Collaboration

24
May
2024
Call for papers: The Future of Management Education and Research:The role of institutions
Collaboration Source:
  • Members
Collaboration Type:
  • Call for papers

Change is inevitable. There are few areas in which this is more apparent than in the management education and research ecosystem (MERE) that we all operate within as scholars. The tenets of the ecosystem that many senior scholars joined at the start of their careers have evolved significantly over the lifetime of those careers. Chalk, talk, typewriters and gowns have given way to innovations ranging from flipped classrooms, hybrid learning, through to global research teams working on multidisciplinary projects and open access publishing. Over the last two decades, this transition has been accompanied by strong normative pressures which have limited the strategic choice of their Deans (Wilson & McKiernan, 2011).

One significant pressure that has been exerted on providers is the increase in the number of powerful institutions shaping the way that the MERE looks and operates. The actions of these institutions, whether separately or combined, bear on the MERE in different ways as their original intentions are sometimes accompanied by unintended consequences. For instance, publishing houses (e.g., Nikkei, Thomson Reuters, Economist Group) and analytics companies (e.g., Quarquarelli Symonds) through their flagship products (e.g., the Financial Times, Times Higher Educational, Economist, QS) produce ranking lists that influence individual MEREs in gauging their relative position in the world. But they can also encourage global mimicry among providers, where those lower down a list or ranking copy the processes, products, and services of those higher up, in their search for success. In addition, a growing body of literature points to the detrimental effects of these ranking lists in science (see Harley & Fleming, 2021; Huse, 2020). At the heart of the ranking system is the questionable practice of privileging elite journals.

Business school associations (e.g., Association of Asia-Pacific Business Schools - AAPBS) act as influencers and educators, passing on best practice across their membership. Yet eventually, such best practice can become the strategic norm across whole segments of providers. Furthermore, one of them, the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS), produces a highly influential journal ranking guide that is closely consulted by research active academics and their Deans for the purposes of performance evaluation in certain geographies e.g., the UK. It acts as an informative guide to journal selection but can come to represent a prescription for an individual publication portfolio and continue to fuel the damaging ‘publish or perish’ culture.

Foundations e.g., Ford (Gordon & Howell) and Carnegie (Pierson), played influential roles in commissioning major reports that shaped the business school sector in the USA, while the reports of national Governments e.g., Robbins in the UK and Jackson in Australia, led to the establishment of key schools at London and Manchester, and AGSM in Sydney. For instance, the Ford and Carnegie reports provided a critique of the sector at the end of the 1950s that has been interpreted as generally positive (Nelson, 1961) but also as unnecessarily negative (Daniel, 1998), as the sector was changing for the better already.

Business schools as institutions themselves have influenced each other by demonstrating best practice in either teaching, research, operations, or knowledge exchange (Thomas et al., 2013). At the same time, many of them have challenged and informed businesses, universities, and governments e.g., Harvard and Wharton in the USA, HEC, ESCP in France, the early schools of commerce in Germany and the UK, and IMD in Switzerland. In the business school ‘golden years’ between the 1960s to the 1980s, their research produced a portfolio of tools and techniques that supported efficiency and effectiveness gains in different types of organisations. But a long period of silence followed when their self-centred research focus and shareholder primacy in teaching rendered their societal contribution woefully inadequate. From the late 2000s, they were awoken by, pressures from, inter alia, global institutions (e.g., the UN), government funding bodies, social movements, and accreditation agencies.

Alumni associations help providers keep in touch with practice by reflecting societies’ educational needs and wants to their alma maters and so influence curricula design and delivery. But this could emerge through a lens distorted by the make-up of the individual alumni cohort.

Accreditation bodies (e.g., AACSB, EQUIS, AMBA, CEEMAN), created to assure good product and service quality among providers, have extended their reach to advising Deans on changes to their school strategy and on the content of the curricula of their flagship programmes e.g., the MBA, arguably diluting local intellectual design.

Government departments grant and renew licenses to practice, distribute funding, and assure research quality and record research outputs (e.g., the UK Research Evaluation Framework) using standard formula and assessment processes which come with huge financial and administrative burdens. They also wield cuts across the ecosystem.

