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Book part
Publication date: 4 March 2024

Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas, Munish Thakur and Payal Kumar

The 170-year-old Master in Business Administration (MBA) program is becoming obsolete and inefficient to address today's real-world problems, and is facing mounting criticism from…

Abstract

Executive Summary

The 170-year-old Master in Business Administration (MBA) program is becoming obsolete and inefficient to address today's real-world problems, and is facing mounting criticism from business scholars, management deans, and academic scholars alike. Reviewing major criticisms, this chapter suggests a new design for the MBA program that will not only address the criticisms but also accept a paradigm shift that will spearhead it in coming decades. The redesigned MBA “structure” proposes a four-semester full-time program, during which each semester delves into deeper marketplace problems of increasing complexity (i.e., from simple to complex to unstructured to wicked problems) and deals with these problems with new levels of critical thinking skills and ethical reasoning processes tempered by corresponding entrepreneurial knowledge, skills, and values. The “content” of the redesigned program is anchored around five major themes of business learning: namely, intrinsic motivation management, creativity and innovation management, productivity management, revenue management, and eco-sustainability management, each geared to generate professional entrepreneurial knowledge, and skills and values urgently needed today. Numerous beneficial features of this newly redesigned integrated business management program (MBA) are also discussed.

Details

A Primer on Critical Thinking and Business Ethics
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-312-1

Book part
Publication date: 4 March 2024

Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas, Munish Thakur and Payal Kumar

We revisit the problem of redesigning the Master in Business Administration (MBA) program, curriculum, and pedagogy, focusing on understanding and seeking to tame its “wicked…

Abstract

Executive Summary

We revisit the problem of redesigning the Master in Business Administration (MBA) program, curriculum, and pedagogy, focusing on understanding and seeking to tame its “wicked problems,” as an intrinsic part and challenge of the MBA program venture, and to render it more realistic and relevant to address major problems and their consequences. We briefly review the theory of wicked problems and methods of dealing with their consequences from multiple perspectives. Most characterization of problems classifies them as simple (problems that have known formulations and solutions), complex (where formulations are known but not their resolutions), unstructured problems (where formulations are unknown, but solutions are estimated), and “wicked” (where both problem formulations and their resolutions are unknown but eventually partially tamable). Uncertainty, unpredictability, randomness, and ambiguity increase from simple to complex to unstructured to wicked problems. A redesigned MBA program should therefore address them effectively through the four semesters in two years. Most of these problems are real and affect life and economies, and hence, business schools cannot but incorporate them into their critical, ethical, and moral thinking.

Details

A Primer on Critical Thinking and Business Ethics
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-312-1

Book part
Publication date: 19 April 2024

Knut S. Vikør

While most West European nations were formed around pre-existing entities that could be called “countries” before the modern age, this was not the case in the Middle East. Some…

Abstract

While most West European nations were formed around pre-existing entities that could be called “countries” before the modern age, this was not the case in the Middle East. Some entities, like Egypt, did have a clear political and cultural identity before colonialism, others, like Algeria, did not. This chapter discusses the four states of the Maghreb: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, through the perspective of “country creation” going into and coming out of colonial rule. We can see here two “models” of fairly similar types of historical development, one showing a gradual process through a protectorate period to relatively stable modern nations, another through violent conquest and direct colonization ending in violent liberation and military and wealthy but fragile states. The article asks whether these models for the history of country creation and the presence or absence of pre-colonial identities can help explain the modern history and nature of these states in the Arab Spring and the years thereafter. Then, a more tentative attempt is made to apply these models to two countries of the Arab east, Syria and Iraq. While local variations ensure that no model can be transferred directly, it can show the importance of studying the historical factors that go into the transition from geographical region to a country with people that can form the basis of a nation.

Details

A Comparative Historical and Typological Approach to the Middle Eastern State System
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-122-6

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 22 December 2023

Rican Vue, Lucy Arellano Jr and Uma Mazyck Jayakumar

This review addresses how student organizations are conceptually framed in the scholarly literature—organizations the authors referred to as “ethnicized student organizations” or…

Abstract

Purpose

This review addresses how student organizations are conceptually framed in the scholarly literature—organizations the authors referred to as “ethnicized student organizations” or “ESOs,” which include both Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) student organizations and ethnically white student organizations such as mainstream fraternities/sororities and clubs that are normalized as not having a racial/ethnic affiliation.

Design/methodology/approach

Critical race theory informs the analysis of 175 articles that address ESOs from 2002 to 2016.

Findings

Analysis revealed that a majority of scholarship conceptualizes ESOs in ways that can minimize the role of institutional whiteness where they are positioned as either serving or hindering both individual students and institutional goals. Findings also reveal a smaller body of literature that emphasized institutionalized power dynamics and honors the transformative work of BIPOC students through ESOs.

Originality/value

Despite widespread public commitments to diversity among institutions, whiteness remains a core institutional presence. This study illustrates the relationships among student organizations, white supremacy and higher education transformation.

Details

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, vol. 43 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-7149

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 18 March 2024

Peter Smagorinsky

This study aims to consider the role of emotions, especially those related to empathy, in promoting a more humane education that enables students to reach out across kinship…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to consider the role of emotions, especially those related to empathy, in promoting a more humane education that enables students to reach out across kinship chasms to promote the development of communities predicated on a shared value on mutual respect. This attention to empathy includes a review of the rational basis for much schooling, introduces skepticism about the façade of rational thinking, reviews the emotionally flat character of classrooms, attends to the emotional dimensions of literacy education, argues on behalf of taking emotions into account in developmental theories and links empathic connections with social justice efforts. The study’s main thrust is that empathy is a key emotional quality that does not come naturally or easily to many, yet is important to cultivate if social justice is a goal of education.

Design/methodology/approach

The author clicked Essay and Conceptual Paper. Yet the author required to write the research design.

Findings

The author clicked Essay and Conceptual Paper. Yet the author required to write the research design.

Research limitations/implications

The author clicked Essay and Conceptual Paper. Yet the author required to write the research design.

Originality/value

The paper challenges the rational emphasis of schooling and argues for more attention to the ways in which emotions shape thinking.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

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