Sustainable MBA

The traditional MBA degree (Masters in Business Administration) requires coursework and other study of business from a primarily financial standpoint, with some attention to management of people, to conventional economic theory, and to business ethics. A sustainable MBA program includes these subjects, and also study of managing for environmental and social sustainability. These programs are sometimes called "green MBAs".





== Conceptual foundation ==

Sustainability in these programs is generally defined to include economic, environmental, and social sustainability, collectively known as the Triple Bottom Line. For each of these domains, sustainability means that it will be possible to continue through the foreseeable future, at least, without major breakdowns, such as



Economic: running out of oil or other natural resources and having nothing to replace them on the scale required

Environmental: loss of habitat, species, and whole ecologies; global warming

Social: overpopulation beyond the carrying capacity of the earth; consequences of eliminating poverty within the current economic model

The environmental and social justice movements are sources for many of the issues, arguments, and research on sustainability, but the idea has firm roots in classical economics.



Externalities: economically significant effects of manufacturing and trade on those who are not part of the industry or market in question. The classic example of a negative externality is pollution, while the largest current issue is global warming. The literature has identified many others, and many positive externalities, and has proposed many controversial measures to improve the balance.

Natural resources: conventional accounting, including national accounts, treats extraction of finite natural resources as income, priced at the cost of extraction, and not as depletion of non-renewable natural capital. The resources of nature come to us for free.