Animal activism in the business school: Using fierce compassion for teaching critical and positive perspectives

Abstract

This article explores a practical approach to teaching animal ethics in food systems as part of a business course. We argue that tackling such complex and emotionally charged topics is vital to shifting unsustainable and hurtful behaviours towards more positive futures. Our teaching example outlines a pedagogy of courageously witnessing, inquiring with empathy and prompting positive action; an activist approach we term fierce compassion. These three layers blend positive and critical perspectives in a classroom to address contentious issues of large-scale industrial animal production hitherto largely neglected in a traditional business curriculum. While acknowledging that academic activism is controversial, we argue that fierce compassion – noticing the suffering that is remote and often systemically hidden – can inform and structure education towards more post-anthropocentric and just futures for all living beings – human and nonhuman alike.

Homo responsabilis as an extension of the neoliberal hidden curriculum: The triple responsibilization of responsible management education

“…In this article, we are not engaging in a traditional empirical study; instead, our arguments rely on long-term abductive reasoning and reflexive practice based on both: (1) our experience of developing and teaching the RMLE curriculum in our business school over a number of years, in line with many previous RMLE articles (e.g. Hawkins and Edwards, 2015; Skilling et al, 2022; Statler, 2014; Tallberg et al, 2022); and (2) confronting that experience with literature on responsibilization under neoliberalism (particularly Brown, 2015; Shamir, 2008). We agree with Blasco (2020) that while each business school has its HC, which is shaped by different constellations of actors and cultural context, it is still possible to diagnose more general elements of HC that constrain possibilities of transformation.…”

“…In line with RMLE studies building on own teaching experience (e.g. Parkes and Blewitt, 2011; Skilling et al, 2022; Statler, 2014; Tallberg et al, 2022), each of us then selected one illustration from our current teaching where we particularly notice how responsibility learning can too easily lead to excessive moral burdening of students as consumers and/or employees in particular. When we started working on the article, we received some information about a pilot course in entrepreneurship that one of us had approved as part of the school’s RMLE offering a few months earlier.…”