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Introduction
Jennifer S.A. Leigh
Nazareth College, USA
Roz Sunley
University of Winchester, UK
Provide leaders for tomorrow who have been educated to think critically, to act ethically and always to question.
Louise Richardson, New Vice Chancellor of Oxford University at her installation, January 2016
This edited collection profiles cutting-edge approaches to teaching and learning for the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) that move beyond current discussions of sustainability and corporate social responsibility content, to include a wider lens that highlights the process of educating the next generation of responsible managers within and beyond the boundaries of higher education. The completion of this book coincides with the release of the newly negotiated United Nations Sustainable Development Goals or Global Goals. These inter-governmentally created goals released on 25 September 2015 follow up on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and form an ambitious backdrop for all nations, sectors, industries and organizations. This inspirational goal architecture offers an exceptional opportunity to fundamentally rethink management education.
Writers from around the world share their ideas and experience of the six Principles of the PRME (see page 10). A unique aspect of this book is that each chapter integrates original content from academic authors, together with commentary from practising managers. This collaborative approach allows integration of academic and business voices on education for responsible management, in essence modelling the PRME Principles 5 and 6, Partnership and Dialogue. In this introduction we begin by demonstrating the Principles through the book's fundamental framework, and discuss briefly the global need for management education reform. After discussing the book's theory-practice structure, we share the genesis of the book and then the subsequent themes that emerged across the chapters. We use these themes, as well as the PRME Principles, to introduce the chapters. With this thematic and Principles framework the chapters appear more than once, indicating the multi-dimensional character of the teaching and learning innovations.
Starting with Principle 5, our book models Partnership explicitly as the authors "interact[ed] with managers of business corporations to extend our knowledge of their challenges in meeting social and environmental responsibilities, and to explore jointly effective approaches to meeting these challenges" (PRME, 2015, p. 170). When crafting this new model of scholarship we sought to bring research and teaching practice to practitioners for their perspective, and practitioners to research in order to understand the opportunities and challenges instructors face. The depth of interactions in these chapters varied from co-authorship to consultation and testimonial to joint action research and co-instruction. These book chapters represent varied responses to effective approaches to "meeting these challenges" through minor and radical changes in our classroom practices.
We engaged Principle 6 by requesting the integration of academic and managerial perspectives in each chapter. This chapter structure of co-authorship "facilitate[d] and support[ed] dialogue and debate among educators, students, business,...civil society organizations,...and other stakeholders on critical issues related to global social responsibility and sustainability" (PRME, 2015, p. 170). In this book we move the dialogue beyond the business case for responsible management education (RME) to a conversation about how to educate managers and leaders, and the value of the numerous experiential, engaged and ethics focused approaches for learners. In the conclusion we reflect more on this approach and its upsides and downsides.
While many academic journals, websites, conferences and teaching resources testify to growing interest in PRME, attention has been focused on the initiative itself rather than how management educators prepare themselves, their students, the learning environment and their teaching resources for this arena of learning. Little is known about the pedagogical frameworks that underpin educating for PRME, or their assessment by practising managers. As growing numbers of academic institutions sign up to PRME—600 and counting—it is important that management educators understand that a variety of pedagogical approaches and strategies can provide effective learning experiences for PRME related topics beyond traditional instruction such as lectures and case studies. This text aims to provide comprehensive and detailed coverage of innovative pedagogical approaches being used around the world, drawing together leading thinkers and management educators in this field, to share their practice, primary research and scholarship on this topic.
Global needs
The urgency for management education reform is evident in recent global agreements such as COP21 and the United Nations' 21 October 2015 release of their 2030 agenda for people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership which highlighted their 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets (United Nations, 2015). Their report titled Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development outlines their aspirations: "We envisage a world in which every country enjoys sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth and decent work for all" (UN, 2015, p. 4). The UN acknowledges the fundamental role of commerce; however this vision will require a new level of commitment, dedication and collaboration:
Private business activity, investment and innovation are major drivers of productivity, inclusive economic growth and job creation. We acknowledge the diversity of the private sector, ranging from micro-enterprises to cooperatives to multinationals. We call upon all businesses to apply their creativity and innovation to solving sustainable development challenges
(UN, 2015, p. 29).
Article 12 of the COP21 agreement signed in December 2015 suggests "climate change education, training, public awareness, public participation and public access to information" are essential if this global framework is to be effective.
It is clear that now, more than ever, the global community is looking towards business and education to play their role in creating a just and fair economy, which in turn increases the urgency and relevance of management education reform. PRME offers business schools a systematic and holistic framework to revise both content and process. The book's 15 chapters with 44 contributing authors and practitioners, representing many places including Aotearoa (the nation also known as New Zealand), Colombia, India, Italy, Spain, South Korea, the United States and the United Kingdom, provide a truly international perspective on new ways forward.
Our book fosters a deeper understanding of the interdisciplinary nature of responsible management education. It goes beyond traditional management functions to explore a deeper more holistic formation of individuals who, as the next generation of global leaders, will be called cognitively, emotionally and behaviourally to respond to the complex challenges of our world. We argue that responsible management content is no longer enough, but that we must radically broaden the way in which we inspire and enrich the education of our future business leaders.
Structure of the book
To embody Principles 5 and 6, this book incorporates two types of chapter structure to capture the dual voices of academic educators and practising managers:
- Academic authors with practitioner commentary
- Co-authorship between academics and practitioners
These blended voices approaches seek to support a new model of academic writing that bridges the theory-practice divide, with conversation across practice lines. The practice voices in the chapters critically reflect on the utility of a particular academic idea, and draw out subsequent implications for teaching practice in higher education.
