Sustainability-oriented assessment and its influence on students' orientations toward responsible enterprise education: a qualitative study in postgraduate business education

Purpose This study examines how postgraduate students describe and make sense of their orientations toward responsible enterprise in the context of sustainability-oriented assessment. Specifically, it investigates how embedding the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within summative assessment influences students' cognitive interpretations of enterprise, their affective engagement with sustainability values, and their future-oriented self-perception. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative interpretivist design was adopted. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 full-time postgraduate Master of Business Administration (MBA) students from two UK higher education institutions, both of which had independently embedded the SDGs within summative enterprise assessment. Data were collected after assessment completion to capture retrospective meaning-making, and analysed using Braun and Clarke's (2021) reflexive thematic analysis. Findings Three interrelated dimensions emerged through students' engagement with SDG-aligned assessment: cognitive reframing of enterprise through sustainability, affective engagement with sustainable enterprise values, and future-oriented self-perception. Students who entered with predominantly profit-oriented framings of enterprise appeared to move toward understanding it as socially embedded and environmentally consequential. Emotional proximity to sustainability challenges appeared to strengthen personal commitment, while shifts in future oriented self-perception suggested an inclination toward responsible future professional practice. A minority of participants engaged instrumentally or expressed unresolved tensions between commercial and sustainability goals, qualifying the study's central argument. Research limitations/implications The study is limited to a single MBA module within a UK higher education institution, which may affect the generalisability of findings across disciplines and contexts. The qualitative design, while offering rich insights into students' meaning-making, does not capture longitudinal changes in attitudes or behaviours. Future research could adopt comparative and longitudinal approaches to examine how sustainability-oriented enterprise education influences students' values over time and across cultural settings. Further studies may also explore the role of different assessment designs in shaping purpose-driven learning outcomes. Practical implications The findings offer clear guidance for educators designing sustainability-oriented enterprise education. Sustainability should be embedded within assessment criteria as a core requirement rather than supplementary content, positioning SDG reasoning alongside commercial viability as a structuring principle of enterprise thinking. Authentic tasks connecting business ideas to real sustainability challenges foster personal investment and purpose-driven learning. The complementarity of group and individual assessment components is significant: collaborative phases build shared understanding, while individual components consolidate personal meaning-making. Structured reflection throughout the module strengthens the connection between enterprise concepts and students' own values, aspirations and emerging sense of responsible professional identity. Social implications The study highlights the potential of enterprise education to contribute to broader societal outcomes by developing purpose-driven, socially aware graduates. When sustainability principles and the SDGs are embedded within assessment, students are encouraged to align entrepreneurial activity with social and environmental needs rather than commercial logic alone. This approach supports the development of graduates better equipped to address complex global challenges through responsible innovation and ethical decision-making. By linking enterprise learning with real-world impact, higher education institutions can play a meaningful role in shaping individuals who contribute to inclusive, sustainable societies and responsible business cultures beyond the classroom. Originality/value While sustainability integration in enterprise education has received growing scholarly attention, limited empirical research examines how students internalise sustainability when it is embedded within core assessment structures. This study contributes an empirically grounded, multi-dimensional account of how sustainability-oriented assessment functions as a pedagogical condition shaping meaning-making, affective engagement, and future-oriented self-perception in postgraduate business education, with implications for how higher education can cultivate graduates who integrate economic reasoning with social and environmental responsibility.