Exploring and Exposing Values in Management Education: Problematizing Final Vocabularies in Order to...

Exploring and Exposing Values in Management Education:Problematizing Final Vocabularies in Order to Enhance MoralImagination

Martin Fougere • Nikodemus Solitander •

Suzanne Young

Received: 25 September 2012 / Accepted: 12 February 2013

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Abstract In business schools, there is a persistent myth

according to which management education is, and should

be, ‘value-free’. This article reflects on the experiences of

two business schools from Finland and Australia in which

the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education

(PRME) have been pragmatically used as a platform for

breaking with this institutionalized guise of positivist value

neutrality. This use of PRME makes it possible to create

learning environments in which values and value tensions

inherent in management education can be explored and

exposed. Inspired by Rorty’s understanding of ethics—

notably his discussion of ‘final vocabularies’ and ‘moral

imagination’—and Flyvbjerg’s reading of phronesis, the

article discusses an approach to learning that helps both

teachers and students in exploring and exposing values in

management education by problematizing dominant busi-

ness school vocabularies, thereby leading to moral devel-

opment, in the Rortian sense. The article presents a number

of final vocabularies that business students come to class

with, some learning methods used to challenge these

vocabularies through discussion of alternative vocabular-

ies, and the new directions for moral imagination that may

result.

Keywords Final vocabularies � Moral imagination �Phronesis � PRME � Responsible management education �Values

Abbreviations

PRME Principles for responsible management education

CSR Corporate social responsibility

CR Corporate responsibility

MBA Master of Business Administration

IR International relations

IB International business

Introduction

It no longer seems possible to retain the image of

management education as an objective, value-free

transmission of knowledge. The political and ethical

consciousness-raising of the past decade has height-

ened awareness that management education transmits

values, whether explicitly or implicitly. (Thomas

1977, p. 484)

As the quotation above shows, the academic discussion

on values in management education has been ongoing for

decades, yet the topic is seemingly as relevant—and

unresolved at least in terms of what it means in practice—

as it was in 1977. The last 10 years have again brought the

issue of values in management education to the surface, in

the form of public calls for more ‘responsible’ business

models, as firms and their managers need to be able to

address wider problems of equity, sustainability, global-

ization and development, and embed business practice into

broader ethical discussions (Scherer et al. 2009). This

M. Fougere � N. Solitander

Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland

e-mail: Martin.fougere@hanken.fi

N. Solitander

e-mail: Nikodemus.solitander@hanken.fi

S. Young (&)

La Trobe Business School, La Trobe University,

Melbourne, VIC, Australia

e-mail: s.h.young@latrobe.edu.au

123

J Bus Ethics

DOI 10.1007/s10551-013-1655-9

development has been flanked by an increasing number of

both specialized courses at business schools and special

issues of management education journals that are devoted

to these issues (Brower 2011; Pless et al. 2011; Starik et al.

2010; Steketee 2009; Stead and Stead 2010; Wu et al.

2010). The pressure is seemingly again on for business

schools to adopt a wider scholarly lens and turn their the-

oretical perspectives and empirical research toward ‘big’

social and economic questions (Podolny 2009; Wilson and

McKiernan 2011). Yet built into the structures of the

management education system there is still the persistent

myth of a ‘value-free’ management education. The per-

sistence of this myth is supported through (1) a legitimi-

zation of management as science by dressing it in the guise

of the ‘neutral’, ‘objective’ and ‘rational’ vocabulary of

natural sciences and (2) an institutionalized denial of the

desirability of a reflection on values (Clegg and Ross-

Smith 2003; Ghoshal 2005; Gonin 2007).

In this article, we are inspired by Rorty’s pragmatist

philosophy, which (1) rejects the notion that knowledge

presented as value-neutral may ‘refer to the real’ better

than more interpretative or normative vocabularies (Rorty

1981, p. 572) and (2) questions the very possibility of value

neutrality—as ‘whatever terms are used to describe human

beings [and more generally social phenomena] become

‘evaluative’ terms’ (Rorty 1981, p. 574; emphases in the

original). This does not necessarily mean for Rorty that

more value-neutral, seemingly ‘Galilean’ scientific vocab-

ularies are necessarily worse in a social science context

than more ‘hermeneutical’ approaches to knowledge—

what matters to pragmatists like Rorty and Dewey is that

‘we give up the notion of science travelling towards an end

called ‘correspondence with reality’ and instead say merely

that a given vocabulary works better than another for a

given purpose’ (Rorty 1981, p. 571; emphasis in the ori-

ginal). Thus, for Rorty, ‘there is no basis for truth beyond

consent within a linguistic community’ (Gold 2010,

p. 301), and there can be no foundations for moral judg-

ment that would hold universally across linguistic com-

munities. Instead, in a Rortian understanding—and as

articulated by Gold (2010, p. 301)—‘moral development

lies in using our ‘‘moral imagination’’ to create empathy

with members of differing linguistic communities in order

to extend our level of human solidarity and foster social

hope’. The problem we see in the dominance of seemingly

value-neutral approaches to management education thus

lies both in the lack of acknowledgement that there are

values attached to these dominant vocabularies and, relat-

edly, in the lack of diversity of vocabularies to which

business students are exposed.

