Should responsible management education become a priority? A qualitative study of academics in Egyptian public business schools

Mohamed Mousa,Hiba K Massoud,Rami M Ayoubi,Hala A Abdelgaffar

doi:10.1016/j.ijme.2019.100326

Abstract

In this paper we investigate why responsible management education (RME) should become a necessity in Egyptian public business schools. A total of 80 academics from three universities were contacted and interviewed in six different focus groups. Three types of motives were identified from the interviews: extrinsic local, intrinsic school and extrinsic global, which inspired academics to believe in the importance of implementing RME in their business schools. Most respondents consider implementing RME is crucial to rebuilding their schools' legitimate and ethical role. Focusing only on academics rather than the executives of the selected business schools, is perceived to be a limitation. Moreover, addressing only public business schools and excluding private ones may limit the authors’ ability to generalize results. Thus, the authors of this paper invite researchers from the fields of cultural diversity, CSR, sustainability and higher education (HE) to collaborate in producing more interdisciplinary and/or trans-disciplinary papers on the same topic. Future researchers may seek to investigate the perceptions of management in the addressed business schools. Replicating this study with private business schools in Egypt may be considered another research opportunity. The educational authorities need to develop a framework for implementing and assessing RME in public business schools. This paper contributes by filling a gap in HE management, responsible leadership, and sustainability literature in which empirical studies on RME and the responsible practices of academics have been limited so far.

Highlights

Despite the fact that business schools have been perceived to be a change agent for many national and multinational enterprises, they are accused of neglecting climate change, human rights and other challenges of sustainability, cultural equality and social peace (Crane & Matten, 2010; Doherty, Meehan, & Richards, 2015)
The objective of this paper is to find an answer to the question of to what extent responsible management education (RME) should become a necessity for Egyptian public business schools
Despite the fact that the majority of respondents were uncertain about the definition, scope and purpose of RME, after explaining these notions by the authors, the majority if not all of the respondents agreed on prioritizing the implementation of RME in Egyptian public business schools

Summary

Introduction

Despite the fact that business schools have been perceived to be a change agent for many national and multinational enterprises, they are accused of neglecting climate change, human rights and other challenges of sustainability, cultural equality and social peace (Crane & Matten, 2010; Doherty, Meehan, & Richards, 2015). We will develop the capabilities of students to be future generators of sustainable value for business and society at large and to work for an inclusive and sustainable global economy. We will incorporate into our academic activities and curricula the values of global social responsibility as portrayed in international initiatives such as the UNGC. We will engage in conceptual and empirical research that advances our understanding about the role, dynamics and impact of corporations in the creation of sustainable social, environmental and economic value. We will interact with managers of business corporations to extend our knowledge of their challenges in meeting social and environmental responsibilities and to explore jointly effective approaches to meeting these challenges. We will facilitate and support dialogue and debate among educators, business, government, consumers, media, civil society organizations and other interested groups and stakeholders on critical issues related to global social responsibility and sustainability

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