Social movements prescribe rigour and relevance with good research methodology and deep societal impact (e.g., Responsible Research in Business and Management - RRBM). In turn, their principles influence both accreditation agencies (e.g., RRBM on both the AACSB and the EFMD on EQUIS) and nascent providers (e.g., in less developed economies) hoping to mimic the success factors of Western providers.

The United Nations developed guiding principles for providers in order to promote a critical reflexivity of management education towards more responsibleness (PRME). By 2024, over 800 schools claimed to follow them. Yet some have argued that these principles do the opposite by creating an ‘imaginary’ and preventing a fundamental change of the MERE (Miller & Price, 2018).

Scholarly academies and associations (e.g., AoM, BAM, EURAM) influence thousands of individual members contributing to the MERE globally. Broadly representational, they provide a forum for a free exchange of views in a way that academics might be restricted from expressing themselves within their more narrowly focused universities. Consequently, academic research results are made more visible and so their chances of leading social and political debate in a world of distorted truths is improved. These academies and associations transfer successful conventions to contemporary generations; they offer career guidance and support at each stage of the scholarly life cycle, from doctoral to professorial ranks and, especially, they nourish the journey of new academics. At the same time, they own key journals, control entry to their Fellow's Colleges and, dictate the themes, keynote lecturers, agendas, and locations of annual conferences, wielding considerable influence over the profession.

One of those academies, EURAM, was founded in 2000 and its first conference was held in Barcelona in 2001 with a few hundred pioneers present. Since then, it has grown its membership to over 2000 and played a significant part in championing open, inclusive, international, and cross-cultural activity and research across the Continent. It places ‘a strong emphasis on multidisciplinary theoretical perspectives and methodological pluralism and promotes critical examinations of the historical and philosophical roots of management theory and praxis’. Since its inception, an active fellowship has fostered the next generation of academics through doctoral and early career consortia at its annual conference, and the conference itself has criss-crossed a geography of diverse contexts, cultures, and governances. Yet, it has morphed into a reflection of other academies (e.g., AoM, BAM) in the development of its services portfolio, in its leadership of the next generation, and in its structures and processes.

Large technology companies (Amazon, Coursera, EdTech, Facebook, FutureLearn, Google, LinkedIn,) together with corporations or consultancy companies who have, or wish to have, their own learning academies will play significant roles as the MERE rolls out.

This special issue aims to investigate the impact that these and other institutions are likely to have on the future of the MERE. Their interventions may shape the MERE in ways not necessary nor intended. In this context, the fundamental and perennial question of purpose for the MERE (Clegg et al., 2021) will have to be continuously posed.

We welcome both conceptual and empirical original articles, shorter, impactful opinion pieces, and point-counterpoint arguments addressing the role of institutions in shaping the future of the management education and the research ecosystem.

Potential questions that manuscripts might address could include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Which institutions have shaped the MERE in the past? How, and why?

  • Which institutions might shape the future of the MERE? How, and why?
     
  • Which institutions will command the major influence over the MERE in future?
     
  • What are the foreseeable, desirable, or undesirable developments of the MERE through institutional influence?

  • How will academics position themselves in response to institutional pressure and what role will they play, individually or through various organisations?

  • What has been the role of scholarly academies and associations in shaping the MERE in the last 25 years? What will be their influence in the next 25 years?

  • What will traditional providers like management departments and business schools look like in the future? Why? What will be their preferred business model? What function will they perform?
     
  • What role have management journals played in the past in shaping the MERE and how might this evolve into the future?

  • What will be the impact of social movements on the future of management education and research?
     
  • How will institutions in different parts of the world influence local management education and research?

These questions concur with the aims of European Management Review as a scholarly outlet and the Guest Editors encourage submissions that draw from a wide range of contexts, themes, methodologies, and theoretical perspectives.

Submission Process

The system will open for submissions to the special issue on December 1, 2024, and will close on January 31st, 2025. Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with European Management Review’s author guidelines and submitted via the online system. To ensure that all manuscripts are correctly identified for consideration for this Special Issue, it is important that authors select “SI: The Future of Management Education and Research Ecosystem” when they reach the “Article Type” step in the submission process. All submitted manuscripts will be subject to European Management Review’s double blind review process. Submitting for the SI does not exclude the submission of a paper for the EURAM conference.