In order to break with the institutionalized dominance of

‘positivist value neutrality’ and transform management

education by ‘incorporating the values of the broader

society into research and education’ (Gonin 2007, p. 44),

one pragmatic move we have made in the two business

schools we represent is to use the UN Principles for

Responsible Management Education (PRME) as a platform

for change. PRME was introduced in July 2007 in order to

highlight the need for business schools to infuse ‘respon-

sibility’ into their education offerings based on ‘interna-

tionally accepted values’ that are to serve as ‘a framework

for systemic change for business schools’ (PRME 2012).

The second PRME principle states that business schools are

to incorporate into all academic activities and curricula the

‘values of global social responsibility’. However, the

meaning of these ‘values’ remains very open and the call

for change is based on a broad consensus that business

school education needs to address sustainability and legit-

imacy challenges. We thus see PRME as a broad frame-

work which we can pragmatically use as a lever for making

it acceptable to bring about more diversity of vocabularies

in management education and pedagogical approaches that

are different from ‘business school as usual’. In our Rortian

understanding, PRME implementation makes it possible to

engage with business school linguistic communities in

three ways: (1) by uniting one global business school

community in the acknowledgement of the need for change

and responsibilization through a broad, global consensus;

(2) by encouraging business schools from different parts of

the world to engage with each other (as in the case of this

article, which connects experiences from business schools

from Finland and Australia), which contributes to

enhancing our moral imagination and enlarging our com-

munity; and (3) by inviting different disciplinary commu-

nities within business schools to work towards ‘responsible

management education’, thereby creating cross-disciplin-

ary possibilities conducive to the development of moral

imagination through the cross-fertilization of different

vocabularies.

Even though there are an increasing number of studies

on the changes originating from the introduction of PRME

(see Bendell 2007; Rusinko 2010, Solitander et al. 2012;

Stead and Stead 2010; Wals 2010; Young and Nagpal

2013) the focus is often on sustainability curriculum design

and practice, rather than how to address issues related to

values. Hence despite charters such as PRME that

emphasize the integration of the values of responsibility in

teaching, management education still faces an increasingly

heavy critique, which suggests that curriculum changes

amount to little but lip-service (Podolny 2009; Sliwa and

Cairns 2009). In this article, we propose that a more

responsible way of designing management education

involves exposing values and value tensions inherent in

management education, while legitimizing faculty to

challenge dominant business school vocabularies, thereby

providing a safe environment for students to explore their

M. Fougere et al.

123

own values. The types of learning methods that this entails

have to rely much more on teacher moderation and facil-

itation than on transmission. When creating a space for

different vocabularies to be drawn on in classroom dis-

cussions, the teacher should be ‘willing to challenge even

the most sacred elements of his or her own final vocabu-

lary’ (Gold 2010, p. 305), taking the position of an ‘ironist’

who has the ability to see that depending on the purpose,

different vocabularies may work better than others (see

Rorty 1989).

While many are arguing for the adoption of sustain-

ability approaches as a method of making education more

responsible, Benn and Martin (2010) contend that an over-

emphasis on ‘technical processes’, such as triple bottom-

line and life cycle analysis, threatens to marginalize

approaches based on stakeholder perceptions and values

clarification. Likewise the focus within business ethics

teaching on rules-based approaches, administrative proce-

dures and codes of conduct can be seen as a threat to

business ethics itself (Parker 1998; Clegg and Rhodes

2006), as it removes the reflexive encounter people are

faced with in the context of ‘the way that they bring

morality to bear on their interaction with organizational

requirements’ (Clegg and Rhodes 2006, p. 4). Rather, what

is needed is a stronger focus on how people interact with

rules, norms and organizational values in constituting their

own and others’ conduct in particular contexts, in line with

Flyvbjerg’s (2001) discussion of ‘phronesis’. In

approaching the issue of responsible management educa-

tion, we are inspired by a Rortian understanding of moral

imagination (Rorty 2006; Gold 2010) and Flyvbjerg’s

(2001, 2006) reading of phronesis. We aim to show how

this approach, when applied to pedagogy in a business

school context, helps both teachers and students in

exploring and exposing values in management education

by problematizing dominant business school vocabularies,

thereby leading to a development of moral imagination.

