Prelims

Half Title Page

Innovation in Responsible Management Education

Title Page

Innovation in Responsible Management Education: Preparing the Changemakers of Tomorrow

Edited by

Regina Obexer

MCI | The Entrepreneurial School, Austria

Desiree Wieser

MCI | The Entrepreneurial School, Austria

Christian Baumgartner

FHGR University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons in Chur, Switzerland

Elisabeth Fröhlich

ISPIRA Think Tank for Sustainable Supply Chains, Germany

Alfred Rosenbloom

Dominican University, USA

And

Anita Zehrer

MCI | The Entrepreneurial School, Austria

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL

First edition 2024

Editorial matter and selection © 2024 Regina Obexer, Desiree Wieser, Christian Baumgartner, Elisabeth Fröhlich, Alfred Rosenbloom and Anita Zehrer.

Individual chapters © 2024 The authors.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-83549-465-3 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83549-464-6 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83549-466-0 (Epub)

List of Abbreviations

CBR

Community-Based Research

ESD

Education for Sustainable Development

PRME

Principles for Responsible Management Education

RME

Responsible Management Education

RMERC

Responsible Management Education, Research Conference

SDGs

Sustainable Development Goals

SL

Service-Learning

UN

United Nations

About the Editors

Desiree Wieser did her PhD in Management at the University of Innsbruck, Austria in 2022. She is an Assistant Professor in the department of Non-profit, Social & Health Care Management. Desiree's teaching activities focus on entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship (2022 Ars Docendi Recognition Award for Excellent Teaching in Austrian Universities), responsible management, and research ethics. Her research interests are diverse and stretch from higher education management to education, including online, entrepreneurship and responsible management education. She was a member of the program committee and coordinator of the ninth Responsible Management Education Research Conference.

Regina Obexer is a university Lecturer and the Head of the Center for Responsible Management & Social Impact at MCI | The Entrepreneurial School. She coordinates activities and initiatives in the field of responsibility, sustainability, and ethics across MCI and is the Head of the PRME Task Force. She is also a member of the steering group of the PRME Chapter DACH, and she serves as the Vice Chair of the MCI Research Ethics Committee. In 2022, she led the program committee and coordinated the ninth Responsible Management Education Research Conference. Her research interests are at the intersection of digital education, change management, education for sustainable development, and responsible management education. She is a doctoral candidate at Lancaster University, researching collective transformative agency in sustainability change laboratory settings.

Alfred Rosenbloom is a Professor Emeritus and was the first John and Jeanne Rowe Distinguished Professor at Dominican University. His research interests include case writing, the application of the case method in management education, global branding, marketing in countries with emerging and subsistence markets, and the challenge of integrating the topic of poverty into the management education. Al coleads the Anti-Poverty Working Group, Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME), and participates broadly within PRME. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Nepal and Bulgaria and was twice honored with the Teaching Excellence Award from Brennan School of Business students.

Anita Zehrer holds the position of Professor and serves as the Head of the Family Business Center at MCI The Entrepreneurial School ®. Concurrently, she also assumes the role of Head of Research in the domain of Management and Society within the institution. Her scholarly pursuits are characterized by a breadth of research interests, with a primary emphasis on the landscape of family business management and entrepreneurial behavior in small- and medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The scholarly impact of Dr Zehrer's work is evidenced by publications in leading business management and tourism journals.

Christian Baumgartner studied Landscape Ecology and is a Professor for Sustainable Tourism at the University of Applied Sciences Graubünden (Switzerland) and the owner of Response and Ability (www.responseandability.com). He specializes in the development and implementation of sustainable tourism and sustainable regional development and has led specific tourism development projects in Europe, Central and Southeast Asia. He is passionate about working and researching in the field of labeling and monitoring and is an Auditor and Certification Councilor in several European certification schemes. He has taught at several universities in Europe and Asia.

