Reflections and reflective practice to advance responsible management education for sustainability: the case of an Australian MBA programme

Purpose: This paper aims to explore Master of Business Administration (MBA) students’ “reflections” and/or “reflection on practice” of sustainability into responsible management education using Bain et al.’s (2002) 5Rs (reporting, responding, relating, reasoning and reconstructing) reflective scale. Design/methodology/approach: This study adopted a case study approach using content analysis and written reflective journals analysis from MBA students’ assignments. Findings: This study revealed that responding and relating (emotionally-based reflections) scales are dominant reflections while reasoning (cognitively-based reflections) is a slightly less dominant reflection. The findings confirm that effective management education for sustainability should encourage and motivate students to reflect on their emotional learning to improve leadership values, attitudes and activities. Such reflection can lead to transformative experiences. Research limitations/implications: This study adopted a small-scale content analysis using an Australian university’s MBA case. To increase validity and generalisation, researchers will benefit from a wide range of quantitative analyses in different countries and cultural contexts. Practical implications: Curriculum design using reflections and reflective journals should be enhanced in management education for the practice of sustainability and/or sustainable development. Social implications: Higher education should encourage socially and environmentally responsible management in programme and curriculum design with a reflective approach. Originality/value: This study presents a conceptual framework and analysis approaches that can serve as some bases for the development of a more robust analysis in responsible management education.