1st Edition
Transformative Management Education The Role of the Humanities and Social Sciences
Due to the recent global financial crises, academic business schools have come in for much criticism, having, in the eyes of the public, failed in their responsibility to society by teaching future managers only how to increase their personal gain without any consideration as to their actions’ social and cultural consequences. Realising that there is a pressing need to innovate their educational offers accordingly, business schools are beginning to turn to the humanities and social sciences to improve on the understanding and thus the teaching of management.
This book is the result of an empirical study conducted at eight academic business schools that either already practise or are beginning to practise linking management education to the humanities and social sciences. Gathered mostly in interviews our research team conducted during site visits to these schools, the material presented shows three major fields of concern: how to shift the focus from instrumental to transformative learning, how to reframe the concept of disciplinary subject matter towards a more relational understanding of knowledge—especially in the light of the impact digitalisation is having on education—and how to address the organisational, as well as the political consequences of management education turning towards the inclusion of the humanities and social sciences strategically. The findings indicate that the humanities and social sciences indeed offer knowledge which can significantly help management education with meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century.
Innovating management education by making it part of its program portfolios proves a challenge in and of itself in the face of a university system which still determinedly clings to disciplinary segregation. Reforming management education towards an engagement with fields of knowledge traditionally at best ignored and at worst vilified as being completely useless in the "real world" may therefore place academic business schools at the forefront of a movement that is beginning to reshape the educational landscape as a whole. This book will be of value to researchers, academics and students in the fields of business, management studies, organisational studies and education studies.
Foreword, by William M. Sullivan
1. Introduction:
"There Is Something About the Humanities. . .": Transformative Management Education Meets the Humanities and Social Sciences
1.1: The Point of Departure: From the Carnegie Report of 2011 to the "Humanities’ Business" Research Project
1.2: Consulting the Map: Historical and Research Notes
1.3: On the Way: The "Humanities’ Business" Project’s Research Design
1.4: Nearly There: Deciding on Narrative Strategies for the Report
1.5: The Point(s) of Arrival: Key Findings and Chapter Structure
2. Transforming Education: Philosophies and Practices
2.1: "The Primary Focus Is Not the Subject, but the Student": Instrumental versus Transformative Education
2.2: "So Basically I Teach Myself": Transformative versus Instrumental Teaching
2.3: "There Is No Gap Between Theory and Practice": The Role of Professional Practice in Academic Management Education
2.4: "Knowledge You Can’t Google": Practices of Teaching Integrated Management Education
2.5: "Transformative Humanities"? Conclusions and Suggestions
2.5.1: Students’ Perspective: Start with the First Year
2.5.2: Teachers’ Perspective: Dialogical Interaction and ‘Presencing’
2.5.3: Perspectives of/on Professional Practice: A Critical Approach
3. Transforming Knowledge: Towards Tomorrow’s Needs
3.1: "A Successful Catch-all of Nothingness": Concepts of Management
3.2: The Something-Factor: What the Humanities (Are Supposed to) Know about Management and Business
3.3: Discipline Matters: Concepts of Integrated Knowledge
3.4: The Skills of Integration: Conclusions and Suggestions
3.4.1: Looking for Management: An Appeal to Business Schools
3.4.2: Leaving the Ivory Tower: An Appeal to the Humanities and Social Sciences
3.4.3: De-Sexing the Cherry: The Knowledge of Concepts
4. Transforming Business Schools: Strategic Challenges
4.1: "The Behavioural Complexity of Professors" and Other Internal Challenges
4.2: "We Need to be Able to Sell It": External Strategic Challenges
4.3: "Politics Is Everywhere": Conclusions and Suggestions
4.3.1: Academic Governance Revisited: De-Managerialising Faculty
4.3.2: Quality Management Revisited: Measuring Literacies4.3.3: Business Schools’ Branding Revisited: Showcasing Transformative Management Education
5. Conclusion: A Business Schools’ Guide to the Galaxy of Transformative Management Education
6. Coda: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
7. Afterword, by Matt Statler
8. Appendix: Panorama of Cases in Fact Sheets
9. Bibliographical References
Biography
Ulrike Landfester is a Professor of German Language and Literature at University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
Jörg Metelmann is Associate Professor of Culture and Media Studies at the University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
"Beyond the hollow rhetorics of ‘innovation’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘sustainability' that marks the contemporary business school, Transformative Management Education: The Role of the Humanities and Social Sciences demonstrates that there is hope for a better way of educating students of management, entrepreneurship and economics. Ingeniously structured in genealogical, diagnostic and programmatic sections, this book offers a cornucopia of historical, empirical and future-oriented insights and reflections on what can be done at, and with, management education. I highly recommend it to teachers, university managers and everyone who is interested in rethinking and reinventing a key institution of our time."
—Timon Beyes, Professor for Sociology of Organization and Culture, Leuphana University Lüneburg and Co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Reinventing Management Education
