This article presents an empirical analysis of textbooks for International Economics in upper secondary schools with a focus on moral responsibility for the environment and society. The purpose is to analyze the meanings offered to students regarding the scope of taking moral responsibility in relation to the role of a business person. Four different meanings are formulated as a result of the study: one states that a business only can take responsibility in order to obey laws and respond to consumer demands, a second and third meanings imply that, a business can make demands, to different extents, on subcontractors. A fourth meaning include that a business (apart from making profit) also can be a tool for change. The different meanings are discussed in relation to different functions of education (Biesta 2008, Säfström 2005) and Education for Sustainable Development. The main argument is that a tool for change-meaning, contributing to a subjectification function of education, ought to have an increased space in education, if we want students who are engaged in sustainability issues regarding the environment and the society also to see a future working within the business world. This is equally important if we want business students to see a future working for sustainable development.

This paper explores various kinds of logics of ‘business education for sustainability’and how these ‘logics’ position the subject business person, based on eight teachers’ reasoning of their own practices. The concept of logics developed within a discourse theoretical framework is employed to analyse the teachers’ reasoning. The analysis takes its starting point in different approaches to how a business ought to or could take responsibility for sustainable development. Different approaches to business ethical responsibilities, in combination with assumptions about how educational content is legitimised and presupposed purposes of education, are used to construct logics of business education for sustainability. In the paper, the results of this analysis are presented as: the logic of profit-, social- or radical-oriented business education. Our results also show how the different logics position the subject business person differently, as one who adapts to, adds or creates ethical values. The results are first discussed in terms of how environmental and social challenges could be dealt with in the future and secondly, considering the risk of de-subjectification with regard to profit-oriented business education, the implications this may have for the educational quality itself.

Purpose: The paper presents a study of the roles of a business person privileged by teachers when the concept of ‘sustainable development’ is incorporated into the subject of business economics.

Methodology: A logics approach to discourse analysis was used to analyse the empirical material, which consisted of video recorded observations in five teachers’ classrooms collected two years after the inclusion of the concept ‘sustainable development’ in the upper secondary school syllabus in Sweden.

Findings: The results show how different rules and conditions for doing business are foregrounded in classroom practice. This in turn has different implications for whether a responsible business person is expected to: a) adapt to self-interest, b) respond to customers’ increasing interests in sustainable products, or c) be sensitive to the needs or interests of others (including humans, animals and nature), when making business decisions.   The results also illuminate how talking about ‘homo economicus’ as ‘real’ can hinder, how talking about customers in altruistic terms can facilitate, and how talking about the complexity of others’ interests can suggest ways of doing business (more) sustainably.

Practical implications: The empirical examples that illuminate the privileging of specific roles could be used for critical reflection in order to make students better equipped to address uncertain and complex sustainability issues.

This paper makes a contribution to the debate that has been described as a tension between instrumental and emancipatory educational objectives in environment and sustainability education. The contribution involves a methodological approach (introd-) using the concept ‘dislocatory moments’, to identify and analyse moments in classroom practice that address educational objectives relating to ‘change for sustainability’ and ‘thinking and acting independently’. A case of business education, when ‘sustainable development’ is integrated in a series of lessons, is used to exemplify the approach involving analysis of the emergence and closure of a dislocatory moment and the change of logics that occur. The illustrative case shows how room for subjectivity and change can be intertwined in educational practice. It is suggested that the methodological approach could be used in empirical research of classroom practice to further knowledge about the kind of situations that contribute to ‘business as un-usual’ without compromising emancipatory education ideals.