2.1. Flipped Learning
The existing instructor-centered or instructor-led classes presented as an education method suitable for industrial society are effective for mass communication of information, but are not suitable for leading creative knowledge and the socialization of knowledge required in the modern, information-oriented society [
19,
30]. Therefore, new educational approaches have been proposed to rectify the shortcomings of instructor-centered methods through the use of learner-centered methods, and flipped learning is a notable paradigm among these. It is a form of blended learning that inverts the order of lecture and assignment, often described more simply as ‘school work at home and home work at school’. In flipped learning, students study the instrumental content at home before the classroom, while the lecture time, which was traditionally conducted in the classroom, is now free to employ collaborative and hands-on activities such as discussions, exercise questions, and team projects in classrooms [
31]. Recently, flipped learning has emerged as an effective teaching method that increases students’ interaction and deeper engagement [
32].
Flipped learning has become popular since 2006, when it was used by Bergmann and Sams, chemistry instructors at Woodland Park High School in Colorado [
33,
34]. This high school, which is in a suburban area, had significant issues regarding absent students. These frequent absences led to difficulties for students to understand curriculum content and keep up with class progress. The two instructors took it upon themselves to develop the contents of the class in the form of video lectures and post them online. In other words, they used digital media to move the lectures to students’ homes and used interactive practices to move the traditional homework to inside their classroom. Through their pioneering efforts, their students were able to supplement their learning and their learning opportunities were enhanced. Flipped learning can also be termed “reversed instruction”, “blended learning”, “inverted classroom”, or “24/7 classroom” [
34].
Bishop and Verleger [
35] reviewed 24 studies and refined flipped learning, focusing on student-centered learning, which emphasizes “learning by doing”. The basis of flipped learning is active learning and builds over constructivism [
36]. It embraces problem-based learning, peer-assisted learning, cooperative learning, and collaborative learning under active learning [
37]. After all, flipped learning, which stresses the instructor’s role as a coach, is a pedagogical option to provide opportunities for interactive and dynamic engagement in the learning process [
38]. Their role is not lecturing all the answers in the class, but observing, supporting students and providing feedback [
20]. It is considered as an alternative to traditional teaching methods to improve the student’s motivation. The characteristics of flipped learning are identified with constructivist learning theory as better communication with the teacher during face-to-face class time; the participation of students in constructing their awareness; an emphasis on discovery, experimentation and verifying hypotheses; project work and enquiry-based learning methods; an understanding of the learning process through reflection and self-assessment [
39,
40,
41].
Such flipped learning has attracted attention among educators and researchers as an innovative model which uses various technologies to mediate between teaching and learning [
37,
42]. Previous studies have found that over 80% of undergraduate students prefer the flipped classroom over existing traditional teaching methods [
30,
43]. An important advantage of flipped learning is to promote learners’ cooperation and innovation [
44]. Furthermore, flipped learning was found to contribute positively to learners’ interaction and active learning [
45], creative thinking [
19], interests [
46], learning performance [
18,
47], and behavioral and emotional engagement [
48].
Despite the increase in literature regrading flipped learning, the research that applies flipped learning to business education has received relatively less attention [
49]—especially in the disciplines related to corporate sustainability. Therefore, in this study, a flipped classroom was used to teach corporate sustainability in a business course using the funnel experiment and the results are examined according to the educational effects.
2.2. The Funnel Experiment
The present study used Nelson’s funnel experiment as the pre-class learning material for flipped learning. This experiment is a well-known subject often used to illustrate the adverse effects of tampering or over-adjustment [
27,
50,
51,
52]. To do this, it uses a funnel installed downward and at a fixed height above a table (see
Figure 1). A point on the center of the table is designated as the target, the “bull’s eye”. This experiment involves repeatedly dropping a marble into the funnel and tracking its landing positions. Before releasing each marble, participants can manipulate the funnel to get the marbles to come to rest on the target. However, it is not easy to achieve the objective and get the marble to come to a stop on the target. Even if the funnel is aimed precisely at the target, there are always to a certain extent uncontrollable variables—as is often seen when the marbles hit the table and bounce and roll off in random directions and various distances.
Through the course of dropping the marbles, the following four adjustment rules are proposed for illustration purposes, which can be present in the common management behaviors of real workplaces [
26,
29,
53].
Rule 1 (no adjustment to the funnel apparatus) is to leave the funnel as it is without moving it even if the position where the marble has stopped is not on the target. That is, after aiming the position of the funnel over the target at the beginning, the funnel cannot be moved again.
Rule 2 (move the funnel apparatus relative to the last position) is to adjust the funnel position each time in the opposite direction and by the same distance from the target. In other words, after each marble is dropped and come to a rest, the error is measured as the distance and direction of the marble away from the target. Then, in an effort to reduce the error, the funnel is moved from its current position in the opposite direction by the same distance as the previous error. Thus, this rule compensates for relative errors in the previous drop each time.
The same as for Rule 2, Rule 3 (move the funnel apparatus relative to the target) is also to adjust the funnel position each time in order to compensate for any error in the dropped marble compared to the target. However, this rule refers to the original target as a basis for the adjustment rather than the last position of the funnel. In other words, we must first move the funnel to the original target point each time, and then move it by the same distance in the opposite direction to the error.
Rule 4 (place the funnel apparatus over the last position) is to aim the funnel at the spot where the marble last came to rest. Under Rule 4, we center the funnel right over the resting position of the marble that was just dropped.
