Letters to the Future Challenge: A Scalable Online Tool to Engage Management Students with the SDGs

The mission of the Principles for Responsible Management Education by the UN is to transform management education and to engage students with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, it seems that relevant SDGs are not being met, especially on important goals such as zero hunger. What is needed are pedagogical tools and interventions that help future leaders to feel empowered to act positively to contribute to SDGs. An effective way of doing this is by writing a letter to the future. In this paper we develop a novel format of this letter to the future challenge (LTC), an online scalable written learning intervention where participants (a) reflect on and write about the imagined ideal world contrasting this with the idea of the world that will come to pass if nothing changes, and (b) reflect on and write about concrete goals and actions that contribute to certain SDGs. LFC is a promising new toolkit for management education. Based on insights from positive psychology, we propose that LFC offers ways to increase a self-transcendent action repertoire, and potentially kickstart societal change. LFC can be part of a pedagogical toolkit to enhance human agency and foster building good intentions for sustained behaviour change.