This paper advocates for a humanistic transformation of business education, drawing on three converging scholarly traditions: the capabilities approach (Sen 1999; Nussbaum 2011), the humanistic management tradition (Melé 2003; Pirson 2017; Dierksmeier 2019), and Pope Francis’s vision of integral ecology (
Laudato Si’
, LS 137–139). It offers a philosophical and pedagogical critique of the technocratic paradigm that dominates sustainability discourse in business schools — a paradigm that Critical Management Studies (Alvesson & Willmott 1992; Spicer & Alvesson 2025) has shown to be structurally resistant to transformation, operating through the slow formation of identity and desire rather than through explicit instruction alone. Through a normative lens, the paper re-centers practical reason, affiliation, and moral imagination as the foundations of transformative leadership formation. It argues that genuine reform is obstructed by structural barriers — accreditation pressures, ranking systems, and market forces — that systematically incentivize instrumental over ethical formation. At the same time, it identifies emerging alternatives in business education that point toward viable pedagogical reform. In response to both this diagnosis and these possibilities, it proposes principles for an education capable of forming leaders with the practical wisdom, relational depth, and moral imagination that a crisis-ridden world demands.
Business schools are frequently presented as meritocratic institutions that reward talent, effort and entrepreneurial capability. This article examines how business education can simultaneously acknowledge inequality rhetorically while continuing to legitimize unequal outcomes pedagogically. Drawing genealogically on Louis Althusser while engaging selectively with institutional theory, the article develops the concept of pedagogical disavowal: the institutional organization of knowledge, evaluation and aspiration through which inherited structural advantage is reframed as individual merit while its historical foundations are marginalized within business education. Grounded in the UK context, the analysis argues that business schools can function as legitimacy‐producing institutions that help stabilize meritocratic understandings of inequality despite extensive public recognition of class advantage and elite reproduction. The article contributes to debates on merit, legitimacy and management education by distinguishing pedagogical disavowal from earlier accounts of ideological reproduction and hidden curriculum, specifying how legitimacy is sustained through routine pedagogical and organizational practices rather than ideology alone.
David Roberts· British Journal of Managemen...· 0 citations
This paper challenges the dominant utilitarian paradigm of innovation, which reduces technology development to measures of patentability, profitability, and efficiency. Drawing on influential figures in the field of technology philosophy, including Heidegger, Ellul, Feenberg, Ihde, and Stiegler, it makes the case that innovation needs to be reinterpreted as an ethical and ontological endeavour rather than just a technical or financial one. By closely examining seminal patent decisions like Chakrabarty, Myriad, and Mayo, the paper demonstrates how legal regimes actively define the metaphysical parameters of what constitutes invention, frequently omitting moral, cultural, and ecological factors. In the name of legal uniformity, it further criticises the TRIPS Agreement as a global epistemic framework that marginalises non-Western knowledge systems. The paper proposes a normative model for innovative governance, grounded in ontological pluralism, ethical reflexivity, and democratic accountability, to transcend instrumentalism. Participatory evaluation approaches, ethical committees, and curriculum change in scientific and engineering education are examples of practical recommendations. In an era of global crises, this interdisciplinary intervention advocates for a fundamental change in the way society, policy, and law understand and govern innovation.
This paper examines how quality culture has been discursively constructed in higher education scholarship and policy, and develops an alternative conceptualization grounded in academic values rather than governance imperatives. Quality culture has become a central reference point in higher education, frequently positioned as a bridge between compliance-oriented quality assurance and enhancement-focused approaches. Despite its collegial rhetoric, the concept is embedded in wider socio-political rationalities that shape how institutions understand and enact quality. Drawing on Torraco's (2005) integrative review Grant and Booth's (2009) typology, the paper conducts a critical review of foundational, empirical, and policy-oriented scholarship on quality culture. It identifies three dominant framings of neoliberalism: quality culture, situated in accountability and efficiency; managerialism, which appropriates collegial language to advance organizational control; and global competition, which positions it as a mechanism for rankings and reputation. The analysis shows that these framings are not separate problems but expressions of a single functionalist commitment: culture treated as a property of the institution that can be managed. The same conception reabsorbs ostensibly alternative frameworks, which keep culture as a variable to be specified and measured. The division that matters, then, is not between dominant and alternative discourses but between treating culture as something the institution has and something it is. Quality culture must be re-anchored in trust, collegiality, student partnership, and public purpose, treated as emergent conditions rather than managed outcomes, if it is to be distinguished from institutional compliance.
