Embedding responsible management education – Staff, student and institutional perspectives

Abstract

There is a resurgence in responsible management education, with business schools' considering its adoption as vital for business courses. Nevertheless, initiating institution-wide changes for responsible management education is an inherently complex activity in business schools, requiring not only revisions in their curriculum, but also sustained faculty and institutional support. This paper explores this complexity in one UK business school, a signatory to the Principles of Responsible Management Education, who have commenced a programme of change in RME. Based on primary data obtained from two workshops with the business schools' faculty, a student survey and a systematic analysis of the curriculum of four undergraduate degrees and two postgraduate degrees, we find that misalignment between faculty skills and institutional bureaucracy, together with an inconsistent focus on responsible management across the curriculum raises key challenges for its adoption. We extend the premise that significant change in RME, requires fundamental changes of a business school's own ethos of what responsibility means to itself.

Reducing carbon emissions in business through Responsible Management Education: Influence at the micro-, meso- and macro-levels

“…The aims of Responsible Management Education share many similarities with those of Education for Sustainable Development in equipping students with the requisite knowledge and understanding to deal with sustainability issues within business as well as contributing to progress against the Sustainable Development Goals though business activities (Parkes, 2017). Here Responsible Management Education can be defined as any teaching, research or enterprise activities in the areas of ethics, sustainability and responsible corporate practices, which business schools engage with in order to develop a more responsible strategic focus (Beddewela et al, 2017).…”

Business School Professors’ Perception of Ethics in Education in Europe

“…We wished to carry out a cross-cultural comparison to see to what extent national culture explains the perception about the importance of teaching ethics. According to the literature, when students are educated about ethics, ethics is more likely to be properly managed, and global business practices achieve better results [45]. Globalization has meant that organizations have to face increasing challenges to adapt effectively to different cultures and understanding that some cultures have strong ethical principles is essential.…”

Cooking up a Course: Teaching sustainable marketing at MBA

“…Even though sustainability related skills are viewed as increasingly important for managers (Fisher, Bonn 2017), academic business programs are reluctant to adopt sustainability related content and only a small portion of marketing courses is devoted to sustainability education (Barber et al 2014;Fisher, Bonn 2017;Friel, McLaughlin 2013;Perera, Hewege 2016). Especially business schools tend to base their programs on a businesscentred worldview in which the success of society depends on the success of companies (Beddewela et al 2017) and in which the success of companies equals profit. For decades international business schools have focused on the shareholder model that reduces the success of companies to quarterly financial returns and stock market value (Barber et al 2014;Exter et al 2013).…”