Search results

In this chapter, the author underscores the crucial role of the international community in promoting and facilitating responsible management education in business and management schools, as well as higher educational institutions. The chapter highlights the initiative on the Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME), which has been supported by the United Nations and adopted by hundreds of schools and universities worldwide. The author explains that PRME aims to equip students with the necessary knowledge, skills, mindset and capabilities to bring about rapid and scalable improvements to society. Given that today's students are tomorrow's business leaders, policymakers and organizational heads, investing in responsible management education is crucial. This chapter emphasizes that responsible educational efforts can produce better citizens and future leaders, enabling them to create the world that we aspire to live in. This chapter underscores the importance of global collaboration and commitment to promoting responsible management education. When working together to prioritize ethical and sustainable practices in business and management education, we can foster a new generation of leaders who are equipped to drive positive change in the world.

Capitalism is under siege (Porter & Kramer, 2011), and business schools are under fire (Amann et al., 2013). So, management and leadership education in higher education institutions should be reinvented under the more challenging era of capitalism. How then can business schools cope with these challenges and contribute to global endeavor for making sustainable capitalism? In this context, there is thus reason for the following three core concerns that new understanding of management and leadership education is required. First, shortcomings of contemporary capitalism lead to failures of responsible management. Second, ethical failure of management leadership is a pressing issue. Third, academic responsibility under the new capitalism remains unexamined. Based on these three core concerns, we seek to generate inclusive insights into the educational embeddedness of management and leadership members and the consequences of such embeddedness on managerial processes, structures, and outcomes under contemporary capitalism.

Research into responsible management education has largely focused on the merits, attributes, and transformation opportunities to enhance responsible business school education aims. As such, a prominent part of the literature has occupied itself with examining if responsible management modules are inherently considered a non-crucial element of the curriculum and determining the extent to which business schools have introduced such learning content into their curriculum. However, there has been scant research into how to apply novel teaching approaches to engage students and promote responsible management education endeavours. As such, this paper seeks to address this gap through the development of a teaching framework to support educators in designing effective learning environments focused on responsible management education. We draw on constructivist learning theories and Lego Serious Play (LSP) as a learning enhancement approach to develop a pedagogical framework titled The Educator's LSP Journey. LSP is chosen due to its increasing application in learning environments to help promote critical discourse, and engage with highly complex problems, whether these are social, economic, environmental, or organisational. Therefore, this paper contributes to the responsible management education discourse by providing educators with a practical methodology to support student engagement and co-creation of knowledge by fostering exploratory learning environments and enriching the practices of active learning communities.

This paper proposes the development of a student-led pedagogic tool in an undergraduate development economics module offered in a UK business school. It uses the developing country informal sector as an illustrative example. The informal sector plays a huge role in contributing towards job creation, income generation, and poverty alleviation in developing countries. The overall goal of the tool is to propose recommendations of mechanisms that can be used to incentivise the informal sector to embed responsible management in their practice. The tool is to be jointly developed with students and other stakeholders in a developing country. Students are expected to acquire skills related to researching pertinent topics in the development economics field, critiquing policies and frameworks developed by global intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations, and engaging with global stakeholders who are directly and indirectly impacted by these policies and frameworks. The paper highlights the connection between development economics, the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the United Nations (UN) Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME). The development of the tool also provides an avenue for business school students to bridge current gaps in educational institutions in developing countries in engaging with the PRME. The activities discussed in the paper present opportunities for business schools to be innovative and flexible in how they deliver responsible management education. This can ultimately expand the diversity of stakeholder involvement in contributing towards the SDGs and responsible management.

In the face of pressing global challenges, the role of educational institutions in fostering responsible management practices has never been more crucial. Drawing on the preceding chapters, this concluding contribution explores the nexus of innovation and social impact within the realm of responsible management education (RME), offering a synthesis of perspectives and strategies for driving positive change at micro-, meso-, and macro level. The authors argue that the frequent inertia of higher education institutions must be overcome with urgent action in reshaping curricula, teaching methodologies, and institutional policies to foster sustainable development and effect positive social impact. The chapter emphasizes the role of innovation in education and the development and diffusion of responsible business practices as a means to catalyze systemic change.

This paper aims to find an answer to the questions: To what extent is the implementation of responsible management education (RME) perceived to be adequate for developing responsible leadership skills among business school students? How should it be used effectively to guarantee such an outcome?

