The B-schoolers embracing lower pay

Mar 03, 2022 View in browser   By Jordan Wolman THE BIG PICTURE If businesses want to attract top talent, they better step up on climate. That's not coming from us. More than 2,000 business students in 30 countries across six continents said as much in a new report from Yale University and the Global Network for Advanced Management. Fifty-one percent of the students surveyed said they would accept a lower salary to work for an environmentally responsible company, up from 44 percent in Yale's inaugural 2015 survey. Twenty-six percent of respondents said they would not accept a job with a company that has weak environmental practices, up seven points from 2015. Yet only 20 percent of student respondents said businesses are making sufficient efforts to address global environmental challenges, roughly the same as seven years ago. Most business students firmly believe climate change is an issue in their arena. About three-fourths of respondents said they believe global warming to be a business issue — even more than those who characterized the problem as a health issue or a moral one. But they also ranked environmental and social concerns behind traditional business issues like finance, operations, and sales and marketing as topics that executives need to be on top of. "[S]tudents seem unlikely to advocate that sustainability concerns become the new top priority for business leaders, but that these concerns be clearly added to the list of existing priorities," the report authors said. Interestingly, while more than half of respondents said the conditions of the planet are "poor" or "very poor," concern dropped off when thinking locally. Only one-third thought their own countries had poor environmental or social conditions, a response that held roughly steady across the world. And while 52 percent of respondents rate themselves as "very" or "extremely" worried about global warming, only 31 percent of students believe others at their school are similarly concerned — a number that drops when students consider people in their workplaces and further plunges to 11 percent when students think of people in their country. Another clear trend: Business students want more — more experiential learning focused on sustainability, more sustainability-focused case studies, and more career services focused on sustainability jobs. Ultimately, the report concluded that business schools should emphasize opportunities to integrate sustainability topics, and that corporations need to improve their sustainability practices — if for nothing else than to attract top talent. It also called on business students to be the catalyst for change within business schools. "It would be easy for the heads of today's corporations and business schools to read contradictions into these opinions, and throw up their hands at a lack of a clear direction," the report said. "However, we believe the nuance in these opinions reflects the growing maturity of sustainability as a concept in business, and of future leaders' understanding of it."   SUBSCRIBE TO NATIONAL SECURITY DAILY : Keep up with the latest critical developments from Ukraine and across Europe in our daily newsletter, National Security Daily. The Russian invasion of Ukraine could disrupt the established world order and result in a refugee crisis, increased cyberattacks, rising energy costs and additional disruption to global supply chains. Go inside the top national security and foreign-policymaking shops for insight on the global threats faced by the U.S. and its allies and what actions world leaders are taking to address them. Subscribe today.     WHAT WE'RE CLICKING — A new report out today from the nonprofit As You Sow assesses the progress of 55 of the largest American corporations regarding their greenhouse gas reduction targets. Spoiler alert: A lot of them flunked. — Hydrogen is once again on the move as a potential source of clean fuel. Four Western states announced an ambitious partnership to create a "hydrogen hub," the Colorado Sun reports.   DON'T MISS CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO's new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. CHECK OUT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE.       Follow us on Twitter Catherine Boudreau @ceboudreau Debra Kahn @debra_kahn Greg Mott @gwmott Lorraine Woellert @Woellert Jordan Wolman @jordanwolman   Follow us

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