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

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.

Sustainable Development Goals and Education: A Bibliometric Mapping Analysis

“…Covering both aspects, Storey et al [22] compile initiatives in this field, and Arruda [100] proposes a transdisciplinary methodology designed by a business school to integrate Principles of Responsible Marketing Management Education (PRME) into school curricula. Some articles also address management education in general and other studies examine in greater depth how business schools implement the figure of the Responsible Managing Employee (RME) [101] and the challenges and values to be assumed for sustainability.…”

Responsible Management Education in Time of Crisis: A Conceptual Framework for Public Business Schools in Egypt and Similar Middle Eastern Context

“…Our third contribution lies in extending the theoretical scope of stakeholder theory by Ullmann (1985a, b) by showing that in the context of a crisis, stakeholders' needs might change and hence the organization should regularly redefine its pool of social obligations. In our case, given the crisis the labour market is currently passing through, business schools should employ RME to redefine and re-explore and then balance their students' needs according to the changed requirements in society (Garriga, 2009;Mintzberg, 2005;Rabasso & Rabasso, 2011;Mousa et al, 2020). Accordingly, focus should be given to some educational programmes while others should be suspended or pared back.…”

“…wefor um. org/) was ranked as having the lowest quality management education, Mousa et al (2019a) and Mousa et al (2020), have elaborated that unlike many Western business schools, tackling global responsibility and Rabasso, 2011;Waddock et al, 2010) highlight that the inclusion of sustainability in teaching and research scholarships at business schools has become the cornerstone in all accrediting bodies, such as Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) evaluating business schools, the matter is seen different in the Middle East. Mousa et al (2019) indicate that public business schools in the Middle East are only accredited by the local governmental ministries of education in their countries.…”

Perceptual Gap Among Corporate World, Academics and Students: Personal Qualities and Employability Competencies of Students

“…Many researchers have conducted exemplary research in the area of academics and curriculum development (George, 2019;Mousa, Massoud, Ayoubi, & Abdelgaffar, 2020). These researchers tried to bring the focus of academic institution to develop and improve their curriculum as per the need of industry requirement.…”