In this paper we argue that our current value-systems contributing to unsustainable social practices and the dominant death-denying culture have a close relationship to each other. The ways society ...offers to alleviate the anxiety of death are avoidance and distraction especially through consumption. Consumption in this regard aims to raise individual self-esteem and to strengthen the current version of reality. The question we address in this paper is how we can move from this unsustainable cultural pattern to more death-aware and sustainable one. This question is pertinent because experimental evidence shows that a direct confrontation with death often leads to fundamental and long-lasting behavioural and value changes. These changes are in line with those emphasised by ecological economics as the possible basis for sustainable societies. The first section of the paper discusses the social theoretical background of the topic arguing that the emphasis we put on individual, bounded self leads to a heightened sense of death anxiety. The second section discusses on the one hand Terror Management Theory, and on the other the alternative but related Transcendence Management Theory with their different emphasis on ways of coping with death anxiety. The following section provides a theoretical model integrating these two strands of research and interpreting their main conclusions at a social level. This framework is the main contribution of the paper since it not only captures the social dynamics of these different ways of coping but also offers possible ways to move towards a more death-aware and sustainable social arrangement.
•Implications of terror management & transcendence management theory revisited and discussed for sustainability transitions.•Death denial maintain the impetus of the dominant consumer society seriously hindering sustainability transitions.•A model is offered on how a more death aware culture can lead to more sustainability.
The grand challenges of our times are seriously interlinked: ecological crises cannot be tackled separately from social problems. In the strong sustainability approach, a good life for all must be ...achieved within ecological boundaries. To respect the planetary boundaries, it is required to provide critiques for the current economic, social and political order and suggest concrete actions that may lead to strong sustainability transformation. Business schools must address these challenges and provide solutions through educational content and innovative teaching methods. In this article, we argue that participatory education is the appropriate tool to teach strong sustainability in business schools. Building on Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy and Gert Biesta’s participatory education theories, we developed a theoretical framework to understand how these theories can strengthen strong sustainability education. Using the analytical framework, we explore the risks of participatory education in our Degrowth course and bring empirical examples of its impacts on students by analysing the reflection articles of 37 students. According to our findings, this particular type of education creates both positive emotions, like enjoyment and enthusiasm, and negative ones, like anxiety and helplessness.
The practice of participation has gained prominence in several disciplines recently. The present study discusses how participation meets system dynamics, a particular modelling method, which looks at ...complex systems from an endogenous viewpoint. System dynamics has always oriented itself towards practical problems and engaged with clients actively. This tradition is represented in contemporary participatory methods. We can underpin the involvement of stakeholders in a number of ways: with normative arguments (participation is a democratic right), substantive (involvement produces better knowledge), instrumental (participation improves the chance of success), and transformative ones (improvement of social capital). We discuss three schools of participatory system dynamics. First, group model building, a professional and practical method. Next, participatory system dynamics modelling, which is rooted in public policy decisions and aims to involve stakeholders actively. Finally, community‐based system dynamics aims for the empowerment of communities, with long‐term deep commitment on the part of the researcher.
•The concept of more sustainable marketing communications emerges from a backcasting project.•The project shows that the inner drives of backcasting can lead to sustainable mind-sets without framing ...around these issues.•The inner drives of backcasting are utopian thinking; psychological safety; and intellectual independence.
In 2018 a marketing communications firm decided to do a participatory backcasting project involving all their local members of staff to see what the future might bring in marketing communications. The exercise led to a unique knowledge accumulation process that has substantial research relevance. Unintentionally, this backcasting revolved around the role of marketing communications in transforming business to an ecologically sustainable and socially just modus operandi. While presenting the results of this action research, on the one hand this paper aims to provide inputs to reorienting marketing communications from its undignified status in sustainability efforts to something that supports sustainability transitions in society. On the other hand, it aims to contribute to the methodological discourses on backcasting. While it has been long established that backcasting is an adequate tool to address sustainability issues, this project suggests that participatory backcasting as a methodological framework has its own inner drives that lead to responsible and sustainable mind-sets even without such framings. These inner drives may have to do with the nature of utopian thinking, and the psychological safety and intellectual independence it provides.
Recent years have brought dramatic changes in the social and economic world. This shows that futures are both unpredictable and uncertain, as well as important points of reference. This is also true ...for business schools. Therefore, this paper aims to understand how business schools construct the term future and what they claim to do about it in terms of their agency. Our findings are based on discourse analysis of the external communication of 100 business schools globally. Through the examination we identified 6 agency frames, namely (a) preparing, (b) shaping, (c) responsibility, (d) exploring, (e) personal futures, (f) adapting.
In this paper, we investigate how highly ranked business schools construct their legitimacy claims by analysing their online organisational communication. We argue that in the case of higher ...education institutions in general, and business schools in particular, the discursive formation of these legitimacy claims is strongly connected to the future. Consequently, we utilise corpus-based discourse analysis of highly ranked business schools’ website communication by focusing on sentences containing the expression ‘future’. At first, we analysed the future-related language use to reveal the general future picture in the corpus. Furthermore, by combining qualitative and quantitative textual data, we identified six typical agency frames (i.e. preparing, shaping, adjusting, exploring, personal future, responsibility) about the future. By examining the co-occurrence of these frames, we were able to identify different discursive strategies. As we connected our findings to general societal phenomena we could interpret why and how business schools utilise these discursive strategies to (re)create and maintain their legitimacy.
Present and future business leaders might be amongst the most important actors in initiating and managing a transition towards a sustainable economy and society in general. Preparing them for such a ...role has to be a central task of higher education institutions, especially business schools. Our paper maps how business schools frame sustainability in relation to probable and possible futures by examining the external online communication of the TOP100 business schools. Close to half of these institutions do not address sustainability in their education-related online communication, while the other half emphasize its economic dimension almost exclusively. We found little proof in their education-related communication that business schools attempt to stray from the path of the status quo, accordingly they continue to strengthen a neo-liberal worldview, only incorporating those aspects of sustainability which are compatible with this perspective. We also have to acknowledge, however, that business schools are ‘open institutions’ attempting to meet the expectations of their stakeholders. This may result in numerous and even conflicting goals. Choosing only a few of them as a communicative focus, (e.g., promoting individual strategies for career enhancement), wrings out the larger organisational and social issues like sustainability in its holistic sense.
•Business schools are key in initiating transitions towards a sustainable future.•Half of top business schools do not deal with sustainability in their communication.•Those schools that do, emphasize its economic dimension almost exclusively.•Economic sustainability is compatible with a neo-liberal worldview.
Recently, several expectations have been raised towards higher education institutions (HEIs). These expectations are about the roles HEIs should play and responsibilities they should have in society. ...This article focuses on three different responses. The first section touches upon the organisational template of the entrepreneurial university concerning the economic role of HEIs. Secondly, issues of teaching and present HEIs' attempts to respond to the expectations in relation to human value creation are discussed. Thirdly, social engagement and open science is investigated as a response to the question of societal value creation. Finally, in connection with these topics, the article touches upon the possible consequences of organisational homogeneity and heterogeneity to HE in general.
This paper explores the impacts of adolescents' screen time, learning outcomes and parental performance in relation to different mediation strategies. These issues are addressed through the analysis ...of a representative survey carried out with 1000 families in Hungary in 2017. Within this research, 12–16‐year‐old teenagers and their parents were asked about their experiences and perceptions of mediation. Four main parental strategies can be identified: balancing mediation, restriction, permission and ad hoc mediation. The significance of parental performance in the analyses indicates that parental mediation forms part of the contemporary parenting skillset and correlates with perceptions of children's screen time and subjective quality of parenting.
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