Challenges of integrating sustainability in management education: A 25‐year review of institutional logics, paradoxes and sensemaking

Abstract

Although sustainability has been championed in management education for over 25 years, its integration remains uneven, fragile and contested. Existing literature mirrors this fragmentation—often descriptive, celebratory or narrowly focused, offering limited insight into the organisational processes that shape integration. Synthesising 70 peer‐reviewed articles, this systematic review asks: What explains the complexity and contested nature of sustainability integration in management education through inter‐, multi‐ and transdisciplinary approaches, and with what implications? We identify three predominant rationales underpinning integration: (1) skills/employability—preparing graduates for market demand in sustainability competencies; (2) standards alignment—compliance with frameworks such as Principles for Responsible Management Education, the Sustainable Development Goals and accreditation requirements and (3) moral/ethical—commitments to societal and environmental responsibility. Using institutional theory, we interpret these as manifestations of coexisting civic, market and professional logics. We further surface nine recurrent tensions that shape implementation and leverage paradox theory to group them across four domains: organising (stability vs. change; autonomy vs. control), learning (breadth vs. depth; conventional vs. transformative learning), performing (aspirations vs. resource constraints; rigour vs. relevance; neoliberal vs. public purpose) and belonging (disciplinary silos vs. integration; pluralism vs. coherence). Finally, mobilising sensemaking theory, we examine how educators and institutions actively navigate competing logics and paradoxical tensions through iterative processes of sensegiving, sensebreaking and sensemaking. By integrating these perspectives, the study advances an integrative, organisationally grounded framework that helps explain why sustainability integration remains complex. In doing so, the review reframes sustainability integration from a pedagogical add‐on to an ongoing organisational transformation, with implications for research, policy and practice in management education.