Transforming Business Education: It’s about Time: a Systems Perspective on Incorporating Climate Change, Sustainability, and the Care for Our Common Future

Abstract

In this paper we define the nature of the climate change problem and we analyze the task of getting human society to act quickly enough and appropriately to solve this global crisis. We show how our current citizen mental models keep us locked into fossil fuels and prevent us from acting. We demonstrate how simple system dynamics models provide the necessary insight, expand the boundaries of our mental models, and give us the understanding to redesign how our business and governing systems work. We suggest transforming business education using these insights as the key to appropriate climate change action and setting us on the road to a prosperous and sustainable future.

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Keywords

Climate change, sustainability, system dynamics, short-termism