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

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Teaching international business
• global challenges
• SDGs
• collaborative-applied learning
• critical reflection

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Original text “Kansainvälisen liiketoiminnan pääaineopinnot valmistavat kansainvälisiä liiketoiminnan osaajia, jotka pystyvät vastaamaan tämän päivän talouselämän haasteisiin ja ottamaan globaalin näkökulman asioihin”.

² www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_global_population_growth_box_by_box?language=en

³ E-Mail communication 14.12.2021, UN expert and scholar, anonymized.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Elo

Maria Elo, associate professor, University of Southern Denmark, professor, Belt and Road Institute of International Business at Shanghai University, senior research fellow, University of Turku and adjunct professor, Åbo Akademi University works on international business, -entrepreneurship and -migration with topics such as internationalization, resources of skilled migrants and returnees, migrant and diaspora entrepreneurship, transnational and family businesses, diaspora networks, diaspora investment and remittances. She has published books and articles, for example, in Journal of World Business, Journal of International Business Policy, Industrial Marketing Management, Regional Studies, Journal of International Entrepreneurship and International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business.

Lasse Torkkeli

Lasse Torkkeli, D.Sc. (Econ. & Bus. Adm.) is Principal Lecturer at LAB University of Applied Sciences and an Adjunct Professor of International Business in the Turku School of Economics at the University of Turku. At LUT University, Torkkeli’s research interests are in the international entrepreneurship and international business domains, and include SME

internationalization, digital entrepreneurship, and sustainable entrepreneurship. His research has been published in journals such as International Marketing Review, International Business Review and Industrial Marketing Management, among others.

Hannes Velt

Hannes Velt, D.Sc. (Econ. & Bus. Adm.) is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at LUT University School of Business and Management. Velt’s research interests are in the international entrepreneurship and international business domains, and include entrepreneurial ecosystem, SME internationalization, entrepreneurial start-up and scale-up development. His research has been published in a variety of journals.