Abstract:

Innovations are needed in order to renew ways of operating and to both gain and maintain a competitive advantage. Innovating is an activity that ideally brings about sustainable innovations. Such innovating views business development from three perspectives, namely, economic, environmental and social (see e.g. Hautamäki 2019). The article is aimed at sharing interim results of an on-going university-industry collaboration project, which involves companies from the domain of culture. We develop and update business education in the culture and tourism sectors in the South Karelia region in Finland and St. Petersburg in Russia. The present curriculum development will involve improving operators’ knowhow of sustainable business and responsible management in the afore-named business sectors. The DACUM workshop (Developing A Curriculum) methodology has been used in the process. This methodology has already been successfully applied by LAB previously e.g. in the ESLogC project (Kotonen, Tuominen, et al. 2015). With the help of earlier experience and expertise, the DACUM workshop was organized on April 30, 2020, using online platforms Zoom and Padlet. The focus group consisting of six representatives from businesses and organisations involved in event management discussed their competences and areas for improvement. Through a qualitative research approach, a thematic analysis was performed on the outcome of the workshop. Based on the results of the workshop, an attempt was made to create a competence chart and to make decisions about future development areas in sustainable business education.

Keywords:

Sustainability, responsible management, event organisation, DACUM.