Responsible management education in Egyptian public business schools: Are academics ready?

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Author
Mousa, Mohamed
Abdelghaffar, Hany
Ayoubi, Rami M.
Date
2019-09-09Acceptance date
2019-04-30
Type
Article
Publisher
Emerald
ISSN
0262-1711
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Purpose – This paper focuses on three out of the 24 public business schools in Egypt in order to
investigate how responsible management education is perceived and exercised by academics there.
Design/ methodology/ approach – A total of 168 academics were contacted and interviewed in 42
focus groups. The length of each focus group was about 45 minutes, and interviews were conducted in
Arabic as most respondents have no mastery of the English language. The authors used thematic
analysis to extract the main ideas in the transcripts.
Findings – Based on data analysis of the perceptions of academics concerning business education,
research and management process at the target business schools, the authors of this paper found that
responsible management education is not considered a priority in the work agendas of the three
Egyptian public business schools. Besides a lack of general acceptance and awareness of the need for
responsible management education, there are functional, procedural and edu-academic barriers that
these schools need to overcome first before proceeding with implementation and expecting positive
outcomes.
Research limitations/ implications – This research maybe subject to criticism because the authors
address only the perspectives of academics in the chosen business schools while neglecting other
academic partners, particularly those in managerial positions, such as rectors and heads of
departments. Future researchers may use the same research questions to investigate a managerial level
perspective to depict a more holistic picture of the situation. Moreover, including Egyptian private
business schools may also enrich the findings. In fact, the authors suggest that scholars from different
academic disciplines such as sustainability management, business ethics, higher education,
sustainability and cultural diversity work together to produce more interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research on the global responsibility themes business schools have to manage.
Practical implications – If the administration of the addressed business schools seek to implement
responsible management education, they should overcome the following barriers. Firstly, the
functional barrier (the limited financial budget and need for official approval to address both sociocultural and environmental aspects). Secondly, procedural barriers (lack of channels for formal and/or
informal collaborations with governmental bodies, private enterprises, NGOs and social activist
groups). Thirdly, Edu-academic barriers (lack of CSR inclusion in business school strategy, faculty
promotion and incentives not tied to their proactive embedding of sustainable development and other
socio-cultural issues into their curricula, research and academic practices, and no incentive or support
for interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary collaboration with researchers and faculty from other
departments and faculties).
Originality/ value – This paper contributes by filling a gap in sustainability, HR management,
business ethics, and higher education literature in which empirical studies on responsible management
education and the responsible practices of academics have been limited so far
Journal/conference proceeding
Journal of Management Development;
Citation
Mousa, M., Abdelgaffar, H.A. and Ayoubi, R.M. (2019) 'Responsible management education in Egyptian public business schools', Journal of Management Development. DOI: 10.1108/JMD-01-2019-0022.
Description
Article published in Journal of Management Development on 09 September 2019 (online), available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-01-2019-0022.
Sponsorship
Cardiff Metropolitan University (Grant ID: Cardiff Metropolian (Internal))
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