Tomorrow's Business Leaders Research Articles

On educating ethics in the AI era: why business schools need to move beyond digital upskilling, towards ethical upskilling

Uncritical assumptions about the perfect rationality of AI—coupled with the single-minded focus on profit maximization and rational efficiency in organizations—have resulted in business leaders believing that they can delegate critical morally sensitive decision-making to AI, potentially resulting in harmful outcomes. As we will argue, business education thus far has been largely complicit in enabling such harmful aspects of AI-driven decision-making in organizations. This needs urgent remediation. Our opinion article aims to clarify what exactly we—as management scholars and practitioners—have been getting wrong thus far, and how we might ensure that the business leaders of tomorrow are well-equipped to step up and guard against the irresponsible and harmful use of intelligent technologies.

Gender effects of project assessment: Evidence from a market simulation

We investigate how males and females perform as entrepreneurs and traders using information on the trading activities of students participating in a business game in two university courses. In one course, students create entrepreneurial ventures that they pitch to their peers. These students are issued securities of all the ventures and trade in a simulated market based on information revealed in the classroom pitches. In the second course, students trade these ventures in a separate simulated market but do not see pitches and trade based on anonymized written information about the ventures. We measure student performance as entrepreneurs by the traded prices of their proposed ventures in the online market and performance as traders by the value of their closing portfolios. In the course where traders observe the sales pitches of the entrepreneurial teams, we find that both male and female traders buy and sell at lower prices when the female share of the venture team increases. Females buy at higher prices and sell at lower prices than males and end up with lower portfolio values than males. None of these results obtain in the course where trading is based on the same information delivered in written and anonymized form and the gender composition of the venture teams is not known. These findings provide insight on how the assessment and performance of tomorrow's business leaders is affected by environments involving direct sales pitches.

PRME: Building a global movement on responsible management education

This article aims to set out the history and context of the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) as a background to the papers in this special issue, as well as provide some insights into plans for the future development of PRME. In doing so, it draws on material first published in a recent book chapter, “Development of responsible management education and the Principles for Responsible Management Education in context” by Hayes, Parkes and Murray (2016) in Sunley and Leigh eds (2016). In the mid-2000s, the UN Global Compact and its academic community recognised that the business leaders of tomorrow would need to play a critical role in tackling sustainability challenges. The response was the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative, launched in 2007 by former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with a mission to inspire and champion responsible management education, research and thought leadership globally. Ten years later, PRME has become the largest organized relationship between the United Nations and management-related academic institutions, business schools and universities, and the initiative has grown to over 650 signatories from more than 85 countries across the world. PRME is, first of all, a global call to action based on six Principles (PRME Principles, 2008). Management-related educators are called on to enable current and future leaders to generate sustainable value for business and society at large (Principle 1 - Purpose); management-related higher education institutions are called on to incorporate into academic activities and curricula values of global responsibility (Principle 2 - Values). To support the transformation of management education, PRME has developed into a global network-based initiative. This article reviews the evolving network-based structure over the past ten years and presents an outlook of the initiative’s priorities during the next decade, most notably in supporting to achieve the agenda set out by the Sustainable Development Goals

An Empirical Analysis on Challenges and Opportunities Faced by Higher Education System with Special Reference to Management Institutions

Higher education system is essential for social, national and economic development of the country. India's higher education system is the third largest in the world. Higher education especially in management in India stands at a crossroads because of diverse and technological global economy, so change in the traditional university structure of educating and training tomorrow's business leaders is needed. To provide our students with talents necessary to compete in this marketplace, we must recognize and accept the challenges and opportunities before us. The existence of an institution will depend upon the education quality and ability to cope up with new challenges and opportunities. If we, as academicians, today accept the challenges before us, there is no reason we cannot sustain our position as the preeminent provider of high-quality educational services for decades to come. So, it is an immediate requirement to shape the management education in accordance with the global changes to improve competitiveness Therefore, in the present paper, an effort has been made to examine the current management education system and to find out challenges and opportunities for the improvements in the present management education system so that it can respond to current paradigms.

Hostile territory: employers’ unwillingness to accommodate transgender employees

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of employers’ responses to the restroom requests of transgender employees, and to assess the ability as educators to reduce transphobia in the students.Design/methodology/approach– Subjects were 194 undergraduate business students at a medium-sized public university in the northeastern USA who were enrolled in an undergraduate course in organizational behavior. During class, they read a brief case which asked the students to play the role of a CEO in Little Rock, Arkansas, receiving a complaint from a female employee about using the same restroom as a coworker who is transitioning from male to female.Findings– The most inclusive response was also the rarest, with only 27 percent of students recommending unisex bathrooms. Hostile actions, forcing the transitioning employee to use the men's restroom, were recommended by 38 percent of those who correctly realized that an employee would be unprotected by sexual orientation discrimination law in this case and by 30 percent of those who thought that she could sue for that type of discrimination in that jurisdiction.Research limitations/implications– It would be interesting to replicate this with non-student samples such as human resource managers and executives. The use of a US sample and of a text-based case can also be viewed as weaknesses. Because gender identity is embodied, self-constructed, and socially constructed, no single research study can capture the totality of work life for transgender employees.Practical implications– Transphobia is so powerful that a substantial percentage of the students recommended courses of action that they believed to be illegal even though the study was designed to discourage a hostile response. Employers that are concerned about transgender rights will need to do a lot more than just grafting the word “transgender” onto their extant set of policies.Social implications– Since today's business students are tomorrow's business leaders, the authors could eventually make the business world more tolerant if the authors could identify a message that resonates with the students and causes them to re-evaluate their homophobia and transphobia.Originality/value– Empirical studies of transgender issues have been dominated by the qualitative approach, so there is a need for more quantitative research on this topic. The hostile responses usually indicated greater acceptance of transgender employees who have completed gender reassignment surgery. This seems difficult to reconcile with a conception of transphobia as a generalized distaste towards all those who transgress gender norms.