For this study, we developed a simulation tool using Microsoft Excel (Redmond, WA, USA) to make it easier for students to understand, which can be found in the
supplementary material of this article. Using the material,
Figure 2 shows the result after 70 consecutive drops from each of the four rules simultaneously for the same case. This result is not static because the tool randomly generates each case, and it reflects the inability to predict the direction and distance of a dropped marble bounced and rolled off the table. The scatter plot visualizing the results due to the rules will help to illustrate the differences between each rule.
Since most people want to make an effort to improve the error of the marble position in relation to the target, they tend to not evaluate Rule 1 as a good strategy. However, as shown in
Figure 2, the results from the simulations are more disappointing in the case of Rules 2, 3, and 4 than Rule 1. Rule 1 is to not take any action even if an error occurs because there is no knowledge about the error and the error is not controllable. It is meaningful in that it accepts the error at the present level, acknowledges the cause of the error, and continuously adheres to or pursues the original purpose.
However, most experimental participants consider Rules 2, 3, and 4 to be more worthwhile with a view to reducing the uncontrollable errors due to the marble’s bouncing on the table. Deming [
26] calls the actions taken to improve errors despite no knowledge of the cause of the errors as “tampering”. To review the three rules one by one in terms of the real world, Rule 2 is similar to shooting. People tend to check the results of shooting that are away from the target and correct their targeting while shooting. They offset their targeting by the errors of the position of bullet holes in relation to the target and expect that they would hit the target in new attempt. It can be likened to leaders in organizations, who respond recklessly to every situation or immediately intervene even in simple mistakes.
Rule 3 creates the shape like a bowtie as the funnel position is adjusted in the opposite direction and distance from the original target. It can be compared to the competition between rival nations to develop nuclear weapons who are immediately counteracting the previous acts of the opponent. They only tend to intensify their competition while checking the nuclear arsenal of their opponent. Rule 3 can be found in the infinite price competition in business, the competitive development of natural resources, and competitively rising trade barriers.
Rule 4 is similar to the telephone game, in which one person whispers a message to another and the next person delivers the message to another consecutively. It can be seen that when the message has reached the final person, the message has been distorted to the extent that one cannot accurately guess the original message. The adverse effects of a train-the-trainer program without employing regular standards corresponds to the foregoing. In cases where new workers or unskilled workers of an enterprise are educated and they educate their junior employees as instructors, if there is no principle or standard, the original intent of the education will gradually be distorted. Such is the case when competing countries or enterprises benchmark success cases indiscriminately without principles; they achieve results similar to Rule 4. Also worth mentioning, a common point between Rule 3 and Rule 4 is to forget the original target and to solely depend on the previous result.
2.3. Corporate Sustainability Education
Organizations are the fundamental cell of the social world in which we live [
54,
55]. Thus, their activities affect the economic, environmental and social dimensions of their context [
56]. However, as business has been considered a major cause of social, environmental and economic problems since the 1990s, reflections have emerged on the traditional business model for investors focused on maximum short-term profits and the need for a more ethical and humane approach to business [
57,
58,
59].
These phenomena are widely acknowledged today in words such as corporate citizenship, business ethics, corporate social responsibility, sustainable business, and corporate sustainability. Although the diverse concepts express their unique meanings, they commonly emphasize an interrelation between the competitive advantage of company and social influence, as well as moral obligations for the environment, economy and society [
55,
57,
60,
61].
Corporate sustainability is defined as “meeting the needs of a firm’s direct and indirect stakeholders without compromising its ability to meet the needs of future stakeholders as well” [
62,
63]. The principal stakeholders involve shareholders, employees, clients, suppliers, pressure groups, communities, and so forth. Companies have taken environmental and social issues into consideration in an interdisciplinary way. Implementing corporate sustainability in an organization always entails seeking a renewal of strategic management [
63].
Traditional strategic management has a tendency to adhere to competitive perspectives that growth and survival only come from outperforming and beating competitors. From now on, competitive perspectives are not enough to embrace corporate sustainability. Corporate sustainability demands to be free from the competitive view that the aim is to fight against rivals for market share within a given industry. Coopetition, a compound term of cooperation and competition, even appears in many contemporary industries [
23,
64,
65]. The revolutionary mindset of cooperative competition starts with the recognition of sustainability-based strategies that most of one’s own success can depend on the success of others [
65,
66].
Business education seems still immature for teaching these trends to improve socio-environmental performance beyond economic performance, such as the paradoxical coopetition promoting cooperation between the competing firms [
21]. Schools are still used to teaching business as a “zero-sum” or “winner takes all” game and lack experience in considering it from the wider view of corporate sustainability. Therefore, it is indispensable that new teaching methodologies are developed to alleviate these issues and to promote the understanding of sustainability [
24,
67].
In this study, a flipped learning experiment was conducted to explore the alternative methodologies. To evaluate its effectiveness in sustainability education, the learning outcome was measured by students’ shifting cooperativeness and competitiveness mindsets. The learning outcomes associated with sustainability education have been focused on knowledge regarding sustainability as well as behavior towards sustainability and emphasized the affective attributes to connect both of them [
24,
68,
69]. Researchers commonly categorize the types of attribute needed to achieve success in a social dilemma context as cooperativeness and competitiveness [
70,
71]. The two concepts are salient by definition, “whereas cooperative and prosocial people tend to maximize joint outcomes and to foster equality between the self and the other; Competitive and proself people tend to maximize the relative advantage over the other’s outcome” [
71]. As both the cooperative and competitive mindset are composed of three sub-dimensions termed beliefs, behavioral tendencies, and feelings, they are reckoned to be robust learning outcomes.