We do not only discuss the issue from the perspective of

student learning but also through a critical reflection on our

own practices as educators, which we believe is a necessity

in any context that we wish to label responsible manage-

ment education (Cunliffe 2004; Grey 2002).

The article is structured as follows. The next section

discusses the role of values in management education and

practice before drawing on Flyvbjerg and Rorty to discuss

how such a surfacing of values—and more specifically of

what Rorty calls ‘final vocabularies’—may be desirable.

After this theoretical section, the context and practices of

our two business schools are discussed. In the subsequent

section, we introduce some selected examples from our

courses in light of our approach inspired by Rorty and

Flyvbjerg; we present the types of final vocabularies stu-

dents come to class with, the learning methods used, and

the new directions for moral imagination that may result.

The salient conclusions are then drawn.

Situating Values in the Context of Management

Education and Practice

Mintzberg (2005) has famously argued that management

education needs to allow students to engage in reflective

practice, share their practical experiences, and connect with

their prime constituency in the real world. Thus, a central

task for responsible management education should be ‘to

consider ethics in the context of those contemporary

challenges that contextualize action rather than to appeal to

abstract or universalizing moral principles or arguments’

(Clegg and Rhodes 2006 p. 4). This view rejects an

understanding of ethics wherein ‘organizations can col-

lapse ethics into systems of rules, codes or administrative

procedures’ (ibid). Such an approach would, at its worst,

amount to a ‘relief from responsibility’ (Bauman 2008,

p. 52), wherein ‘a measure of genuine or putative clarity is

injected into a hopelessly opaque situation by replacing

(more correctly, covering up) the mind-boggling com-

plexity of the task with a set of straightforward must-do

and mustn’t do rules’. This type of rules-based approach

can also have the effect of rendering action ethically neu-

tral, wherein codes become substitutes for ethical reasoning

(Clegg and Rhodes 2006). In the context of management

education, this means that students need to face ‘situations

of ambiguity where dilemmas and problems will be dealt

without the comfort and consensus or certitude’ (Clegg

et al. 2007, p. 109).1

In this vein, Springett (2005, p. 149) prioritizes critical

reflection and the incorporation of a political agenda with

students being ‘regarded as active learners and critics’. In

criticizing courses that are based on ‘issues’ and ‘solu-

tions’, he argues they provide a managerial approach

without a grounding in the genealogy and politics of these

‘symptoms’ and instead promotes a pedagogical approach

which incorporates values-based education and multi-dis-

ciplinary approaches (Springett 2005). These approaches

can be fostered through the use of many methods to pro-

vide students with a window to delve into, understand and

test their own values, assumptions and attitudes (Clemens

and Hamakawa 2010). Hence they can help in developing

the students’ awareness of themselves at individual, rela-

tional and collective levels (Boje and Al Arkoubi 2009).

1 It may be added here that in real situations moral codes and rules

often conflict, which leads to the need to choose the lesser of two

evils: interesting ethical questions often are precisely those in which a

decision either way will violate one ethical rule.

Values in Management Education

123

Business courses including MBAs have been criticized

widely as being focused on profits-first and indoctrination

towards a single-minded pursuit of profits (Slater and

Dixon-Fowler 2010). Mintzberg (2005) argues that MBA

programmes teach functional specialization rather than

management more broadly, while courses are siloed, and

lack soft skill development and human capital manage-

ment. Courses emphasize theoretical paradigms based on

agency and transaction costs which have become a self-

fulfilling prophecy as graduates seek profits first at

any costs (Slater and Dixon-Fowler 2010; Ghoshal 2005).

Giacalone and Thompson (2006) refer to this as an orga-

nization-centred worldview with the focus on the centrality

of business to society; Slater and Dixon-Fowler (2010)

explain that even when sustainability is taught in MBAs it

is primarily from an economic viewpoint. Neubaum et al.

(2009) contend that the students’ moral philosophy does

not appear to change or develop while at a business school.

