Integrating SDG 12 into Business Studies through Intercultural Virtual Collaboration

Abstract

Intercultural Virtual Collaboration (IVC) has been a growing field in recent decades as it allows students from different cultures to work together without having to move physically. Besides providing students with an authentic experience that they are going to encounter in their future professional careers in increasingly globalised and digitised workplaces, more recently, IVC has also been used as a means to engage university students from different cultures in social and political issues that are common across societies. In this paper, we present an analysis of an IVC project that involved undergraduate Business students from a university in Spain and a university in the Netherlands where students from both universities were asked to collaborate online to develop a business case to analyse how companies communicate about the way they integrate SDGs in the different cultures involved. A content analysis of group reports delivered by students was carried out. In addition, intercultural competence development was measured through a questionnaire. Results show that the IVC project contributed to raising students’ awareness of how companies approach SDGs and adapt their products to different cultures. Students were also perceived to have developed intercultural knowledge, intercultural virtual teamwork, intercultural attitudes and intercultural awareness.

Student Perceptions of Pedagogical Approaches to Integrating the SDG 8 into Business School Education

“…Moreover, there are other groups of studies that explore how the SDGs have been incorporated into business programs and curricula [9,20] by applying innovative teaching pedagogies [52]; we extend this line of research. Nevertheless, although we have found some articles analyzing the integration of SDG 4 [51], SDG 6 [53], and SDG 12 [54], we have not found any articles investigating the integration of the complete SDG 8 in HEIs or BSs. By 2030, under the SDG 8 targets, full and productive employment and decent work for all and equal pay for work of equal value (women and men, young people, persons with disabilities, nationals, and migrants) must be achieved worldwide [2].…”

Integrating eco‐labeling and green advertising in achieving Sustainable Development Goal 12

“…In addition, a couple of studies suggest that there is a requirement to create awareness about the significance of SDG-12 among business students and policy makers. Intercultural virtual collaboration is one of the approaches that support in creating awareness about SDG-12 among business students (Ferreira-Lopes et al, 2022). SDG-12 can also be the part of the local government plans for data collection about waste management, which can be ensured by the public administrators (Beccarello & Di Foggia, 2022).…”

“…Existing studies on SDG-12 do not address the assessment of SDG-12 from marketing of green products (Beccarello & Di Foggia, 2022;Ferreira-Lopes et al, 2022;Gasper et al, 2019;Opoku et al, 2022;Palakshappa & Dodds, 2021;Akter et al, 2022). There are studies available on eco-labeling (Chen, 2021;Donato & D'Aniello, 2022;Galati et al, 2022;Hosseinikhah Choshaly, 2018;Hosseinikhah Choshaly & Mirabolghasemi, 2022;Liu et al, 2023) and GA (Ali et al, 2021;Ekebas-Turedi et al, 2021;Jahari et al, 2022;Lee et al, 2023;Samaraweera et al, 2021;Shi et al, 2022;Wang et al, 2020) on consumer behavior.…”

International Students’ Perceptions towards Their Learning Experience in an International Network Seminar in Japan: During and Post the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The teaching innovations in distance or online learning that had already occurred before the pandemic [7][8][9][10][11][12], in terms of virtual and visual ways of communicating teaching issues, were heavily depended upon during the pandemic. At that moment, the main goal was to maintain education in any possible way undisrupted at all levels of education [13][14][15].…”