Can Stanford GSB Stay #1 Without Stepping Up its Climate Game?
The GSB typically places in the top five among MBA program rankings. It fares much less well in its climate ambitions. The 2023 Financial Times MBA ranking, which includes net zero targets and teaching on ESG issues as a parameter, ranks the GSB in the bottom half for its climate footprint.
We need to do better.
The effects of climate change are causing significant transformations within existing organizations, and business schools have a crucial role to play in preparing students for these changes. Recent articles in Harvard Business Review and the Financial Times emphasize that business schools are uniquely positioned to address climate change. They possess extensive knowledge in organizational and industry transformation, are affiliated with institutions at the forefront of climate research, and equip business students with highly relevant skills to help solve various aspects of the climate crisis.
In the words of Katherine Garlinghouse (MSx ‘21), failing to address such issues is like “not teaching globalization in the 80s and 90s”. This is a global call for action. Industry-leaders such as Microsoft need business leaders to lead the change in systems, products, and processes. According to Linkedin’s green job report, the fastest-growing green job is that of a ‘‘sustainability manager.” Without a strong understanding of the intersection of climate and business, GSB graduates may miss out on the highly sought-after skills that employers increasingly demand.
Business and sustainability are not separate disciplines
Stanford University has been actively integrating climate in its educational principles. The university recently opened the new Doerr School of Sustainability — Stanford’s first new school in 70 years — to tackle urgent climate and sustainability challenges. Furthermore, Stanford has introduced a new funding award for ‘Ecopreneurship’, which provides stipends for entrepreneurs focused on solving environmental issues. And under the direction of Aurora Winslade, Director of Sustainability at Stanford, the university is actively working on a Climate Action Plan to decarbonize Stanford as an institution.
But we need more here at home, at the GSB to be up-skilled as future business leaders. Treating sustainability education as a separate silo outside the business school implies that sustainability is a supplementary discipline that one may choose to pursue if interested. This no longer reflects the realities of a business career in which all of us will be asked to deal with climate-related and other sustainability issues.
Whilst the Doerr School is exciting for those of us who want to build careers in the energy transition, its mandate is not to teach us how to adequately address business challenges. Integrating the climate toolkit into finance, operations, investments, accounting, strategy, and human resources is and should be the responsibility of the business school, as Dean Arun Majumdar of the Doerr school recently confirmed in a discussion with students.
Competition: other business schools are rapidly taking responsibility
Meanwhile, other business schools are taking swift action to adapt their curriculum to this new reality.
- Harvard Business School is adding climate cases to the core curriculum, including a recent new case by George Serafeim, who teaches the oversubscribed “Investing for Climate Change”. HBS is also rolling out a two-day course that explores the purpose of the firm.
- Eight leading European business schools created the “Business Schools For Climate Leadership” partnership to take coordinated action in preparing the future leaders.
- UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business created an Office of Sustainability and Climate Change to focus on curriculum, research and student programming.
Stanford is slowly developing a competitive vulnerability. If the GSB truly wants to give its students the tools to change lives, change organizations and ultimately change the world, it needs to make its programs more compelling on climate, a topic that will shape the business world for the coming decades.
What can the GSB do to stay ahead of the ‘wave’?
Success for GSB, its students, and the environment means the adoption of more climate-forward processes in businesses. Based on our two-year experience at the GSB, we believe the following actions would better prepare us, as students, to deal with the future challenges of climate change in business.
=> The core curriculum should be revised to include lessons on the impact of climate change on business principles. The GSB should support faculty in conducting research and creating cases that cover topics such as:
=> The GSB’s elective programming should include courses on system dynamics and change to address the interdisciplinary challenges presented by the climate crisis. By analyzing both failed and successful case studies, students can learn how policies, laws, and interdependencies will influence business models, and how businesses can take a leading role in driving change within a system.
=> Climate classes at GSB should come in levels: plenty of opportunities to teach students the basics of climate in business, supplemented with high quality classes for those with prior knowledge. The deepening, more advanced classes in climate business are missing at Stanford generally.
=> More coordination between the Doerr School of Sustainability and the GSB is necessary beyond those who have committed to the additional E-IPER program. Joint entrepreneurship classes, speaker events, and faculty research could be effective ways to lay the foundation. The challenges of climate change within businesses will need interdisciplinary teams.
=> Students should be pushed to engage in experiential learning opportunities to explore how various organizations approach collaboration and innovation for change, including but not limited to government agencies, think tanks, and non-profit organizations.
=> The GSB community should also learn from global action and incorporate it into teaching. GSB cases and discussions tend to be US focused. While the US has taken steps such as releasing subsidies through the Inflation Reduction Act, Europe has been more successful in reducing its emissions for many years through a regulatory framework, which includes a carbon taxation mechanism. As a student body, we must look beyond Silicon Valley’s borders to find solutions that can create lasting change.
As Kate Raworth has argued with her concept of the ‘doughnut economy’, businesses must optimize for both human needs and planetary boundaries. We need to learn how our planetary boundaries influence the way of thinking about and conducting business. While the student body has taken steps to educate each other by inviting speakers, taking cross-disciplinary classes, conducting research projects, and pushing professors, it is time to institutionalize this approach. We need to equip the students with the tools of tomorrow to solve the problems of today. We need Stanford-level change to prepare us for the system changes the world faces in the climate crisis. A future-proof MBA program prepares us for these challenges; and if Stanford manages to do that, they are on track to retain their #1 ranking.
Author’s note: Whilst climate change is the key focus of this piece, we believe that the proposed solutions are also relevant to other important business topics, specifically DEI.
Further reading: Lola Damski’s 2020 Non-disclosure article
Editor: Anne-Sophie Martin
