It Creates a Mindset: Why Awareness Alone Won't Build Responsible Careers

Event: ANZAM Sustainability and Responsible Management Special Interest Group (SRM-SIG) online PD seminar, Wednesday 22^nd July 11-12pm 2026

Presenters: Ananya Bhattacharya, Limin Fu, Glen Croy, Wee Chan Au, Tracy Scurry, and Qudsia Iftikhar (Monash University and Newcastle University)

Attendees: SIG members and beyond

What actually happens to a graduate's sense of responsibility once they leave the lecture theatre? That question sits at the heart of new research presented by Ananya Bhattacharya, Limin Fu, Glen Croy, Wee Chan Au, Tracy Scurry, and Qudsia Iftikhar (Monash University and Newcastle University), funded by Monash Business School's Business Education Research Group.

Drawing on Tams and Marshall's (2011) definition of responsible careers - work through which people seek impact on societal challenges like sustainability and social justice, via their role choices and strategic approach to work - the team surveyed 48 and interviewed 13 early-career professionals across Australia, the UK, and beyond, most within a few years of graduation.

The findings are genuinely double-edged. First, participants consistently described responsibility as an ongoing, negotiated, subjective process - not a fixed checklist. Second, and encouragingly, higher education emerged as a truly formative context: graduates credited their degrees with giving them the language and frameworks - through curriculum and experiential learning - to even think about responsibility at work. As one participant put it, memorably, "it creates a mindset."

But the third finding is the sobering one. Having the mindset is not the same as being able to act on it. Participants described four recurring barriers: structural constraints (junior staff have little strategic influence), economic constraints (mission-driven roles often pay less, forcing compromise), cultural pressures (performance metrics still trump ethical purpose), and - perhaps most damaging - symbolic commitment frustration, where organisations commit for ethical practices at the surface level without real investment or support for the staff, leaving graduates disillusioned.

This matters directly for our Working Group's mission. The researchers argue that PRME-aligned institutions have largely succeeded at building awareness and knowledge, but this now needs pairing with genuine efficacy: confidence, capability, experience, and resilience to act on values under real organisational constraint. The proposed vehicle is authentic learning genuinely engaged with live societal challenges, not simulated exercises.

The provocation for all of us designing responsible management curricula is blunt: are we preparing graduates merely to aspire to responsible work, or to navigate and contest the friction they will actually meet? Closing the gap from mindset to efficacy looks like the next frontier for PRME-aligned business education - and a rich agenda for this Working Group to take forward.