Business school is climate denial in a suit

Image copyright Collectif HEPC

Today, there are over 13,000 business schools around the world. These institutions shape the minds and values of future business leaders, bureaucrats, managers, and marketing executives. But what they’re teaching is dangerously out of touch with the realities of our time.

As a graduate of HEC Montréal, one of Canada’s top business schools, I can testify firsthand: the content taught in these schools is mostly disconnected from the ecological and social crises we are facing — and from the systemic causes behind them. Even worse, the economic policies and corporate strategies promoted in business schools often go directly against the actions recommended by climate experts.

Take Chapter 5 of the IPCC report on climate change mitigation, which focuses on demand, services, and the social aspects of reducing emissions. The IPCC stresses the importance of sufficiency — measures that aim to reduce demand for energy, materials, land, and water, while ensuring well-being for all within the limits of our planet. However, business schools train students in accounting, logistics, taxation, microeconomics, marketing, financial engineering in a way that is geared toward maximizing corporate profits and boosting production.

And boosting production, of course, means boosting extraction and consumption of resources, therefore boosting demand for energy, materials, land, and water — the very opposite of what our planetary situation demands.

To give a concrete example, one required course in the international business specialization at HEC Montréal teaches the OLI model by economist John Dunning. The OLI framework explains why firms engage in foreign direct investment:

• O for Ownership advantages — firms exploit resources they alone control (like technologies, brands, or patents) abroad to maximize profits.

• L for Location advantages — they seek out locations that offer lower costs or abundant natural resources.

• I for Internalization advantages — they choose to keep operations in-house rather than outsourcing, to maintain control.

This model is deeply problematic. The "O" pushes firms to expand the use of their fixed assets (like technology or branding) across multiple markets, which in turn encourages them to produce more and to maximize profits and recoup those investment costs. The "L" incentivizes companies to move industrial or extractive activities to countries with weak environmental and labour standards. And the "I" leads them to build even more infrastructure and operations abroad, increasing their material and organizational complexity — which again requires more production to cover overhead costs. A mining giant like Glencore illustrates this logic well: it leverages proprietary extraction technologies and brand dominance (Ownership), targets countries with lax environmental regulations and rich mineral deposits (Location), and internalizes operations from extraction to export to retain control (Internalization) — all of which compels the company to continuously extract and sell more raw materials to justify and sustain its global investments.

This way of thinking is incompatible with a livable future because it leaves us — and especially companies — unable to control or limit the pace of production, locking us into a cycle of endless growth.

Business schools must radically transform their pedagogies. And students do agree with this. In fact, based on a survey we conducted with over 300 students, the vast majority of HEC Montréal students — 78% — support a deliberate reduction in production and consumption in developed countries as a response to the ecological emergency.

It’s no longer enough to sprinkle a few sustainability courses into an otherwise growth-oriented curriculum. We must fundamentally rethink business education to align with the urgent need for strong social and ecological sustainability. New pedagogical and research approaches are necessary to train a new generation of managers, owners and researchers capable of leading the way toward reduced production and consumption — not expanding it. Business schools that cultivate pluralistic economics — an approach that draws on multiple economic paradigms rather than clinging to a single neoclassical lens — show how richer, more impactful research can emerge.

Disciplines like economics, accounting, marketing, strategy, and finance must be reimagined to serve a post-growth world — where success means meeting human needs within planetary boundaries. This should mean teaching ecological economics instead of neoclassical models, accounting that tracks care and environmental regeneration (not just profits), (de)marketing that promotes sufficiency over consumption, and sufficiency business strategies rooted in cooperation, repair, and resilience rather than expansion.

This means leaving behind models like OLI and embracing new ones that reflect values of ecological balance, social justice, and economic sufficiency. One alternative could be a C-R-D model — Commons, Relocalization, Dissemination — which promotes cooperation, local resilience, and open knowledge sharing over competition, accumulation, and expansion.

• C – Commons: Businesses are based on collectively managed shared resources, fostering democratic governance and the reproduction of life, not private accumulation.

• R – Relocalization: They are rooted in the ecological and social capacities of their territories, favoring short supply chains, local resilience, and proximity-based solidarity.

• D – Dissemination: Rather than growing or dominating markets, they freely share knowledge and practices to encourage autonomous replication, social learning, and cultural transformation — without seeking organizational expansion.

To make these principles tangible in the classroom, one course at a business school could invite students to design a business plan for a local repair and sharing cooperative — a neighborhood hub where community members can borrow tools, repair items, and exchange skills. By grounding the business plan in the Commons (C) approach, students would design the enterprise as a community cooperative with a governance structure in which local members co-own and co-manage the organization, making decisions democratically — including how profits are reinvested in the community or the hub itself. From a Relocalization (R) perspective, students could assess local needs and resources: What tools or repair services are most in demand? What underused spaces could be repurposed for the hub? They could explore partnerships with municipal repair cafés, libraries, or makerspaces, and emphasize short supply chains, reuse, and circular economy principles. In terms of Dissemination (D), the business model would rely on open-source documentation — such as guides on how to start a similar hub — and a strategy to encourage replication in other neighborhoods, municipalities and regions. This would not be done through franchising or expansion, but by offering toolkits, mentoring, and peer-to-peer learning networks, all without profit-driven motives.

This is not a lonely call in the wilderness. Across the world, business schools are beginning to shift. In France, HEC Paris, KEDGE Business school and ESC Clermont Business School have all started to rethink their programs in light of the Anthropocene and the need for strong sustainability. Beyond business schools, initiatives like Rethinking Economics — a global network of students and organizers advocating for a new way of teaching and practising economics — are challenging the dominance of neoclassical thinking and pushing for pluralistic, socially relevant economic education. It is a start.

It’s time all 13,000 business schools follow suit. The stakes are too high to keep producing leaders for an economic model that is destroying the foundations of life on Earth.