The book is designed for responsible management educators, deans, faculty developers and corporate trainers. Responsible management educators will benefit from the leading practices profiled in the chapters, all of which include sections with guidance for individual interpretation in the classroom. Anyone engaged in innovative pedagogy will find inspiration in the various models from around the globe. Deans supporting curricular reform will gain a deeper understanding of how practitioners view the relevance of the various pedagogical practices detailed in the book. We believe this academic-practitioner partnership in each chapter directly addresses the ongoing issue of relevance in the responsible management domain. Additionally, we hope it can help academic administration understand the benefits of such pedagogical practices and the resources needed to construct these learning environments. Lastly, we believe that corporate trainers will benefit from understanding the challenges inherent in responsible management education, which may stimulate new approaches in their own professional work.
Origins of the book
The vision and genesis of this book occurred in a small coffee shop in Copenhagen, following a Research in Management Learning and Education Unconference attended by both editors. We quickly entered an intense dialogue that evidenced Jennifer's broad scholarship of PRME and Roz's passion for practical pedagogy, which this book now reflects with the help of all our contributing authors.
The process has been somewhat akin to what is known in software development as the principle of "scrum", in that the book has developed iteratively and holistically with writers contributing their ideas towards the vision of a book on educating for responsible management, rather than content about the topic.
Emergent themes about responsible management teaching
Teaching responsible management (RM) topics is much more than curating the newest interdisciplinary knowledge on the various complex issues facing business in the 21st century. This book provides clear evidence that responsible management education (RME) requires us as educators to utilize more experiential and engaged approaches to help guide our learners and emerging leaders. We believe we must begin with the problem or responsibility focus, which then leads us to the appropriate teaching approaches, instead of taking RME and inserting it into our normal teaching protocols. The minimal training and attention given to pedagogy in many institutions, which is amplified by reward systems endorsing narrow disciplinary scholarship over investment in teaching, often thwarts change. Despite these barriers we see academics from all over the globe, and at all stages of their careers, innovating and experimenting with new RME teaching and learning methods and philosophies.
As we read the first drafts of the chapters at an intensive editing retreat we were excited by the emergence of several shared themes within the chapters—none of which was scripted within the strictures of the initial call. We share these themes below as a means of introducing the chapters. Following this section we classify chapters by PRME Principles for readers seeking this focus.
Out of the comfort zone—into the learning zone
It appears to be a fundamental process that RME topics, and the often purposefully disruptive teaching and learning processes highlighted in the book, move students out of their comfort zone and attempt to push them into a learning zone. This can also be a place of discomfort for instructors as students adjust to new boundaries of learning.
- This theme begins in Chapter 3 by Sunley and Coleman, "Establishing a foundational responsible learning mind-set for business in the 21st century", which discusses a pilot class where the instructor purposefully integrates liberal education practices into a first year undergraduate orientation course, which results in some students embracing, and some contesting, the need for more authentic engagement with their learning.
- Humphries, Casey-Cox and Dey in Chapter 4 titled "Choosing food yet consuming plastic: Learning to notice the difference in management education" catapult both instructors and students into the learning zone of Radical Human Ecology theory and an experiential exercise focused on modern lifestyles and plastic.
- Swamy and Keegan share in Chapter 12, "Developing responsible managers through service-learning at Goa Institute of Management, India", that service-learning in Goa, India continues to be a pedagogy for pushing student and academic boundaries.
- "Experiential learning through shared responsibility and risk" by Wagenberg and Gutiérrez in Chapter 5 brings moving students out of their comfort zone to the course level with a semester long entrepreneurship class where investment funds come from their personal funds in order to create higher accountability.
- Lastly, Tyran and Garcia in Chapter 14 protest the systematic omission of socioeconomic and cultural class issues in management education within their chapter "Management education and social class: Can managers do more to encourage social equality and meritocracy in the workplace?"
These chapters collectively contest fundamental assumptions about teaching and learning and disrupt the traditional roles of teachers and learners. Fortunately, the practitioner commentaries repeatedly validate the relevance of this approach in order to prepare 21st century responsible managers. Pushing, prodding and provoking students is not for the meek, as discussed in these chapters. It requires a high level of emotional and social intelligence on the part of instructors as well as modelling an element of risk taking.
Risk taking
Traversing into the learning zone away from our habitual practices, as instructors and students, requires risk taking. Despite institutional disincentives, academics in these chapters demonstrate creative risks in contesting the normative teaching and learning practices through themes discussed above and below. Humphries, Casey-Cox and Dey in Chapter 4 ask us to take risks by modelling how to bring our full identities into the classroom, which in their case includes their family roles as mothers, grandmothers and as social justice activists. Wagenberg and Gutiérrez in Chapter 5 detail their experiences of financial risk taking with their personally funded entrepreneurial student start-up companies in Colombia. Sunley and Coleman in Chapter 3 foster structured risk taking that pushes first-year students ("freshers") off campus and into the wider community. With risk comes reward, as it introduces more emotion into learning. Thus, we observe that RME educators seeking risk need high levels of emotional intelligence to manage their own and students' affective needs. Moving out of one's comfort zone by taking risks inherently evokes ambiguity.
Ambiguity
In numerous student quotes and practitioner comments throughout the book we see the challenge and need for RME to embrace ambiguity as a part of learning. This is typified by "It's been an incredible ride that brought forth just as many questions as there were answers". This quote from the Pragmatic Inquiry method is an example described in Kelley and Nahser's Chapter 8 "Integrating PRME principles in practice through pragmatic inquiry: A sustainable manageme...
