Developing Sustainable Strategies: Foundations, Method, and Pedagogy

Abstract

While the United Nations Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) is a very positive development in the horizon of management education over the last decade, there are still many significant challenges for engaging the mind of the manager in ways that will foster the values of PRME and the UN Global Compact. Responsible management education must address three foundational challenges in business education if it is to actualize the aspirations of PRME: 1) it must confront the cognitional myth that knowing is like looking, 2) it must move beyond mere analysis to systems thinking, and 3) it must transition from a values-neutral stance to a values-driven stance. Using Developing Sustainable Strategies, an MBA practicum in the Sustainable Management Concentration at DePaul University's Kellstadt Graduate School of Business, as a case study, this article identifies the ways in which Pragmatic Inquiry can addresses these challenges. The method of Pragmatic Inquiry prepares students to become responsible managers, to develop sustainable strategies, and to be creators of shared value. Built from the philosophical foundations of American pragmatism and Bernard Lonergan's critical realism, Pragmatic Inquiry is an effective method and pedagogy for responsible management education.

Understanding Responsible Management: Emerging Themes and Variations from European Business School Programs

“…As an increasing number of worldwide organizations are moving toward integrating responsible management principles, scholars have turned their attention toward business schools to examine how managers are currently educated and how business schools' curricula could encourage such management practice (Gosling and Mintzberg 2004;Mintzberg 2004;Bennis and O'Toole 2005;Goshal 2005;Waddock 2007;O'Toole and Bennis 2009;Alcaraz andThiruvattal 2010, Martell Sotomayor 2011;Silver 2012;Kelley and Nahser 2014). A growing number of academicians and business leaders urge for a change in education to better prepare future managers and leaders, by supporting responsible management in business education:…”

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“…However, pragmatism can serve as a theoretical bridge that connects rationality to ethical considerations to support rational choice by providing "effective desires [that] furnish us with our working capabilities" (p. 1790). Kelley and Nahser (2014) argue that pragmatic thought is a pedagogical tool that "prepares students to become responsible managers, to develop sustainable strategies, and to be creators of shared value" (Kelley & Nahser, 2014, p. 631). This concept not only supports the ethical value of the pragmatic ethical perspective as compared to utilitarianism, Kantianism, altruism, and justice models but lends potential to rational ethics (Johnson, 2015).…”

Accounting for Sustainability: Episteme Change and Ontological Plurality

“…Kelly and Nahser [2014] blame a 'scientifi c' approach for the tendency of business schools to seek to discover causal determinants of corporate behaviour in patterns and laws [Ghosal, 2005]. Similarly, Von Hayek [1975] identifi ed a 'scientistic' attitude underpinning a propensity for economics to imitate the physical sciences as well as a phenomena called 'physics' envy by Bennis and O'Toole [2005, p. 98].…”