Universities can be considered a key element in promoting sustainable development through education, research, innovation and social leadership. In this educational-focused article, we discuss the need to provide students with the knowledge and skills needed to understand and address sustainability challenges. To do this, it will be very important to introduce sustainability – and also other related concepts – in university curriculums and, in particular, in Economic and Business courses, where future business leaders are currently being formed. For this reason, the article presented has a double objective, on the one hand, to answer this question: what are we teaching about this topic in universities and, in particular, in Economics and Business courses; and on the other hand: how are we integrating it into curriculum. The article reviews over time the main subjects that have covered this topic – from business ethics to ESG criteria, to CSR – and proposes different strategies to integrate this content into the curriculum.

The social responsibility of companies and organizations towards their stakeholders and towards the planet has been evolving and changing, as has geopolitics and the global economy based on the globalization of markets and capital. This article takes a prospective approach and presents the main challenges that companies and society currently face and the trends that companies and international think tanks are developing to face these challenges. Similarly, the European Union, with its taxonomy, requires companies a greater comply with the premises of the Green Deal. Civil society is also a key element when it comes to demanding more committed companies that can generate sustainable responses to global and local challenges. This involves having an education system that produces more aware and empowered citizens, capable of demanding companies to align their activities with sustainable development.

We start with the Brundtland Report’s (1988) definition of the concept of sustainability to analyze key aspects and look at the essence of human nature. We realize that the way to meet people’s needs is key to optimizing their quality of life, integrating us back into nature and achieving the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The strategy that must be followed is the cooperation between the interested parties by bringing the places of residence, work and consumption closer to being able to have meeting spaces in the proximity of neighborhoods, but also within companies, public administrations and non-profit entities. Given that the purpose is to meet basic human needs in the consumer society we have built, we identify the quality of life indicators that allow us to analyze the sustainability of organizations and products throughout their lifecycle. The application of the quality of life indicators can be essential in our individual and collective decisions of everyday purchasing, both public and private, to raise awareness and to build a strong path towards sustainability. It will also help us design sustainable public policies, including public procurement.

On the occasion of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), the authors take the opportunity to reflect on the recent evolution of the labour market in Spain and its labour relations, as well as its future challenges. A period that begins with a long phase of expansion of the Spanish economy and ends with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the middle, events with a relevant economic and labour effect such as (i) the relocation that has accompanied globalization, (ii) the migratory movements that have rendered us a host country, (iii) the violent impact that the Great Recession that began in 2008 and the pandemic of 2020, as well as (iv) the process of technological and digital transformation in which we are immersed. Despite this, the article does not have a vocation for the past and stops in the analysis on two great challenges. Job quality, a challenge that has been present in the last twenty-five years and that, far from being resolved, has become more urgent. And the digitization of employment, the great test of the Spanish economy and society that may be a turning point in our employment structure.

The EU remains well ranked in many indicators of global competitiveness, with extra-EU trade showing very good figures for both goods and services. This is in spite of the recent growth problems that have affected intra-European trade. The quality of European exports, the role of manufacturing in Europe and the capacity to sustain creative and innovative dynamics are all significant positive performers that must be kept in full swing, in the face of growing pressures from emerging economies in all these areas. To do this requires reinforcing the EU's position as a global actor, and involving a growing critical mass from within the productive sector. In addition, tendencies towards mega-regional trade agreements – with agreements projected on the Atlantic and Pacific stages – propose new ways of establishing rules in global trade, something that calls for a carefully composed response from the EU.

Although Wikipedia is an information source used extensively by students at all academic levels, it is hard to find higher education courses in which Wikipedia has a formal role in the learning process. Using the principal results of the Wiki4HE project as its foundation, this article briefly describes key factors that influence the decisions of academic staff regarding the use of Wikipedia in their teaching. In addition to technological factors relating to the user-friendliness and utility of the work platform this encyclopaedia provides, it also examines the academic and professional factors that have a greater influence: the perceived quality of Wikipedia, its social image, the 2.0 profile of academic staff and their collaborative attitudes, and institutional recognition of this resource.

The article has two main objectives: the first is to highlight the importance of the opinions academic colleagues have of Wikipedia, and the influence this has on decisions to use the encyclopaedia actively in teaching; the second is to show how this decision could be affected by access to a guide to good practice, one that systematically brought together the experiences of other academic staff and enabled an improvement in Wikipedia's social image.