How undergraduate students collaborate to address societal Grand Challenges: Evidence from a group assessment module on business and the Sustainable Development Goals

Societal Grand Challenges (GCs) require management educators to prepare students to address universal, interconnected, and multi-dimensional societal problems. While both business and management scholarship recognise the importance of collaboration in addressing societal GCs, little research has examined how business students collaborate when tasked with addressing GCs of this kind. Drawing on qualitative evidence from student submissions for an undergraduate group assessment module that targeted different Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the paper presents a theoretical framework to examine collaboration among students, when collaboration was important for the integration of transdisciplinary knowledge, holistic assessments and developing coherent business solutions. Applying content analysis and quantitative techniques, we assess students' mode of collaboration and its influence on the coherence of their proposed solutions. Our findings highlight the importance of developing students' collaborative strategies to address societal GCs in business school education, and we discuss opportunities and challenges for enhancing students' collaboration skills in undergraduate teaching, emphasising the role of group assessments in cultivating students’ collaborative strategies and collaboration competencies. • A pedagogy for teaching collaboration to address Grand Challenges/SDGs is described. • Student's collaborative behaviour and their proposed solutions are assessed. • The importance of developing student's collaborative strategy is underlined. • Relevance of teaching actions for students' learning success is highlighted.