Interdisciplinary Learning about People, Planet, and Profit in Germany

For several years, our university partnered with a manufacturing company in Germany that is well known for its sustainable business practices and generates revenues in excess of 2 billion Euro annually. This partnership encompassed several programs, including providing training for the company’s junior management in the Business School of our university and a week-long Sustainability Academy with American and German students at the company headquarters in Germany. We added a week-long program in Berlin to the Sustainability Academy to enable our American students to learn more about and experience Germany before the week at the company headquarters. This study abroad program was unusual in several ways. First, due to the partnership with the German company, our students only paid for the Berlin portion of the trip, so this three–credit hour program was very cheap at well under US $1,000, including airfare. Second, the program included a traditional study abroad portion (the week in Berlin) and a week of taking classes and working with German students at the company headquarters, thus providing our students with the opportunity to interact and work with German students and company management and employees. Third, because the program was shared between the College of Letters and Science (COLS) and the College of Business (COB), half of the students came from COLS and half from COB. One geography professor and one finance professor were selected by their respective deans to attend the trip. The geography professor was assigned to the program partly because she is a native German, so it was a coincidence that the program included geography and business. This combination worked out well, as we will discuss in detail below. The students’ experience began with a three-day pre-trip orientation program. Apart from focusing on getting to know one another and informing students about the logistics of the trip, we taught students about five different main topics: The geography professor taught students Landeskunde, the German word for the study of a country including the history, geography, and social setting; explained “do’s and don’ts” in Germany (including how to behave in business settings or at a formal dinner in preparation for the time spent at the company); and went over a bit of basic German. The business professor introduced students to the main differences in business culture between the United States and Germany and discussed sustainability practices on our campus and at the German company. In doing this, he introduced students to the People, Planet, and Profit framework. This framework, also called the Triple Bottom Line by business writer John Elkington (1994), argues that companies should focus not solely on profit but also on the social and environmental aspects of their business practices as well. We also found this framework helpful to think about how our two disciplines, geography and business, interacted and contributed to this study abroad program. We observed that both disciplines added to all three components, but to varying degrees and in different ways.