Reshaping Management Education at the Time of the Anthropocene: A Proposal

Abstract

Corporations are in a legitimacy crisis. They face growing concerns about their role and responsibilities in driving modern societies beyond most of the planetary boundaries. This legitimacy crisis of the core global business organizations has not left its educational institutions unscathed, and business schools have also been regularly criticized, especially in the last few years. Both corporations and business schools have developed and integrated frameworks, such as CSR or PRME as attempts to answer these concerns. The results remain, however, disappointing and a paradigm shift has yet to take place (Pirson, 2020, Tourish, 2020, Snelson-Powell et al. 2020). As an attempt to renew management education and to restore the legitimacy of business schools, propositions based on a deep paradigm shift have been recently published. Among them, the humanistic narrative developed by Pirson appears to be innovative and relevant (see Pirson, 2020, Pirson & Lawrence, 2010). In this paper, we aim to contribute to this debate by proposing a practical model of Humanistic Management Education (HME), organized around and organizing three interdependent dimensions – Youths, Organizations, and Technological Changes – within glocal dynamics. HME aims to transcend utilitarian goals and enables the development of every individual’s potential to live together sustainably and increase the quality of social ties. We argue that such an approach may support management that allows human organizations to face responsibly the challenges of the Anthropocene.