Matching International Business Teaching with the UN Sustainable Development Goals: Introducing Bi-directional Reflective Learning

Abstract

ABSTRACT Transboundary challenges such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, energy transformation and the Covid-19 pandemic put vast pressures on generating solutions. They also call for updated teaching providing the required capabilities for international business (IB) and -entrepreneurship (IE) students. This paper presents a teaching initiative supporting master’s students to develop an overview of such contemporary and timely challenges and global concerns. The course, developed jointly by two universities and first administered in 2020 at LUT University, combines economic, social, and environmental sustainability aspects with managerial and entrepreneurial issues on IB, triggering the students to rethink and critically address ways forward. Students develop skills and competences to tackle complex real-life problems in collaboration with others, facilitating their entrepreneurial, global mind-set and sensitivity to cultural issues in IB. Thus, the presented teaching approach and course initiative contributes to theory and practice of teaching IB, by presenting how key challenges in contemporary IB can be incorporated in international business education of universities.