Socialization of Prospective Practitioners Towards Pro-Sustainability Business Attitudes: The Business Curriculum and Social Referents

Transforming current business practices is key to addressing urgent sustainability grand challenges. To achieve such transformation, we first must foster the internalization of pro-sustainability business attitudes among prospective business practitioners. In this study, we aim to expand knowledge on the socialization process of business students toward business sustainability. First, we posit that both how and where business sustainability content is integrated into business courses impact the internalization of pro-sustainability business attitudes. Second, we propose that social referents (professors, class peers, and employers) moderate the effect of business sustainability integration approaches on the socialization of business sustainability. We test these relationships in a sample of 1029 business students. Our findings confirm that integrating business sustainability content into most units and making it mandatory in business courses contribute to forming pro-sustainability business attitudes. Moreover, our results reveal social referents, especially class peers, to be key direct and contingent informal socialization elements.