and environmental purpose of the corporation and their role as leaders. I also see a new spirit of activism on campuses as students agitate for action to address both climate change and inequality. But what is also clear is that they are feeling underserved.

Putting voice to this concern, M.I.T. Sloan School MBA student John Benjamin argued in a searing New Republic article that the business curriculum stifles discussion of the common good while emphasizing the overriding—and unquestioned—objective of profit maximization.

“Students are schooled in a system that, having raised the standard of living for millions of people over centuries, is now facing systemic failures in both the environmental and social domains—failures that market forces cause and, as presently structured, cannot address.”

Some business schools are taking steps to address climate change in their curricula . But they are looking only at the win-win rubric and how business can capture a share of economic gains from shifting to a green economy (the UN estimates this at $26 trillion through 2030) while failing to prepare MBAs to make difficult decisions that fit within the win-lose rubric.

For example, schools should be preparing business students for the “wicked” challenges they will face, such as how to transition out of fossil fuels in a way that is both just and orderly, or how to build resilient and profitable businesses without promoting mindless overconsumption.

Producing the graduates society needs: 6 actions for business schools

Developing students into well-rounded leaders requires a set of aspirational principles that guide how a school selects and socializes its enrollees; structures the curriculum and pedagogy by which students are molded; chooses the role models to elevate as exemplars of the principles they seek to reproduce; and guides the research and rewards of its faculty. Business school leaders may have the most impact advocating for and actively implementing the following six strategies.

1. Reexamine the purpose of the corporation

The era of strict adherence to shareholder primacy is coming to an end. What will replace it? Where do customers, employees, the environment, or broader society fit into the priorities of the twenty-first–century firm?

Business professor and management consultant Peter Drucker once offered the view that “there is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.” Profits are one metric of how well the company performs this purpose, but ultimately, Drucker asserts , the definition of the customer goes much further: “the business enterprise . . . exists for the sake of the contribution which it makes to the welfare of society as a whole.”

The Business Roundtable, World Economic Forum, and Black Rock have entered the debate by proposing a redefinition of shareholder purpose that follows similar lines. While these are aspirational statements and some question their effectiveness , the business world is asking new questions and business schools should join the debate in both their research and their teaching.

2. Offer more curriculum coverage of the role of government

Government is the domain in which the rules of the market are set and enforced, yet the business curriculum gives it—as well as, conversely, the proper role of business in policymaking—far too little coverage. Few business schools offer courses on government influence in general, particularly lobbying, and even fewer (if any) approach these topics as a constructive and transparent activity to serve the public good.

Advocating for a new idea of corporate political responsibility, Lyons et al. point out that corporations today wield significant power and influence within the political process. If that power is not turned toward solving our great challenges, governments will be hamstrung in their ability to steer the market.

Rather than teaching the stale binary that dominates public discourse—more versus less government—business schools should examine a more balanced role of government, in which it works with the market to guide its productive energies toward socially desirable ends. This emerging focus can already be seen in the Inflation Reduction Act , and the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act .

3. Teach new, innovative economic metrics and models that spur better incentives

Some of the metrics used for economic calculations can lead to actions that worsen our social and environmental problems. For example, economic valuation techniques like discounted cash flow are anchored in ideas that “ favor short-term gains at the expense of future generations .” In another example, gross domestic product (GDP) measures national health as the sum of the value of goods and services produced over a given time period, regardless of whether they are good or bad for society . New metrics could include the value of wealth to be passed on to the next generation, economic inequality, non-remunerated work (such as child rearing), and resource depletion and environmental degradation.

“If students are to understand and address twenty-first–century problems, they must be taught to think in systems and be able to understand complex, multi-faceted business enterprises through courses like system dynamics modeling, data analytics, and complex decision-sciences.”

