Search results

This paper aims to use the origin story of Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management as a foil for unpacking the tensions between deep disciplinary specialization and liberal education in business schools in Canada and the USA. Ultimately, the paper reveals that those tensions are not irreconcilable, and that through the fortunes of historical contingencies and deliberate decision-taking, a faculty can embrace the benefits of both breadth and depth.

The paper proposes a critical organizational history of management education through a case study. By drawing on secondary literature and archival sources, the authors focus on moments in business education, such as the founding of the Wharton School of Business, the release of the Carnegie and Ford Reports and the trend towards increased specialization to situate a case study of Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Management.

The authors find that the evolution of business education in North America from its broad, liberal origins towards narrow, specialization has come at a cost to some of the benefits of business and management education. An alternative approach, one reflected in the design of Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management, its programme offerings and its interconnection with other disciplines, enables the advantages of deep disciplinarity to co-exist (and cross-inform) with the advantages of liberal approach to knowledges.

The Dalhousie model offers business schools an example of a faculty that balances the rich insights of liberal interdisciplinarity with the need for sophisticated approaches to more granular, often disciplinary, topics. In addition, the paper offers the story of a multidisciplinary management faculty, some explanation for how that faculty was maintained despite pressures towards specialization; and in doing so, contributes to the limited historical research of management education, particularly in Canada, post-2000.

This paper aims to present the progress of the implementation of sustainability in business schools in line with the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) and its principles of responsible management education.

By analyzing the content of the Sharing of Information on Progress reports from PRME signatories, this study identified significant developments in the strategies business school use to implement sustainability. However, it seems that a framework that business schools can apply to accomplish that goal is still lacking. This paper proposes a framework that addresses four components of the integration process and stresses the important role of stakeholders. The authors discuss the results from 2021 in comparison to the results of a previous analysis of the first 100 signatories from 2010 and analyze the findings in relation to the developed framework.

This study shows that business schools have improved their sustainability engagement in many areas (e.g. education offerings and teaching methods, campus practices and engaging stakeholders). However, less attention has been paid to other aspects, such as reviewing and assessing, capability development or communication, which could slow the transformation process. The authors discuss further implications of the findings for enhancing the PRME signatories’ ability to implement the underrecognized aspects.

While the analysis focuses on the status and progress of the integration of PRME within business schools during the past decade, the framework may enable higher education institutions to analyze their potential to implement change and plan future transformation strategies.

Accreditation represents a quality of academic standards and validation, and its impact on business schools is multifaceted. Accredited institutions are widely acknowledged for their higher quality, financial stability, stakeholder acceptance and overall growth compared to non-accredited educational institutions. Given these positive outcomes, this study aims to explore the role of accreditation in fostering financial innovation and business sustainability.

The study used a qualitative design to understand this relationship, engaging 36 leaders from Advance Collegiate Schools of Business-accredited business schools in the Gulf Cooperation Council region as participants to collect data. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to gain an in-depth understanding of the topic. Data were analysed using the content analysis method.

That accreditation significantly influences the business sustainability of these schools. In addition, although the direct impact of accreditation on financial innovation may not be immediately apparent, it was observed that financial inflows experienced remarkable growth after obtaining accreditation.

While the effects of accreditation have been thoroughly researched, its influence on financial innovation and business sustainability remains unexplored. This study aims to discern if accredited educational institutions excel in financial innovation and maintaining sustainable business practices. These findings have important implications as they guide university administrators to maximise the benefits of accrediting their business schools.

This paper explores who among the AACSB categorization of academics conducts the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research within business schools and how AACSB-accredited business schools capture SoTL research as part of their portfolio of intellectual contributions.

This study adopts a qualitative-method research design by collecting primary data through surveys, semi-structured interviews and secondary data in policy documents focused on AACSB-accredited business schools in Canada and the United States.

The findings establish that scholarly and practice academics who possess rigorously acquired research skills due to their terminal degrees are most likely to conduct SoTL research. The results also reveal an even split among respondents regarding whether their AACSB-accredited business school captures SoTL with their journal ranking frameworks.

Based on the findings, two recommendations are offered to foster more SoTL research at AACSB-accredited schools. First, higher education leaders (e.g. business school deans) can further inculcate a culture of SoTL research at the department and institutional levels by creating communities of practice (CoPs). Second, AACSB-accredited business schools could adopt more inclusive journal ranking frameworks to capture better and incentivize SoTL research.

This is the first known study to explore how AACSB Standards 3 and 8 are implemented and operationalized regarding SoTL research. Understanding how these standards are adopted and implemented could help institutional leaders, standard setters and administrators better facilitate SoTL research.