Through the looking glass: challenges for human resource development (HRD) post the global financial crisis – business as usual?

An important question for human resource development (HRD) concerns how its practices may have contributed to the global financial crisis. Commentators have highlighted that HRD must take some of the blame. First, we consider whether HRD's traditional role of contributor through performance-based development interventions, may have facilitated questionable practices in organizations. Second, we reflect on whether HRD was an irrelevant spectator through being benign and impotent; rather than challenging the status quo in organizations. Third, we contemplate the protagonist role and argue that HRD practitioners pursued short-term performance-based wealth maximizing objectives with scant regard for the long-term organizational or societal impact. We conclude by considering how HRD scholars can engage tomorrow's business leaders in critical reflection and how HRD practitioners can pursue a strategic decoupling position which allows for challenging the status quo without alienating their professional status in the organization and ethical standing in practice.

Is socially responsible behavior good business? An investigation of tomorrow's business leaders

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to seek to answer the question as to why socially responsible behavior is good business behavior.Design/methodology/approachA two (presence/absence of warning label) by two (potentially hazardous/not hazardous product) experimental design tested four hypothesized relationships.FindingsIt was found that the more favorable attitudes formed when warning labels are present support the notion that consumers recognize and value the stewardship principle. The findings are consistent with the emerging trend toward the triple bottom line philosophy. The difference between 2002 and 2006 for condition 4 (i.e. potentially hazardous with warning label) suggest that market activities (i.e. increase awareness of hazardous products) results in a dilution effect in which weaker inferences are formed from non‐diagnostic information. Research limitations/implications – Clearly, the use of only USA samples provides a limitation in that we cannot address how these issues might vary across nations. Furthermore, moderating variables that might explain some of the counterintuitive findings were not considered in this study. As with all scientific research, bias (e.g. replying with an inaccurate but socially acceptable answer) should be considered when interpreting the findings of this study.Practical implicationsThe current research makes two major managerial contributions: it supports the triple bottom line framework which suggests that the value of an organization should integrate economic, environmental, and social activities; and confirms the importance of voluntary labeling as a tool for capturing a competitive advantage.Originality/valueThis study addresses the gap in the literature as to the relationship between voluntary labeling, attitudes, and intentions and provides empirical evidence of the causal relationship.

Issues of Consequence: Lessons for Educating Tomorrow's Business Leaders From Philosopher William James

The philosophy of William James (1842–1910) provides guidance to business educators as they steer their students in a new direction that is consistent with capitalism, yet elevates our expectations of what business can and should be: a dynamic, progressive, innovative enterprise that embraces multiple perspectives, and that drives social good. In this essay I derive a set of lessons germane to business education from James's major philosophical themes. I then outline institutional and curricular initiatives consistent with these lessons and discuss the changes in faculty mind-set implied by James's pragmatism.

Does acceptance of corporate wrongdoing begin on the “training ground” of professional managers?

Business schools are a modern-day training ground for many of tomorrow's business leaders and managers. The strong emphasis on an economic ideology dominates business education and leads to the contention that business schools desensitize students to ethical issues and contribute to a moral void in the future corporate leaders. This study employed data collected from a sample of 537 graduate students in a southern state university to examine whether MBA students differed significantly from nonbusiness students in their acceptance of unethical and illegal business practices. Results revealed that business students were more likely to be tolerant of business practices with ethical issues than the comparison group. No significant difference was found in the attitudes toward illegal business practices between them. Implications of the findings are discussed.

DHL aims to develop the business leaders of tomorrow

DHL aims to develop the business leaders of tomorrow

In Search of Tomorrow's Leaders

Who are the business leaders of tomorrow? And where are they? The answer to both questions is a resounding “no one really knows”. This is a surprise because it has become something of a cliche to say that the future sustainable advantage of firms around the world depends on the identification of tomorrow’s leaders. The reality, however, is that existing management research doesn’t tell us much about the characteristics of high-potential managers. Nor does it tell us how organisations should look for and identify them.

The Invasion of the Mind Snatchers: The Business of Business Education

Corporations and universities are engaged in a wide variety of cooperative exchanges, activities, and research with both positive and negative effects. Increasingly, both parties are embracing attitudes and practices typically associated with the other. There is evidence that some of the fundamental value differences that distinguish business from education have become blurred. In this article, we explore some of these value differences, and we argue that the developing interrelationships have both problematic and positive implications. If business education is to continue to develop tomorrow's business leaders, universities and their business schools need to retain a meaningful degree of autonomy and provide a place where orthodox and unorthodox ideas can be freely discussed.

Concerns of college students regarding business ethics

Although some attention has been devoted to assessing the attitudes and concerns of businesspeople toward ethics, relatively little attention has focused on the attitudes and concerns of tomorrow's business leaders, today's college students. In this investigation a national sample was utilized to study college students' attitudes toward business ethics, with the results being analyzed by academic classification, academic major, and sex. Results of the investigation indicate that college students are currently somewhat concerned about business ethics in general, and that female students in particular are more concerned about ethical issues than are their male counterparts.

Preparing Tomorrow's Business Leaders Today

Preparing Tomorrow's Business Leaders Today

Book Review: Preparing Tomorrow's Business Leaders Today

Book Review: Preparing Tomorrow's Business Leaders Today

Book Review:Preparing Tomorrow's Business Leaders Today. Peter F. Drucker

Book Review:Preparing Tomorrow's Business Leaders Today. Peter F. Drucker