Balqees Rashid Suleiman AL Mandhari· The Hungarian Educational Re...· 0 citations
This paper aims to examine how the notion of the common good has evolved within the social sciences, with a particular focus on its application in business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Although scholars often cite the concept, they frequently use it ambiguously or without critical reflection. This study clarifies those shifts and positions the common good as a unifying ethical framework to confront contemporary business and societal challenges.
This paper analyzes 1,690 Web of Science documents (1960–2022) using citation mapping and co-word analysis. This method tracks intellectual structures, thematic clusters and research trends, providing a systematic view of how continuities and transformations shape the discourse on the common good.
This paper identifies three coherent foundational clusters: virtue ethics, Catholic Social Thought and procedural/institutional ethics. Newer interpretations display greater diversity but weaker integration. Six thematic clusters expose persistent tensions between moral agency and structural equity, universal principles and contextual adaptability and ethical imperatives and instrumental outcomes. Sustainability and digital ethics emerge as promising yet underexplored frontiers. Influential works drive much of the debate, but contributions remain uneven across regions and disciplines.
Because of the chosen methodology, the study may underrepresent Global South perspectives and oversimplify complex philosophical debates.
The findings encourage organizations to adopt ethical frameworks beyond environmental, social and governance compliance and urge policymakers to balance grassroots input with institutional accountability.
This paper pioneers bibliometric methods to trace the evolution of the common good, highlighting its coherence and fragmentation and advocating revitalization through interdisciplinary and non-Western perspectives.
J. Belso-Martínez, M. López-Sánchez, Alicia Mas-Tur et al.· International Journal of Eth...· 0 citations
This study examined the linguistic signature of entrepreneurship education and how it differs from instruction in other disciplines. Applying
Bernstein’s (1975)
concepts of visible pedagogy (the explicit transmission of knowledge) and invisible pedagogy (the implicit modeling of a disposition through discourse), the current work presents a systematic linguistic analysis comparing entrepreneurship lectures to a cross-disciplinary baseline. Results revealed a distinctive dual signature. Visible pedagogy was evident in the high-frequency transmission of capital and finance-related content (
d
= 0.40), while invisible pedagogy was evident in discourse patterns that model an agentic stance: a strong inclination toward the first-person perspective (
d
= 0.63) and frequent use of agentic verbs (
d
= 0.19). Smaller but consistent effects (
d
≅ 0.10–0.16) showed entrepreneurship lectures were positively associated with concrete positive social outcomes and negatively associated with abstract moral principles, alongside a greater emphasis on future-oriented language. These findings characterize entrepreneurship education as a discourse environment in which invisible pedagogy models agentic action while visible pedagogy explicitly addresses the capital knowledge entrepreneurial practice requires.
T. Stillman· Entrepreneurship Education a...· 0 citations
Universities today face accelerating instability, shaped by audit cultures, performance metrics, and constant pressures for adaptation. Leadership is often framed in managerial terms of strategic control and technical problem‐solving, yet such models risk obscuring the ethical responsibility that sustains institutional life. This article develops an alternative account of leadership as a hermeneutic‐ethical practice. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur's conception of narrative identity, I argue that leaders are responsible for holding together the
idem
of institutional continuity with the
ipse
of transformation and promise. Leadership is not exhausted by decision‐making but entails the narrative labor of keeping faith with an institution's story while opening it to new possibilities. Hannah Arendt's reflections on responsibility and judgment further deepen this account by highlighting the plurality and contestability of institutional narratives. The article concludes by proposing leadership as a practice of narrative responsibility: sustaining coherence while remaining open to critique, plurality, and renewal.
Linnéa K. Jermstad· Educational Theory· 0 citations