They argue for more ‘moral-based’ arguments to be built

into courses even if management educators feel uncom-

fortable. However, moving from normative approaches,

Grootenboer (2010) in his study of graduate attributes at an

Australian university found that course coordinators did not

want to prescribe values, positions or beliefs that their

colleagues had to teach or promote. Within universities and

business schools, imposing top-down a strategic aim of

‘teaching values’ may not be desirable, as it resembles

more the rules-based approach discussed above and is

bound to be in tension with the ideal of academic freedom

so cherished by faculty members (Solitander et al. 2012).

Thus, the objective of business school educators may not

be to develop normative ‘moral-based’ arguments but

rather to try and surface, discuss and problematize, through

moderation rather than transmission, those values that are

already held by students and/or in the mainstream articu-

lations of their academic disciplines and to provide them

with alternative frames of reference enhancing their

learning.

Phronesis in Teaching

The discussion about the need for an increased emphasis on

context, practice and self-reflection brings us to Flyvbjerg’s

(2001) understanding of the Aristotelian concept (Aristotle

2000) of phronesis. Drawing on the notion of ‘situational

ethics’ that rejects both the foundational view (i.e. some

central values exist that can be rationally and universally

grounded) and the relativistic view (i.e. one value is just as

good as another) of norms, a phronetic approach to

teaching would see norms as contextually grounded. To

Flyvbjerg, phronesis refers to a form of practical wisdom.

It is part of Aristotle’s distinction of three principal modes

of knowledge, namely: scientific knowledge (episteme),

skill (techne), and phronesis (Aristotle 2000, pp. 105–107).

Aristotle defined phronesis as ‘a true and practical state

involving reason, concerned with what is good and bad for

a human being’ (Aristotle 2000, p. 107). Flyvbjerg sup-

plements Aristotle’s articulation of phronesis with insights

from, most notably, Foucault, Bourdieu, Geertz, MacIn-

tyre, and Rorty—all of whom can be seen as ‘empha-

siz[ing] practical before epistemic knowledge in the study

of humans and society’ (Flyvbjerg 2001, p. 130). Impor-

tantly, Flyvbjerg inserts power-related issues into the

centre of the phronetic approach. By combining classical

Aristotelian questions about value rationality with ques-

tions about power relations and their outcomes, Flyvbjerg

(2004, p. 290) constructs a set of key questions that a

contemporary phronetic approach to teaching and research

can use as guidelines to consider: (1) Where are we going?

(2) Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of

power? (3) Is this development desirable? (4) What, if

anything, should be done about it?

A phronetic approach as developed by Flyvbjerg is a

firm commitment to action and change—the 3rd and the

4th questions evoke Marx’s 11th thesis on Feuerbach,

where ‘the point is to change it’ (Marx 1846)—but what

this change should be does not have to be normatively

imposed by the teacher, because as Flyvbjerg (2001,

pp. 60–61) notes ‘there is no unified ‘‘we’’ in relation to

which the questions can be given a final answer’. Similar to

Rorty’s own minimal normative commitment as a ‘liberal’

(see Rorty 1989), this commitment broadly aims at more

environmental and social justice with a preference for

pragmatic approaches—meaning, approaches chosen

because they ‘work better’ in a particular context—rather

than ideological solutions. A Flyvbjerg-inspired phronetic

approach to management education entails paying partic-

ular attention to contextually understood power issues and

tensions between business and society: the more the stu-

dents are exposed to various tensions and problems

between business and society (rather than best practice,

win–win cases only), the better they are likely to become in

making good judgments in difficult situations (Maguire

1997, p. 1412). This is not merely about complementing

‘inspiring stories about business heroes’ with ‘horror sto-

ries about business villains’ (Rorty 2006, p. 377) but rather

about putting these stories in context in order to understand

how power works in these situations (Flyvbjerg 2001,

p. 152). Flyvbjerg sees Rorty’s neo-pragmatism as phro-

netic to the extent that as an approach to both social science

and morality it emphasizes the ‘utility of narratives and

vocabularies rather than the objectivity of laws and theo-

ries’ (Rorty 1981, p. 573) to illustrate how power works

and with what consequences. For Flyvbjerg, just as for

Rorty (drawing on Dewey), ‘‘the way to re-enchant the

M. Fougere et al.

123

world… is to stick to the concrete’’ (Rorty cited in

Flyvbjerg 2001, p. 136).

In addition, focusing on tensions in their context makes

it possible to voice value conflicts, which can lead to the

students’ becoming reflexive on their ‘final vocabulary’

(Rorty 1989) and developing their ‘moral imagination’

(Rorty 2006). These two points are emphasized in

an inspiring way by Gold (2010), whose reading of the

concepts we now turn to.

