Principles for responsible management education in 2068

Abstract

The authors explore the potential relevance of the United Nations initiative Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) in 50 years’ time, including whether, and how, the six Principles on which it is based will change in any way.More than 10 years’ after the launch of PRME, the need to address sustainability in management education is perhaps becoming even more acute, in part due to indirect and contextual issues, including those relating to the environment and geopolitics, and in part due to more direct factors, such as the trends in artificial intelligence. In this context, the authors consider whether PRME might still exist in 2068 and, if so, what it might look like. The research is based on semi-structured discussions, based on the seven questions approach, involving the authors and participants who were senior managers, academics and students based in PRME signatory higher education institutions in China and/or had academic expertise in the area of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The principal results are the imagined institutional, educational, and occupational changes that may have an impact on the future of PRME. The main conclusions are an ongoing investigation of the ‘wicked problems’ as identified in the findings.