Prof Dr Elisabeth Fröhlich served as the President of CBS International Business School, Germany, until 2022. She holds a full professorship in Sustainable Procurement and Supply Chains and is an internationally recognized expert in sustainable supply chain management. She is highly engaged in the field of Responsible Management Education. She serves as a board member of the PRME, she chairs the PRME Nomination and Governance Committee, and is PRME DACH Chapter Chair. She is also leading the AOM MED Ambassador Program as the Vice Chair. She is leading the Board of JARO Institute and offering online trainings in the field of sustainable procurement. Her research focuses on sustainable supply chain management and green procurement, qualification in purchasing, Procurement 4.0, and strategic supplier relationship management. Innovative teaching formats of Responsible Management Education are further main areas of her research. She has published several books and articles on the above-mentioned topics and supports several journals as an external reviewer.

About the Contributors

Antje Bierwisch is a Professor and Study Coordinator for Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Foresight in “Business Administration Online” at MCI in the Department of Business Administration Online since 2018 (https://www.mci.edu/de/faculty/antje.bierwisch). Prior to that, she worked for 10 years as a Project Manager/Senior Researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, ISI in Karlsruhe. Her research focuses on futures literacy, strategic foresight, innovation management, and sustainable innovation. Based on her experience gained from more than 50 applied research projects, she is a consulting expert on strategic foresight at both the economic level for different industries, and the policy level for several national and federal governments, in Germany, Vietnam, Lithuania, and Romania. Since 2023, she has held the “UNESCO Chair in Futures Capability for Innovation and Entrepreneurship,” established at the MCI. The Chair deals with the promotion of future skills and the strengthening of students' innovative ability and entrepreneurial spirit (https://research.mci.edu/de/unesco-chair-futures-capability).

Since October 2018, Prof Bernd Ebersberger has been the Head of the Department for Innovation Management at the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany. He also leads the InnoGreenhouse, the University's entrepreneurship hub. Formerly, Prof Ebersberger held a professorship at the Management Center Innsbruck (MCI). He also held positions at Fraunhofer ISI in Karlsruhe, the Technical Research Center of Finland in Espoo, Statistics Finland, and the University of Augsburg. Prof Ebersberger's research focuses on innovation management, systems, business strategies, entrepreneurship, and the nexus between innovation and sustainability. He is an author, coauthor, and editor of numerous books and scientific publications in renowned journals such as the Journal of Applied Economics, Research Policy, Regional Studies, Journal of Economic Geography, Journal of Business Research, European Management Review, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, and Journal of Technology Transfer and Structural Change & Economic Dynamics.

Lois Fearon is an Assistant Professor and the intellectual lead for international marketing courses for the Faculty of Management at Royal Roads University. She has also served as the Head of the MBA Program, and the Business School Director where she led significant curriculum advancements. Throughout her academic career, Dr. Fearon has taught, managed, and developed numerous courses and programs. Prior to becoming a full time academic, she worked in industry for over 20 years, gaining extensive leadership and consulting experience. Her recent research focuses on assessing the impact of integrating sustainability into business school curricula, reflecting her commitment to advancing sustainable business practices through education.

Gundula Glowka is a Distinguished Researcher affiliated with the MCI | The Entrepreneurial School. Her primary research focus revolves around unraveling the intricate dynamics of risk behavior within small and medium enterprises, studying family-related, SME-specific, strategic, tourism-specific, and external risks. Gundula Glowka was an active contributor to the Erasmus + EU Project titled “Entrepreneurial and Intrapreneurial Competences Assessment Alliance” adding her expertise to the development of teaching and training materials designed to promote entrepreneurial competences.

Alexandra Grammenou is a Lecturer and Research Associate in the Center for Corporate Responsibility, Department International Business in the ZHAW School of Management and Law, Switzerland. Along teaching and research, she is PRME Coordinator in the ZHAW School of Management and Law. She is currently a PhD Candidate in Organizational and Cultural Studies in the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. Her research focuses on business and human rights, governance, and CSR. In the past she worked as Research Assistant in CSR in South Africa and in the Institute of Marketing and Communication in the University of Lugano, Switzerland. She holds an MA in Economics and Communication from the University of Lugano and a Licentiate in Law from the Aristotle University, Greece.

