Seminario Transforming Management Education: Insights from Social-Ecological Systems and Social Innovation Research

The seminar is reserved for the Department of Management’s community. Other interested colleagues can contact Magalì Fia (magali.fia@unibo.it).

Management scholars have long exposed the inadequacy of management education in addressing the complex problems confronting business and society, including the collapse of social-ecological systems. Concerns have been expressed about the culture of competition, self-interest, greed, and short-termism that still dominates the business school, despite the irreparable ecological damage that this culture has contributed to creating, and the innumerable business scandals it has generated. To navigate the grand challenges of our time, management education needs to be shaken at its very foundations.

In this talk, I unpack the process that generates these dysfunctional consequences to expose the root of the problem: assumptions of self-interest, instrumental rationality, capitalist organizing, and mechanistic worldviews generate self-fulfilling prophecies. Only once this harmful process is better understood is it possible to move beyond critique and support the virtuous cycles enabling functional outcomes.

Rooted in a vision of management education aimed at cultivating social-ecological flourishing (i.e. a civic management education), this talk integrates different theoretical lenses to assert the possibility of–and outline trajectories for–transformation in the business school. Today, management education stands at a crossroads: management educators could passively wait until transformation is forced by the unintended crossing of tipping points; or deliberately and collectively navigate it. Ultimately, transformation emerges from the delicate interplay of structure (i.e. inescapable structural barriers) and agency (i.e. intentional transformative actions).

Short biography

Dr Laura Colombo is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter Business School (Sustainable Futures Department), where she is Programme Director for the interdisciplinary BSc Business and Environment. Laura’s research interests are twofold. Firstly, civic management education, where human and ecological flourishing serve as the compass needle guiding educational practices. Secondly, post-growth organisations and their scaling strategies, especially in the context of social agriculture. Laura serves as an Associate Editor at the Academy of Management Learning and Education (AMLE) journal. Her work has been published in leading journals such as AMLE, Journal of Management Studies and Organization. 

Following the seminar, Laura will be available from 14:30 for individual or small-group meetings (Seminari 2).
Those interested in scheduling a meeting are kindly invited to contact Giulia Leoni directly (giulia.leoni10@unibo.it).