How can business schools prepare students to act in a world shaped by environmental and social transition? At UCLouvain’s Louvain School of Management, the answer starts with the people who teach them. A partnership with the Candriam Institute for Sustainable Development is helping turn sustainability knowledge into practical, engaging learning across management disciplines.
Moving from “Why?” to “How?”
While the environmental and social challenges facing businesses remain as pressing as ever, the way students engage with sustainability is evolving.
In a more challenging economic environment, students tend to gravitate towards core management disciplines, such as finance, which they associate with greater employment security. Others feel that they have already encountered the main sustainability concepts in mandatory courses and would prefer to focus on more specialised subjects.
Student feedback has revealed another important concern: while they understand why businesses need to change, they want more practical guidance on how to respond—and what their own role should be as future managers.
Louvain School of Management (LSM) already offers 25 courses supporting responsible management education and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. All master’s students at its Louvain-la-Neuve and Mons campuses are required to complete at least one course on corporate social responsibility. The challenge now is to move beyond dedicated sustainability courses and embed ethics, responsibility and sustainability—collectively referred to as “ERS”—across the different disciplines of management.
Students are asking us to rethink our courses so that they focus more on how to act within each discipline, rather than only on why sustainability matters.
This shift from “why” to “how” lies at the heart of the partnership between UCLouvain and Candriam.
Creating a Learning Community for Teachers
Interest among LSM faculty has also been growing. Some professors already integrate sustainability into their teaching because it is closely connected to their research. Others are motivated to do more, but question how new material can be meaningfully incorporated into an existing course. LSM therefore wanted to create a learning community in which professors can share experiences, explore new approaches and develop their ERS knowledge together. This is how the “Teach the Teacher” initiative was born.
The initiative is therefore not simply about adding new material to an already busy curriculum. It is about giving teachers the knowledge, methods and confidence to integrate ethics, responsibility and sustainability into their own disciplines—from finance and strategy to leadership, reporting and human resources – eventually helping them adopt more active, experiential and engaging teaching methods. The programme’s ultimate aim is to help students develop the critical thinking, adaptability and systemic understanding required to navigate complex challenges.
Creating a Multiplier Effect
Supporting one teacher can influence hundreds of students over successive academic years. By initially reaching approximately 20 faculty members from different management disciplines, the programme has the potential to benefit several thousand students over time. This multiplier effect makes the initiative distinctive.
The programme also recognises that knowledge alone is not enough. Responsible leadership involves attitudes, values and the ability to act under uncertainty. This requires teaching methods that encourage students to participate, question assumptions and connect academic concepts with real-world situations.
Building the Foundations Together
The first year of the partnership, covering the 2025-2026 academic year, concentrated on research, consultation and programme design.
Support from the Candriam Institute enabled LSM to recruit a postdoctoral researcher dedicated to the project, specialist in sustainability-focused communities of practice. She [VS1.1]has also conducted interviews with faculty members to understand their expectations, constraints and preferred learning formats.
The project team also completed a systematic review of research on sustainability education in management, examined existing ERS competency frameworks and compared approaches used by other academic institutions. This work is helping LSM consider how broad sustainability competencies can be translated into the specific context of a management curriculum.
Two ERS bootcamp days brought together 24 faculty members, researchers, teaching assistants, administrative staff and student representatives. These sessions helped create a shared vision for integrating ERS more coherently across LSM’s master’s programmes.
A community of practice involving around 15 faculty members was also established. Meeting regularly, the group shares resources, discusses emerging sustainability issues and considers how different pedagogical approaches could be applied in participants’ courses. A digital repository is being developed to bring together academic research, teaching cases, videos, tools and potential expert contributors.
The programme follows a participatory approach: it is being developed with teachers, rather than simply delivered to them. This is particularly important because faculty members have different disciplinary perspectives and varying levels of familiarity with sustainability topics.
Rethinking How Management Is Taught
What might responsible management education look like in practice?
Some of the approaches being explored include case-based learning, workshops, systems-thinking exercises, community engagement and creative methods that can help students examine complex issues from new perspectives. The aim is to make students active participants in their learning, rather than passive recipients of information.
There is also growing recognition that education must address the emotional dimension of today’s challenges. Climate change, geopolitical tensions and social disruption can generate anxiety and a loss of confidence in the future. While universities have traditionally focused on knowledge and analytical reasoning, preparing future leaders may also require helping them engage constructively with uncertainty and translate concern into action.
At the same time, LSM acknowledges that the skills companies need today are not necessarily the only skills graduates will require in ten or fifteen years. The programme therefore combines insights from employers and practitioners with academic research, long-term thinking and independent critical analysis.
Connecting Academic Insight with Professional Practice
Candriam’s contribution extends beyond financial support. From the 2026-2027 academic year, Candriam experts are expected to contribute their practical expertise through guest lectures and discussions, particularly in areas such as sustainable finance, responsible investment or ESG reporting.
Candriam may also contribute teaching cases and content from the Candriam Academy, helping connect academic concepts with the realities encountered by businesses and investors. These exchanges are intended to complement the university’s academic expertise while preserving its independence in designing and delivering the programme.
