Particularly in Europe, which suffered much of the fallout, revelations of reckless management in the financial industry — a main employer of business school graduates — and the devastating consequences for taxpayers and working people have led to something of a backlash. Students and employers have started to demand that business educators pay more attention to long-term social and ethical sustainability.

In responding to this, business schools are following, not leading, the trend.

Pamela Hartigan, director of the Skoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University’s Said Business School, said that much of what was being taught in the field of social entrepreneurship — market-driven business with a social end — was at the behest of students.

“We are putting down the tracks as the train is coming,” she said.

The increased emphasis on teaching sustainable or more socially responsible business practices is driven by larger cultural changes, not the schools themselves, said Daniela Papi, who worked for nongovernmental organizations in Cambodia for six years before heading to the Skoll center to join a master’s program last year. She is now a consultant for the center.

“M.B.A.s are changing; they will have to, to survive,” she said.

Experts say that students interested in social business remain a minority of M.B.A. applicants, reflecting both the typically high cost of tuition and the fact that universities often offer management programs more suited to the nonprofit sector outside their M.B.A. programs.

Still, Professor Hartigan estimated that half the M.B.A. students at the Said school were interested in the subject.