Critical Thinking and Critical Theory: Interdisciplinary Strategies for Social Responsibility in Business Education

The Vermont Connection Volume 46 Coalition and Insurgence: Responding to the Anti-DEI Climate in Higher Education. Article 13 April 2025 Critical Thinking and Critical Theory: Interdisciplinary Strategies for Social Responsibility in Business Education Joshua Ravenscroft Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/tvc Part of the Higher Education Commons Recommended Citation Ravenscroft, J. (2025). Critical Thinking and Critical Theory: Interdisciplinary Strategies for Social Responsibility in Business Education. The Vermont Connection, 46(1). https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/tvc/ vol46/iss1/13 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Education and Social Services at UVM ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Vermont Connection by an authorized editor of UVM ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact . 89 • The Vermont Connection • 2025 • Volume 46 Critical Thinking and Critical Theory: Interdisciplinary Strategies for Social Responsibility in Business Education Joshua Ravenscroft Corporate scandals, economic recessions and unsustainable business practices have created demand for prosocial business strategies. In response, business education has increasingly included corporate social responsibility curriculum. Nonetheless, ongoing controversies raise the question of what should be done to preserve and advance social responsibility in business education. While research has explored corporate social responsibility, interdisciplinary trends in business education and the application of critical theory to business, it appears that the literature has not yet combined those three ideas into a specific approach. To begin envisioning a business studies curriculum reorganized around these principles, this paper uses interdisciplinary theory and critical management studies to explore the culture of business education and interrogate traditional methods. Even as critical curricula become taboo or restricted, interdisciplinary studies and critical management studies provide a framework for prosocial and sustainable business models. By contrasting traditional business education with divergent methods, this paper collects relevant insights from across disciplines and discusses how to reorganize ethics and corporate social responsibility curriculum to better support students, businesses, and a sustainable future. Keywords: interdisciplinary, business schools, business education, business curriculum, critical theory, critical management studies, corporate social responsibility, immersive teaching approaches, interdisciplinary studies, interdisciplinary theory, business school, ethics, DEI, justice, critical management studies, sustainability Joshua Ravenscroft is an Educational Leadership and Policy Studies M.Ed. student at the University of Vermont. His interests include leadership, organizational behavior and staff development. His approach is founded on strategic planning and engaging with employee collective knowledge and aims to design structures that incentivize a culture of growth and knowledge exchange. 90 • The Vermont Connection • 2025 • Volume 46 Traditional Models of Business Education Controversy, Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility In the aftermath of massive corporate scandals in the 1990s and early 2000s, business schools scrambled to incorporate ethics programming into their already dense MBA curriculum, despite student resistance and disinterest (Alsop, 2006). In 2005, the consensus among employers, students and media outlets was that business schools were so myopically focused on technical skills that their students were not ready to be ethical businesspeople, let alone well-rounded enough for the complex realities of the workforce (Bennis & O’Toole, 2005). After the 2008 financial crisis, mass criticism targeted business schools and MBA graduates working in corporations and banks, blaming them for pursuing profit at the expense of family homes and the national economy (Podolny, 2009). In reaction to ongoing corruption, climate, and financial crises following the 2008 financial crash, the United Nations organized the Principles for Responsible Management Education programs to invite business and management schools to prioritize corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability (Godemann et al., 2014). Corporate social responsibility encompasses models and strategies where businesses go beyond regulated minimums to do social good by balancing the interests of all their stakeholders: not just shareholders, but customers, employees, suppliers, and related communities (Zhao et al., 2023). CSR can be a tool for both practical and altruistic goals; different models may prioritize sustainable revenues, competitive advantage, or the benefit of individuals, society, or the environment (Zhao et al., 2023). Although business schools have faced repeated criticism for their role in economic and social crises, business scholars have made continuous progress in developing a pedagogy of ethics (Raman et al., 2019). Corporate social responsibility has been a topic of attention in business publications for decades and continues to be an area of thriving research and exploration (Zhao et al., 2023). At the same time, due to the tendency for business faculty to be specialists in subfields of business, CSR and ethics material are usually separate courses from the rest of business curriculum, which limits the scope of debate and analysis in the classroom (Schlegelmilch, 2020). Corporate social responsibility is a broad term that includes a variety of business models, and not all CSR models are equally sustainable or prosocial. As Dyllick and Muff (2016) explain, sustainable business models fit into three categories, distinguished by their increasingly positive impact on society and the environment. First are business models that adopt CSR for sustained shareholder value; in this framework, while sustainability concerns are a challenge to business operations, they are an opportunity for innovation and revenue. This view of CSR, while pragmatic, is narrowly profit-driven and may face accusations of corporate greenwashing. Second is the triple bottom line (TBL), a business model that expands beyond profit to include social and environmental concerns as strategic priorities. Third, and most effective at contributing to global sustainability, is what Dyllick and Muff (2016) call true sustainability: a fundamentally different strategy where rather than aiming to minimize harm, the business focuses on creating new strategies and business models that solve sustainability challenges and maximize positive impact. True sustainability faces many obstacles as a business model, particularly for commercial business obligated to generate value for shareholders while navigating the short-term financial expectations of the market (Dyllick & Muff, 2016). However, true 91 • The Vermont Connection • 2025 (...truncated)