Rebecca Chunghee Kim is a Professor of NUCB Business School in Japan. She was a British Chevening scholar and a visiting scholar of University of California, Berkeley. Rebecca received her PhD degree (2009) from The University of Strathclyde Business School. Previously, she taught at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, University of Nottingham, University of Strathclyde, and University of Edinburgh. Rebecca is particularly interested in research on comparative and international CSR, ESG, and capitalism through active collaboration with scholars/practitioners from around the world. As a discussion-loving scholar, Rebecca has delivered speeches on comparative CSR in various nations including Japan, Korea, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Mongolia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Marcus Kreikebaum, European Business School, Wiesbaden, Germany, has been teaching Service-Learning and promoting PRME at EBS University since 2008. He has coached many cohorts of students in local and global Service-Learning projects and published several papers, some of them together with his father Hartmut, with whom he founded the Center of Business Ethics at EBS in 2007. Through field studies in Mexico and Guatemala during his studies in Cognitive Sciences, Philosophy, Literature, and Linguistics in Germany and Oregon, Marcus developed a deep interest in the potential of encounters of the social other. This is also the main thread in his work as a dramatist for several theaters. Marcus got his doctoral degree in 2002 for a dissertation on the Poems of Heiner Müller. He is currently the Director of Business Ethics Center at EBS University and a Senior Lecturer for Service-Learning at the Business School of University of Business and Law, Wiesbaden, Germany.

Louisa Mach is a research associate and a PhD candidate at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany. With her background in teaching business administration and economics in vocational business schools, she is passionate about competence-based learning. While working for the Department of Innovation Management at the University of Hohenheim, she focuses her work on competences for sustainable innovation. Moreover, as part of the Entrepreneurial and Intrapreneurial Competences Assessment Alliance (EICAA), she gained valuable insight into the learning and assessment of competences.

Lisa Marx is a Product Manager at a Tyrolean SME in the cosmetics industry. Before that, she studied part time (International Business and Management with a focus on Marketing and Digital Business) at the Management Center Innsbruck while working part time. Her great interest for digging into the human mind and understanding specific behaviors but also bringing attention to the importance of mental health led to the topic of this study. Moreover, putting research focus on the business context where this topic is often outmissed.

Helga Mayr is working in the Department of Digitalization, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Quality Management at the University College of Teacher Education Tyrol (PHT). She coordinates the implementation of ESD at the PHT, teaches in ESD-relevant teacher training courses, and is involved in several research projects. Her research interest is in integrating ESD in teacher training as well as teaching practice. The focus of her PhD project is on ESD and Design Thinking. Helga studied international economics and business education.

Avvari V. Mohan is a Professor and Deputy Head (Engagement & Impact) at the School of Business, Monash University Malaysia. He received his doctorate in Management of Innovation from the Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, following which he visited South Korea on a Research Fellowship at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Prior to joining Monash University, he served as a member of the faculty at Nottingham University Business School (Malaysia campus). His teaching and research interests are broadly in strategy and innovation with special interests in sustainability-related/responsible business strategies. His research focuses on innovations systems (interorganizational linkages) that help organizations to develop innovations and contribute to sustainable development. He has published his work in international journals and in reports for international agencies. He is on the editorial panels of international journals in the area of innovation and policy.

Marina Schmitz serves as a Researcher and a Lecturer at the Coca-Cola Chair of Sustainable Development at IEDC-Bled School of Management in Bled, Slovenia, as well as a CSR expert/senior consultant at Polymundo AG in Heilbronn, Germany. She draws on several years of work experience as a Lecturer, Research Associate, and Project Manager at the Center for Advanced Sustainable Management (CASM) at the CBS International Business School in Cologne, Germany, as well as the University of Göttingen (Chair of Human Resources Management and Asian Business). Marina is passionate about challenging the status quo of how we understand and teach economy and management-related content to our students. She uses experiential learning to foster meaningful and critical reflection, envisioning alternative futures, and learning to embrace complexity and uncertainty. Additionally, she is currently involved in various international research projects dedicated to innovative higher education pedagogy, involving gamification, theater, and other methods informing arts-based management.

Yoshiki Shinohara is an Associate Professor at the College of International Management, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. He is also the Director of the Center for Inclusive Leadership (CIL). His research focuses on corporate sustainability, corporate social performance and financial performance, and diversity and inclusion in organizations. He is the President of Intellectual Partners Ltd and engages in consulting. He holds a PhD in Business and Commerce from Keio University.

