Decoupling Responsible Management Education – Why Business Schools May Not Walk Their Talk

Abstract

Business schools increasingly aim to embed corporate responsibility, sustainability, and ethics into their curricular and extracurricular activities. This paper examines under what conditions business schools may decouple the structural effects of t heir engagement in responsible management education from organizational practices. We argue that schools may be unable to match rising institutional pressures to publicly commit to responsible management education with their internal capacity for change. Our analysis proposes that decoupling is likely if schools (1) are exposed to resource stringency, (2) face overt or covert resistance against change processes, (3) are confronted with competing institutional pressures, and (4) perceive institutional demands as ambiguous. The discussion points to two implications. While decoupling may give rise to the illusion that responsible management education is progressing, it is also possible that an inconsistency between talk and action can help schools to articulate ambitions for responsible management education, which, over time, inspire recoupling effects.

Legitimacy Deficits of International Organizations: design, drift, and decoupling at the UN Security Council

“…Decoupling has been observed in many organizations (Bromley and Powell 2012;Dick 2015;Maclean and Behnam 2010;Oliver 1991;Rasche and Gilbert 2015), but is still curiously absent from literature on IOs (but see importantly Kentikelenis et al 2016). It refers to the gaps that tend to emerge between institutions' structures, policies, and practices, and is seen most vividly in the 'famous gaps between norms and behavior' (Meyer 2009, 50).…”

Sustainability Centres and Fit: How Centres Work to Integrate Sustainability Within Business Schools

“…With regards to the challenges posed by interdisciplinarity, various studies show that the existing structures in business schools do not easily accommodate an interdisciplinary subject such as sustainability, given that staff might be trained in a narrow discipline (Benn and Martin 2010) or are unfamiliar with specific recommended sustainability teaching styles (Akrivou and Bradbury-Huang 2015;Benn and Martin 2010;Maloni et al 2012;Sharma and Hart 2014). These challenges aggravate structural problems in curriculum re-(design); leading to a situation where sustainability topics are often offered in elective or specialised courses rather than as part of the core curriculum (Rasche and Gilbert 2015).…”

“…For example, research shows that the legitimacy of sustainability topics is often disputed (Hommel and Thomas 2014), and that sustainability is routinely misunderstood and underappreciated among business school educators (Jamali and Abdallah 2015). And despite the pressure from accreditation agencies to embed sustainability across business school programmes, clear templates for the design and implementation of sustainability education are hard to come by (Rasche and Gilbert 2015). These barriers may hamper substantive integration of sustainability topics within business school education (Rasche and Gilbert 2015;Snelson-Powell et al 2016).…”

“…And despite the pressure from accreditation agencies to embed sustainability across business school programmes, clear templates for the design and implementation of sustainability education are hard to come by (Rasche and Gilbert 2015). These barriers may hamper substantive integration of sustainability topics within business school education (Rasche and Gilbert 2015;Snelson-Powell et al 2016). According to a recent survey, only 42% of deans and 37% of faculty believe that business schools have formulated an appropriate response to the integration of sustainability issues (ABIS & EFMD 2013, p. 1).…”

Moral muteness of faculty in management education

“…Khurana and Nohria (2008) claim that the public has lost trust in managers and their education. And, while more ethics courses for business students have become available, the extent of training has not kept up with schools' claims (Rasche & Gilbert, 2015;Rasche, Gilbert, & Schedel, 2013). While all these criticisms are leveled at business schools, Nussbaum (2010) argues too that the American university, in general, has moved away from developing critical thinkers and reduced itself to job training and this make-profit-at-all-costs mentality will undermine democracy.…”