Economists Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz developed a new model for measuring GDP , adding to the growing list of alternative metrics for considering national health, such as the Genuine Progress Indicator, UN Human Development Index, UN Inclusive Wealth Report, Happy Planet Index (New Economic Forum), Food Sustainability Index (Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition), Ecological Footprint (Global Footprint Network), and Gross National Happiness (Bhutan), just to name a few.

Business schools should expose students to the weaknesses in existing metrics and discuss alternatives, not just in isolated electives, but in the required courses in finance and economics.

4. Think in systems

Far too much attention in business education is placed on the tools of management—such as strategy, accounting, finance, and operations in “the core”—and not enough attention is devoted to educating students on how, where, and why they will deploy those tools and how they fit together.

Systems thinking and modeling—seeing connections between parts and understanding how to intervene among them —is a critical skill for business leaders to reduce unwanted failures and to promote valued outcomes for business and society, helping us solve the problems we face, notably climate change and inequality.

If students are to understand and address twenty-first–century problems, they must be taught to think in systems and be able to understand complex, multi-faceted business enterprises through courses like system dynamics modeling, data analytics, and complex decision-sciences. Such courses teach students how to put together the elements of business into a cohesive whole.

5. Integrate more physical, social, and political sciences into the curriculum

How do we expand business education to include the full range of issues with which corporate executives must engage, particularly as corporations become increasingly enmeshed on social and political debates in our society? Meeting commitments to lower carbon dioxide emissions, for example, requires understanding how business decisions affect the natural environment through resource extraction, supply chains, manufacturing, consumption, and disposal.

Ultimately, a well-rounded business student should learn not only the systems of the business, but also the social, economic, political, and environmental systems in which they operate. They should, for example, be able to structure a deal to install a renewable energy project, understand the financing necessary, the regulatory programs that make it possible, and the policies that would make it work even better. Students must be aware of the technological hurdles that are on the horizon, the social reasons why some communities oppose them, and how to pull all these pieces together to be successful.

Such learning could be provided as standalone courses or, better, be integrated into the existing curriculum to help students see connections. We can see some business schools moving in this direction by offering science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs and majors—like the Tauber Institute for Global Operations has done.

6. Train stewards of the market

How do we develop a new kind of leader, one focused on mastering the domains of commerce while also recognizing that they have an interest and responsibility in maintaining the integrity, stability, and equity of the system in which they practice that craft?

“Ultimately, a well-rounded business student should learn not only the systems of the business, but also the social, economic, political, and environmental systems in which they operate.”

To this end, we can no longer take the form and function of capitalism as unquestioned. Instead, business and commerce should be taught holistically, offering students a critical understanding of the various structures of capitalism, the underlying models on which they are based, how they have evolved into the form we know today, where they have failed, what forms they might take in the future, and how to use their role as business leaders to effect constructive change .

This type of education could begin with the works of Adam Smith, Karl Polanyi, Joseph Schumpeter, and Karl Marx and continue to the present with the works of Thomas Piketty, Mariana Mazzucato, and Stephanie Kelton. Many people are reexamining capitalism and working to consider a variant that will replace shareholder capitalism. Business schools must bring our research and our students into that conversation.

Management as a calling: moving beyond the status quo

If business is to fully engage with the problems of climate change, environmental degradation, and social and economic inequality that plague and destabilize our world, we must alter the training grounds for tomorrow’s business leaders.

Our schools must teach students about the essentials of business management. But we must also teach them to responsibly wield the power that they may someday possess to shape and lead our society. They should be guided to look deep inside themselves to consider management as a calling—one that moves away from the simple pursuit of a career for personal gain and toward a vocation that is based on a higher set of values about leading commerce and serving society .

More than a dozen years ago, Rakesh Khurana wrote that it is time to rejuvenate the intellectual and moral training of future business leaders and cultivate courageous leaders who are willing to step forward and guide business, the market, and capitalism through the challenges of the twenty-first century. It’s now past time.

Andrew J. Hoffman is the Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business and the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. He is spending the 2023–2024 academic year as a visiting fellow with the Institute for Business in Global Society at Harvard Business School.

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