One of the primary goals of a recent conference at the Naveen Jindal School of Management was to instill a sustainability mindset in students from The University of Texas at Dallas.

“It wasn’t only just talking about this abstract concept of sustainability, but also changing the perspective of the future workforce talent that we are developing,” said Hubert Zydorek, director of the Center for Global Business, and the BS in Global Business and MS in International Management Studies programs at the Jindal School. “Regardless of the majors the students are pursuing — whether it’s global business, finance, information technology or human resources — sustainability should be the foundation of their professional and personal activities in the future.”

The conference, held April 15 and 16, was the inaugural event of the biennial Ann and Jack Graves Foundation Conference Series. The Center for Global Business and the Sustainable Global Business Initiative, also based in the Jindal School, organized the virtual gathering with involvement from the Society of Sustainable Business, a JSOM-based student organization.

About 135 scholars, practitioners, policymakers and students shared ideas about how sustainability — the idea that meeting needs today in terms of sustaining ecological, social and economic systems should not interfere with the ability of those in future generations to do the same — relates to global business initiatives — and vice versa.

Sustainability — A Global Issue

JSOM faculty members Dr. Habte Woldu, Dr. Mike Peng and Zydorek coordinated the conference along with co-chairs Dr. Agnieszka Skuza, a Jindal School visiting professor from Poznań University of Economics and Business in Poland, and Dr. David B. Zoogah, an associate professor of management and entrepreneurship at Xavier University.

Woldu, a clinical professor in the Organizations, Strategy and International Management Area and director of the Sustainable Global Business Initiative, said the conference needed to be international because sustainability is a global issue. It can lead to solutions to worldwide problems, he said, including alleviating poverty by rational allocation of limited resources.

“We brought in academicians from 21 universities as well as business leaders and policymakers from around the world,” he said. They discussed what they are doing within their university settings, within the corporate world and within international organizations to address the issue of sustainability.

“The exchange of research outcomes presented by academics and common practices shared by industrial leaders and international organizations help us enhance our knowledge of sustainability and better understand it. And, of course, we have our students who will be the future couriers of sustainability-related projects.”

Speakers included:

• Dr. Magali Delmas, a professor of management from the UCLA Anderson School of Management;
• Navid Hanif, director of the Financing for Sustainable Development Office of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs;
• Bhushan Joshi, head of sustainability and corporate sustainability at Ericsson North America;
• Paul Voelker, mayor of the City of Richardson; and
• Gary Cocke, director of the Office of Sustainability at The University of Texas at Dallas.

Topics ranged from sustainability of energy as an enabler of economic development to technology as an enabler of sustainability, and from a Smart-City model for sustainability to university sustainability development and outreach.

Peng, O.P. Jindal Distinguished Chair and executive director of the Center for Global Business, moderated the opening ceremony. Prior to the conference, he said that the academic community can help industry by advocating that it adopt sustainability as a core value. Doing so can help companies work toward not just the usual economic bottom line, Peng said, but toward a triple bottom line: economic, social and environmental growth.

“Ideally,” he said, “you don’t have to radically change your business model or strategy, but while you’re designing and implementing your strategy and your business model, if you can do these three things from the beginning, then all the better. It is challenging; not every company can do this.”

Instilling a Sustainability Mindset

Zydorek said the conference was not only talking about abstract concepts of sustainability but also changing the perspective of future workforce talent being developed at the Jindal School.

Speakers sought to ensure that students could recognize changes in the world and the limited resources available so that they could include innovation in their professional activities in the future.

“With this understanding, they will be able to change some of the designs, processes and methodologies related to becoming a sustainable business,” Zydorek, also an associate professor of instruction, said. “We are faced with the limits that we have in terms of natural resources. We have to be cognizant of the fact that we truly have to change our mindset and behavior for the benefit of our grandchildren and our planet.”

A Long-Term Approach

JSOM alum Mike Redeker, MBA’97, MS’01, a trustee at the Ann & Jack Graves Charitable Foundation; and Peter Greer, president and CEO of HOPE International; were the keynote speakers on Day Two. Prior to the conference, Redeker said it is crucial for business schools to discuss topics such as sustainability so that they can impart knowledge that instills innovative, long-term thinking in business leaders of the future.

“For me, the bottom line is — are we harming things?” he said. “Are we creating things that are going to hurt people or the environment? Are we doing something that is going to do long-term damage? What are the unintended consequences of these actions? Is there a better way to do it? When companies aren’t too worried about their short-term returns, then they can stick to their guns and play the 200-year plan.”

A Social Venture Example

Dr. Ron Bose, professor of practice in the Information Systems Area and director of the Center for Information Technology and Management, was a panelist at a session titled “Sustainability of Energy as an Enabler of Economic Development.” The panelists — Bose; Dr. Wei-Jen Lee from UT Arlington; and Paras Loomba, founder and CEO of Global Himalayan Expedition — are members of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and its offshoot, the Power and Energy Society. The moderator, Dr. Rajan Kapur, is senior vice president of the IEEE’s humanitarian outreach program, IEEE Smart Village.

They discussed how and why Smart Villages are being built in remote areas of the world, including villages high in the Himalayas. Bose discussed how he helped set up a metrics reporting system for the project.

Before the conference, Bose said that the IEEE Smart Village project is a social venture fund that provides grants to entrepreneurs in less-developed parts of the world to capture solar energy for villages — usually the entrepreneurs’ own — that are not connected to an electrical grid.

“The social venture fund idea is very important because it is not only to provide resources for the villages, but we also understand the fact that charity is not sustainable,” he said. “The idea of putting in the ability to generate energy is that this will lead to children going to school, people creating jobs — small-scale businesses and things like that — so it has a big leverage effect.”

The Student Experience

Hassan Mohamed Seoudi, a senior global business major, has been involved with the Sustainable Global Business Initiative at JSOM for a few years. In 2019, he and other JSOM students organized a trip to Ethiopia with Woldu, Zydorek and Redeker to help a group of local women start a fruit dehydration business.

That experience led to the founding of the UT Dallas Society of Sustainable Business (SSB), the student organization that works in tandem with the initiative led by Woldu to cultivate sustainable economic initiatives that improve access to sustainable livelihoods, entrepreneurial opportunities and poverty alleviation in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and in the poorest African countries.

Seoudi and Zhu Lei, co-presidents of SSB, spoke at various times throughout the conference about their organization’s efforts.

Seoudi said his experience in Ethiopia was unlike anything he had done before.

“The project required us to constantly adapt our plans, and we had to transfer all of our knowledge during our time at UTD to the women who were running the business,” he said. “This meant teaching them everything from finance to brand management.”

The learning curve for the conference organizers seemed equally steep at times.

“When you say, ‘Sustainability,’ I have learned that it ripples like a pebble skimming across water,” Woldu said. “The circles keep widening, and you realize there are more and more people and topics to take in.

“But ultimately, that’s good, because already we know that the next time we have a conference we are going to invite more people who have on-the-ground experience with bringing sustainability to businesses around the world. Having students come back next time to share with us their changed perspectives, how they are applying sustainability to their careers and advocating for it would also be gratifying to me as an educator.”