Contexts of Management : Rethinking the Business University

Abstract

Presentation and discussion with Dorthe Iversen and Rasmus Johnsen about the current situation and future of management education

THE COLLOQUIA "RETHINKING MANAGEMENT EDUCATION" The colloquia series "Rethinking Management Education" interrogates how business education can be enriched and reconceptualized by drawing upon developments from the Humanities and the Social Sciences.The conventional raison d'être of a business school education is the ability to do more for its students than they could accomplish in a corresponding period of actual work experience. There invariably is a productive tension, then, between offering a general, humanistic education that orients learning at ethical responsibility within a broader socio-cultural framework and the need for a specialist and practice-oriented learner profile that can draw upon technical skills.Current concerns with the (increasingly prominent) role of business schools, fed by financial and ecological crises as well as ethical scandals, signal the renewed urgency of inquiring into, and experimenting with, the Humanities and Social Sciences in management education. Indeed, management education's scope and direction becomes a subject matter of great importance as it connects the future of the business university to the shaping of tomorrow's society and organizations.So how do we create a context at the business school that fosters graduates with the ability to grasp their own situation and the possibilities for change inherent to it, rather than merely habituating them to the role of the receiver of perhaps all-too-narrow skills?

The colloquia series will address different aspects of this question, emphasizing the role of the Humanities and the Social Sciences in management education. It is organized in conjunction with the "European Haniel Program on Entrepreneurship and the Humanities", a research and teaching project established at CBS and the University of St.Gallen (HSG), Switzerland, in cooperation with, and supported by, the German Haniel Foundation.

June 3rd, 3-5 PM

CONTEXTS OF MANAGEMENT: RETHINKING THE BUSINESS UNIVERSITY

Jörg Metelmann, Contextual Studies Program and School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St. Gallen

Dorte Salskov-Iversen, Head of Department (ICM) and CBS Vice President for International Affairs

Discussant: Rasmus Johnsen, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, CBS