Reshaping the Operations and Supply Chain Management Core Class Curriculum to Include Business Sustainability

Madeleine Pullman; Dwight E. Collins

Madeleine Pullman

Portland State University, USA

Dwight E. Collins

Presidio Graduate School, USA

Volume 7: 2013, pp. 17-48; ABSTRACT

Paralleling the business community, business schools increasingly face pressure from their various stakeholders to address sustainability issues. While sustainability can be delivered as a stand-alone business course, we assert that sustainability topics are a natural fit for the core operations and supply chain management course. Their experience in designing curricula for MBA programs reveals how many traditional and emerging topics in the field offer a natural context in which to address sustainability issues. With the evolution of Operations Management concepts toward systems frameworks such as lean, closed loop supply chains, supplier scorecards, and synergistic networks of production, there is a progression toward including social and environmental perspectives. While many academics know these concepts, they struggle to integrate the sustainability perspective in the classroom. This paper attempts to fill this gap by providing ideas, cases, and article suggestions that are applicable to the core operations and supply chain management classes in an MBA curriculum.

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