Dear Colleagues,
I would like to invite you to an All-Academy PDW dedicated to the issues of sustainable business education. The workshop will take place at the annual Academy of Management meeting in Chicago on Sunday, August 10, from 14:30 to 17:00, at Hyatt Regency Grand A. Please mark your calendars!
Workshop Overview
The main objective of this Professional Development Workshop is to attract the attention of business educators around the world to the growing mismatch between the needs of future generations of business managers and scholars and the predominant model of education in universities today. Many urgent calls for changing business education have emerged in the last decade. The focus of this PDW, though, is somewhat different, since its organizers and facilitators would like to consider the impacts of today's education on managers and scholars as it may affect future generations. To put it more directly, the main objective of this PDW is to ask and attempt to provide possible answers to the following questions: is current business education sustainable? Is it meeting the needs of current managers and scholars without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs? What should be done to ensure sustainability of business education? While many universities are incorporating concepts of sustainability to make their programs' content to be more "green", the organizers, facilitators, and participants of this PDW will argue that there is a strong need to question not only content but management processes and learning methods. Specifically, in the workshop, three aspects of what can help make business education more sustainable will be examined in detail: the management of business schools using sustainable approaches, the curriculum of business education, and the pedagogy of business education in the future.
1. The management of business schools using sustainable approaches
Highlights:
Globalization transformed the way business is done and, by default, (should transform) business education. For instance, as managerial functions become more interdependent, as international competition explodes, and as new markets open, business managers must adjust accordingly in order to be successful. These changes force organizations to develop new types of managers who can deal with the increasingly competitive, multilingual, and interdisciplinary issues businesses face nowadays. In order to succeed in preparing future managers and scholars who will be able to identify, understand and know how to interpret the predictably unpredictable future world, most contemporary business schools require massive reforms in their approaches to business education. Otherwise, the gap between the current state of business education (supply) and the needs of future managers and scholars (demand) will be growing with the speed of globalization itself, thereby rendering many business programs virtually unsustainable, and ultimately, obsolete.
2. The curriculum of business education in the future
Highlights:
The creation of a business education curriculum that prepares managers to lead successfully in a world that meets their immediate needs without compromising the needs of future generations has begun to occupy numerous schools of business and business scholars worldwide. Based on an analysis both of the sustainability and business literature as well as writings on curricular changes, there are at least five important components of a curriculum for sustainable business education that can be identified and will serve as the basis of the presentation in this section.
First and foremost, the SBE curriculum must incorporate a new worldview of the economy and the place of business within it. The second major curricular component is to incorporate an understanding and comfort with systems thinking and complexity – the interrelationships between the various parts of the economy, environment and social environments must be considered and addressed simultaneously. Third, innovation and design concepts are critical to a SBE curriculum. Fourth, the curriculum must incorporate a new approach to leadership. Finally, students pursuing a SBE curriculum should learn new approaches to organizational structures, governance and measurement as the boundaries between social, for-profit and non-profit organizations becoming increasingly blurred.
3. The pedagogy of business education in the future
Highlights: Sustainability can be an intriguing and challenging topic for both business school students and instructors, not only because the topic can cover wide swaths of social, environmental, and economic course subjects, but that it can also be approached from a wide variety of perspectives using multiple processes of instruction. Given its panoramic coverage, from a macro/global to a micro/personal view, sustainability perhaps should be taught and learned using more than one method, so that students are able to apply sustainability principles in the wide range of circumstances which they encounter throughout both their personal and professional lives. Of course, different sustainability topics, student levels, and instructor skills will likely be variables in the selection and application of these multiple instruction methods. This stream of the PDW will explore the opportunities and variables related to that important selection.
This PDW is aimed at business educators, business school administrators (deans, department chairs, etc.), junior faculty members, etc., across the functional, disciplinary, and geographic divide.
Organizers and Facilitators
Vlad Vaiman – Reykjavik University, Iceland – organizer
Torben Andersen – Denmark Technical University, Denmark – facilitator
Arno Haslberger – Webster University Vienna, Austria – facilitator
Slawomir Magala – Rotterdam School of Management, The Netherlands – facilitator
Scott Marshall – Portland State University, USA – facilitator
Michael Morley – University of Limerick, Ireland – facilitator
Nancy Napier – Boise State University, USA – organizer and facilitator
Mark Starik – George Washington University, USA – facilitator
Sully Taylor – Portland State University, USA – organizer and facilitator