Perceptions of marketing teachers regarding sustainability in marketing education: a case study in Canada

Abstract

Broadly, the concept of sustainability provides directions for sustainable development in the global context whereas sustainability education is referred to as a systemic response to sustainability issues (Holdsworth & Thomas, 2020). In higher education, business schools train business leaders who will in turn operate much of the business sector. Business schools therefore have economic, social and environmental impacts on societies through their training programs. Particularly, marketing is one major stream of business education that trains marketers for the business sector. Given the sustainability focus that many universities have adopted (Kemper et al., 2020a), university teachers play important roles in inculcating sustainability principles of in students. However, in the context of marketing education, there is little research on how university teachers perceive sustainability or how that would affect their teaching. This qualitative case study explores the perceptions of marketing teachers regarding sustainability in marketing education. A university in Canada is selected as the research site because of its stated focus on sustainability. The research adopts semi-structured one-on-one interviews with five teachers specializing in marketing. For data triangulation, marketing course syllabi were reviewed to enhance the research credibility. Thematic analysis with NVivo identified themes arising from interview data. [...]