Pratibha Singh, European Business School, Wiesbaden, Germany, has dedicated close to a decade of her career working with NGOs, think tanks, and associations in India, Thailand, and Germany on issues such as gender equality, climate change, migration, conflict management, and sustainable development. Adept in content creation and storytelling, she has published around 40 articles, book chapters, issue briefs, and papers. She holds two Master's degrees in Gender and Development Studies and Public Policy. Currently, she aims to maximize positive impact of financial institutions in consonance with Agenda 2030 at Agents for Impact where she is working as an SDG Rating Analyst. Simultaneously, she is pursuing her PhD from EBS University of Business and Law on sustainability transitions in small- and medium-sized cities of the Global South.

Kristina Steinbiß holds a full professorship for Management with a focus on Marketing at the ESB Business School at Reutlingen University, where she teaches primarily in the Industrial Engineering programs. Her current research focuses on sustainable marketing, how to influence consumer behavior, and the implementation of new business models. She is the author of numerous publications in the above-mentioned fields, including the textbook “Marketing,” the second edition of which has just been published. Next to her university activities, she is also enthusiastic about the TRIZ innovation methodology. As a trainer and coach, she likes to combine this methodology with her marketing approach.

Wayne Visser is a Fellow and Head Program Instructor at the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. He is also a Visiting Professor at Antwerp Management School's Sustainable Transformation Lab, which he established in 2017. He is the Director of the think tank and media company, Kaleidoscope Futures, through which he coproduced and presented the award-winning documentary film on the circular economy called Closing the Loop. In addition, he is the Founder of CSR International and a Board Member of the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI). Dr Visser previously served as the Director of Sustainability Services for KPMG and a Strategy Analyst for Capgemini in South Africa. His work as a Strategy Analyst, Sustainability Advisor, CSR Expert, Futurist, and Professional Speaker has taken him to 78 countries in the past 30 years to work with over 230 clients. He is the author of 44 books, including Thriving, an Amazon bestseller in 17 countries. He is also the recipient of the Global CSR Excellence and Leadership Award, the Emerald Literati Outstanding Author Contribution Award.

Foreword

By Wayne Visser

Management education has come a long way since I first did my business studies around 35 years ago. Back then, sustainable development had just been coined, and the 1992 Rio Earth Summit had not yet taken place. Subjects like business ethics and social responsibility were already on the academic research agenda but had not yet made their way onto most curricula. In contrast, if my experience was anything to go by, business students and business leaders were already actively engaging with social and environmental challenges.

What we have witnessed in the intervening decades is an incremental process of mainstreaming sustainability in business education. One key landmark was undoubtedly the launch of the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) in 2007, which now has around 850 signatories. This is progress, but there are approximately 16,000 business schools, according to an AACSB estimate, so there is still a long way to go. Of course, even among PRME signatory schools, the progress is not even.

My experience of working with over 50 universities and business schools around the world is that there are stages of maturity in the implementation of responsible management education, from ad hoc engagement on sustainability topics, such as through seminars or volunteer activities (stage 1), to a pick-and-mix offering of sustainability elective courses or research projects, sometimes called a saddle-bag approach (stage 2). Then, there's embedding of compulsory business ethics, CSR, ESG or sustainability courses or projects into curricula (stage 3), and mainstreaming sustainability by ensuring that it features in all taught subjects, research programs, and campus operations (stage 4).

Many believe that mainstreaming is the ultimate goal of responsible management education, but I would add a fifth stage, transforming, which is qualitatively different. Here, sustainability is mainstreamed, but there is also critical reflection on the unsustainability of underlying economic systems and business models, and a conscious focus on innovation to transition from systemic breakdown in nature, society, and the economy to breakthrough solutions and market opportunities. In this mode of engagement, through teaching, research, and outreach, responsible management education becomes a driver of systems change and a catalyst for positive tipping points.

The focus of this collection is exactly what we need right now to shake management education out of its complacency. Educational institutions – and especially those that are developing our current and future leaders – need to move from being human capital factories that perpetuate the status quo to creative incubators of a radically different economy in which both nature and humans thrive. This is the essence of my book, Thriving: The Breakthrough Movement to Regenerate Nature, Society and the Economy, and the takeaway message from my poem, Change the World, with which I will end this Foreword.