Management Education and Humanities

Book excerpt: Academics and managers who strive for a humanistic management education usually care for people, but they are challenged by sophisticated intellectual subjects and practical problems. The authors' experience, competence and commitment enables them to present an extensive coverage of important views and an in-depth study of these issues. Eduard Bonet, ESADE, Spain This volume is a timely initiative. It resonates with important questions on globalization and its consequences, on the unrelenting quest for efficiency and productivity, on recent corporate scandals and on the responsibilities of managers and management education. This book is a manifesto for an intellectual revolution. In a complex and open world, managers often bump into the limits of the decontextualized tools associated with mainstream management knowledge and practice. Managers have to navigate in a world that is not only economic but also political, cultural, shaped by history and ethical traditions and preoccupations not only as a mark of social capital but really as a way to enhance their managerial skills and efficiency. The role of management education should be to prepare them for that odyssey and this volume tells us that humanities could be a powerful tool in that sense. This project is served by a highly legitimate international panel of contributors who collectively point towards an alternative for management thinking and management education. Marie-Laure Djelic, ESSEC Business School, France Management Education and Humanities argues that management teachers and researchers seem to be increasingly dissatisfied with the way managers are usually educated in western countries. It claims that educational practices and methods would greatly benefit from reflection on the implicit assumptions and paradigms behind those practices, and debates the role that humanism and humanities might play in the formation of new managerial élites. The book examines three themes that have emerged as central to the contemporary debate on management education: the profession of management; humanism as a philosophy and worldview; and the humanities as an academic field where management schools could find new inspirations for curricula. All three themes are scrutinized in a frame of reference extended between two different points of view: the traditional view, with its tendency to idealize (and even sometimes romanticize) humanism, the humanities and management as a social function; and the past-modern view, which is inclined to skepticism and to the deconstruction of social and cultural phenomena. Providing a lively account of this ongoing debate and exploring new trends and experiences in management education, this book will be invaluable reading for teachers, students and researchers of management, management strategy, and organizational behaviour.