Does an Environmental Course in the Business School Make a Difference?

Abstract

The business community increasingly recognizes the importance of environmental factors in business operations and decisionmaking and wants to bring traditional management tools and problem-solving methods to decisions involving the environment. Business schools have until recently done relatively little to address environmental issues, and many do so with a single elective course in environmental management. The author tested 88 MBA students both before and after a 10-week environmental management course, using an environmental attitude and knowledge scale developed by Maloney, Ward, and Braucht (1975). He found that students were more environmentally knowledgeable, expressed greater concern about the environment, and were more action oriented after the course than before the course, indicating that critically important attitudinal as well as behavioral change does result from a single course.