ABSTRACT Reversing dominant unsustainable business practices requires a fundamental shift in how business practitioners perceive and enact sustainability. Management education is crucial for preparing prospective business professionals to lead this change, yet traditional curricula often perpetuate unsustainable paradigms. Transformative learning (TL) theory has emerged as a promising framework to shift business students' mindsets toward corporate sustainability (CS). Despite growing scholarly interest, research on how TL processes unfold and generate outcomes within sustainability management education is in its infancy and remains fragmented. This study fills this gap by conducting a systematic literature review and an inductive analysis to develop a comprehensive theoretical model of TL for CS. The model identifies and integrates key attributes of the TL process for CS and provides a fine‐grained list of potential TL outcomes, offering new insights for scholars and educators leveraging TL to foster sustainable business leadership and practice.
Ramírez‐Franco et al. (2026) studied this question.