Driving Social Sustainability Through Storytelling

Social sustainability issues are “wicked” in nature. However, incorporating a wicked problem logic into pedagogy requires a different teaching approach and tools. International business educators can look to storytelling when addressing social sustainability's wicked nature. Storytelling helps humanize issues, shifting the focus to the actors involved and their agency. It supports empathy and improves knowledge retention. We propose a framework for leveraging storytelling in social sustainability pedagogy consisting of three parts: (1) addressing the wicked characteristics of social sustainability issues, (2) applying storytelling as a tool (i.e., the actors, plot, and setting), and (3) pursuing six transformative pedagogical outcomes built around identity and purposeful agency. We illustrate the application of our framework using the Allbirds case study in our teaching. Allbirds is a US-New Zealand innovator of natural materials and a “slow fashion” pioneer. We hope to inspire educators to lean into storytelling and, through it, also better support UN SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production).