Development Activity

A Symposium, coinciding with the 25th Anniversary of EURAM, and providing the opportunity to debate some of the key themes surfaced in the Special Issue Call for Papers, will be organized for the annual EURAM conference in Florence, Italy in 2025. For any questions, colleagues are invited to contact Professor Peter McKiernan (peter.mckiernan@strath.ac.uk) as Lead Co-ordinating Guest Editor.

References

Brabet, J., Özbilgin, M., Yamak, S. (2021) Changing the rules of the game in academic publishing: three scenarios in the field of management research. International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, 15(4), 477-495.

Clegg, S., Cunha, M. P. E., Rego, A., & Santos, F. (2021). ‘Open Purpose’: Embracing Organizations as Expressive Systems. Organization Theory, 2(4), 26317877211054860

Daniel, C.A., (1998). MBA: The first century. Lewisburg, Pa: Bucknell University Press.

Harley, B., & Fleming, P., (2021). Not Even Trying to Change the World: Why do elite management journals ignore the major problems facing humanity? Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 57(2), 133-152.

Huse, M., (2020). Resolving the Crisis in Research by Changing the Game: An ecosystem and a sharing philosophy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Nelson, H. G. (1961). Impact and Validity of the Ford and Carnegie Reports on Business Education. The Accounting Review, 36 (2),179–85.

Millar, J., & Price, M. (2018). Imagining management education: A critique of the contribution of the United Nations PRME to critical reflexivity and rethinking management education. Management Learning, 49(3), 346-362.

Thomas, H., Lorange, P., & Sheth, J., (2013). The Business School in the Twenty-First Century: Emergent challenges and new business models. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wilson, D., & McKiernan, P. (2011). Global Mimicry: Putting Strategic Choice Back on the Business School Agenda. British Journal of Management, 22(3), 457-469.

Guest Editor Team

The team of guest editors has extensive editorial and reviewer experience, having edited special issues of several significant journals including the British Journal of Management, European Management Review, Long Range Planning, Organization Science, Management and Organization Review, Research Policy, Management Decision, and the European Journal of International Management.

Stewart Clegg (Stewart.Clegg@uts.edu.au): Professor of Project Management at the University of Sydney and Emeritus Professor of the University of Technology Business School Sydney; a prolific contributor to leading journals, encyclopaedias and edited collections; over 60 books, some of which have won prestigious awards from EURAM and the Academy of Management; a fellow of EURAM, Academy of Management, EGOS Honorary Member, Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management (ANZAM) and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences, amongst other honours.

Peter McKiernan (peter.mckiernan@strath.ac.uk): Professor of Management at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland; Distinguished Professor of Management at Vrje Universiteit Brussel; Adjunct Professor of Management, University of Notre Dame Australia, Fremantle; Co-founder of EURAM, EMR and RRBM. He holds several academic and non-academic fellowships (CABS, BAM, EURAM, AcSS, GIA, CG, CMI, RSA). He is a former President of both EURAM and BAM and was the inaugural Dean of EURAM’s Fellows College.

Kathrin M. Moeslein (kathrin.moeslein@fau.de): Professor of Information Systems, Innovation & Value Creation at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) & Research Professor at HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, Germany. She is a co-founder of, a Fellow of, and a former President of EURAM.

Howard Thomas (howardthomas@smu.ac.uk): Howard Thomas is Senior Advisor, EFMD Global and Emeritus Professor of Strategic Management and Management Education, Singapore Management University (SMU). He has held Deanships/ Senior Administrative Positions at London Business School, AGSM, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Warwick Business School, and SMU. He is also the recipient of several academic fellowships (AcSS, AOM, BAM, EURAM, SMS and the Learned Society of Wales) as well as several honorary degrees. He is also a founder of RRBM.

Sibel Yamak (S.Yamak@wlv.ac.uk): Professor of Management at the University of Wolverhampton Business School, Department of Management and Leadership. She has been a permanent and/or visiting scholar at different universities such as Galatasaray University, Bogazici University, Paris Dauphine University, Panthéon Sorbonne University, Sapienza University, Southampton University and Manchester University. She is a Fellow and former President of EURAM.