The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 management educators working at three public business schools. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the collected data.

The findings show that the implementation of RME alone is not adequate to ensure the development of responsible leadership skills among students in business schools. However, management educators do perceive it as a considerable step towards that outcome if accompanied with internship and training opportunities to exercise and observe how social roles and activities are practiced in business, not-for-profit and civil society organisations.

This study is a pioneering attempt to address the relationship between RME and developing responsible leadership skills among students in non-Western business schools.

This chapter discusses the challenges and opportunities that exist in the realm of management and business education. The author provides an in-depth analysis of the history and development of management education, highlighting the changes and evolution that have occurred over time. Furthermore, the author discusses the dominant paradigm that has shaped management education and the issues that have arisen as a result. Specifically, the author identifies the problems that have contributed to financial crises and business failures, demonstrating the inadequacies of the current approach. Finally, the author argues for the need to revolutionize the current management education system. This involves a significant departure from the traditional methods of teaching and learning, and instead emphasizes the development of critical thinking skills, problem-solving abilities and adaptability in a rapidly changing business landscape. This chapter challenges the current state of management education and offers a compelling call to action for reform. By addressing the issues that have plagued the field and proposing innovative solutions, the author aims to pave the way for a more responsible management education system.

Despite long-standing efforts, higher education's transformation to meet the challenges of the 21st century and foster sustainable development remains elusive, particularly in management education. responsible management education (RME) emphasizes sustainability, ethics, and responsibility in business, yet progress is slow. This book, stemming from the 9th Responsible Management Education Research Conference, explores innovative approaches to RME. The book is divided into three parts, delving into curriculum design and policy directives, teaching methods, and insights from business practice. The book advocates for a paradigm shift in education, emphasizing the need for higher education institutions to embrace sustainable development principles. It provides inspiration for educators and practitioners to incorporate responsible management education into various contexts, aiming to drive positive societal change and shape future leaders with a social impact.

Business schools are vital in promoting responsible management (RM) – a management grounded in ethics and values beneficial to a wide array of stakeholders and overall society. Nevertheless, due to deeply embedded institutional modernistic dynamics and paradigms, RM is, despite its importance, repeatedly marginalised in business school curricula. If students are to engage with RM thinking, then its occlusion represents a pressing issue. Drawing on the United Kingdom (UK) business school context, this paper aims to examine this issue through a framework of institutional theory and consider the role played by (modernistic) institutional accreditation and research assessment processes in marginalisation of RM.

This study used an exploratory qualitative research method. Data were collected from 17 RM expert participants from 15 UK business schools that were signatories to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education through semi-structured in-depth interviews and analysed using the six phases of Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis.

The study identifies a potent institutional isomorphic amalgam resulting in conservative impacts for RM. This dynamic is termed multiple institutional isomorphic marginalisation (MIIM) – whereby a given domain is occluded and displaced by hegemonic institutional pressures. In RM’s case, MIIM operates through accreditation-driven modernistic-style curricula. This leads business schools to a predilection towards “mainstream” representations of subject areas and a focus on mechanistic research exercises. Consequently, this privileges certain activities over RM development with a range of potential negative effects, including social impacts.

This study fills an important gap concerning the need for a critical, in-depth exploration of the role that international accreditation frameworks and national institutional academic research assessment processes such as the Research Excellence Framework in the UK play in affecting the possible growth and influence of RM. In addition, it uses heterotopia as a conceptual lens to reveal the institutional “mask” of responsibility predominantly at play in the UK business school context, and offers alternative pathways for RM careers.

The UK government has taken the lead in accelerating the capacity of higher education to engage with sustainability accounting and adopting a novel systematic approach toward a collective implementation of and contribution to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The UN SDG 16 “Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions” promotes the (re)building of effective and accountable institutions. In line with the institutional logics metatheory, we provide empirical evidence on how the alignment between social mechanisms alongside the reputation of higher education institutions (HEIs) and SDGs on transparent and responsible service (SDG 16) affect the students' overall experience. Using a sample of 142 UK HEIs, interpretative content analysis and ordinary least squares, the results show that integrating HEIs' responsible-oriented research agenda proactively with high sustainability reputation adds significantly to greater student satisfaction.