Final Vocabularies and Moral Imagination

Both the phronetic approach and recent literature on busi-

ness ethics as practice (Clegg and Rhodes 2006; Clegg

et al. 2007; Painter-Morland 2008) show how ethics is

inextricably linked with power relations; this is not only

true in the context of organizations but also in the class-

room. The classroom environment needs to make it pos-

sible for students to be skeptical of those views that are

conveyed by the most powerful agents/interests. The role

of the teacher thus is not to teach per se but through

moderation to expose students to—and invite them to

participate in—a ‘polyphony of voices’ (Flyvbjerg 2001;

Boje and Al Arkoubi 2009) representing the perceptions of

different stakeholders with different interests. It is also

important to create an environment where students dare to

question truth claims of the established paradigms as

expressed through class material, lecturers, and eventually

their work colleagues, as they face problems of challenging

dominant paradigms and lack the ability to think differently

in organizations and societies (Boje and Al Arkoubi 2009).

According to Gold (2010, p. 300), what matters for man-

agement educators is ‘the willingness to jump into the

political fray that is the classroom and provide useful tools

for students to come and understand the implications and

limitations of their final vocabulary’.

Rorty’s concept of ‘final vocabulary’ refers to the notion

that ‘all human beings carry about a set of words which

they employ to justify their actions’ (Rorty 1989, p. 73).

Drawing on the philosophy of language of authors like

Davidson and Wittgenstein, Rorty (1989, p. 11) treats

alternative vocabularies—i.e. alternative ways to represent

the world through language—as contingent, ‘more like

alternative tools than like bits of a jigsaw puzzle’. A Ror-

tian understanding of the classroom entails: (1) considering

that each student brings her/his own set of value proposi-

tions, which will serve as basis for her/his interpretations;

and (2) understanding the role of the teacher as not about

giving some normative, correct vocabulary to the students,

as alternative vocabularies can merely be seen as alterna-

tive tools to make sense of the world. This means that the

teacher should instead strive to make it possible for stu-

dents to: (1) become aware of their final vocabularies and

their associated values; (2) come to terms with the impli-

cations their own final vocabularies have for moral issues

that they may face in business decisions; and (3) enrich and

challenge their own final vocabularies through developing

‘a ‘‘moral imagination’’, a mindset where we identify and

empathize with others not thought of as part of our moral

community’ (Gold 2010, p. 306). Importantly, for Rorty a

moral imagination allows us to become aware of new ideas

and alternatives to our final vocabularies, allowing us to

imagine ‘what it would be like to stand in another’s place

and see what the impact would be’ (ibid, p. 306), creating a

sense of solidarity. By exposing and exploring the values

that characterize dominant views within management

education and among business students, thereby expanding

and challenging the students’ final vocabularies, we as

teachers can help students develop their ‘moral imagina-

tion’ which can then inform their practical wisdom in sit-

uations where they are—and will be—confronted with

difficult decisions involving value conflicts.

Hence by focusing on the ‘how’ question in this paper

we aim to understand how learning can be achieved by

providing students with an environment where values can

be exposed and explored. Pertinent questions in this regard

include: (1) how to expose students to different views from

different sectors and stakeholders; (2) how to engage in

reflection to uncover contested concepts; and (3) how to

open up value discussions in class and use problem-based

approaches to allow space and freedom for students to

explore their own values and those of the preferred busi-

ness paradigms. The aim is to challenge the students’ final

vocabularies and encourage them to explicitly analyse their

assumptions about business, government, the environment,

and society using moral imagination (Audebrand 2010;

Ghoshal 2005; Stubbs and Cocklin 2007).

The Context at the Two Business Schools

Prior to PRME implementation at the Finnish business

school, the bachelor studies were typically based on

benchmarking on the basis of the curriculum of ‘top

business schools’, and drawing on mainstream textbooks

and articles. Teaching thus focused on introducing main-

stream theories and applying them to different cases.

Reflections on values were perhaps possible but were

typically suppressed. For the faculty staff involved in

promoting PRME, it became an explicit objective to sur-

face values and expose students to business and society

issues through introducing cross-disciplinary curricula (as

supported by, e.g. Springett 2005 and Kurland et al. 2011).

To this end, the Corporate Responsibility minor (CR

minor) was created and offered at undergraduate and post

graduate levels. The minor contains courses from the

Values in Management Education

123

subjects of Corporate Law; Management and Organisation;

Marketing; Politics and Business; and Supply Chain

Management and Corporate Geography. The cross-disci-

plinary nature of the minor makes it possible to explore

business and society issues from different perspectives. As

these perspectives are not always compatible with each

other in terms of values, ontology and/or epistemology,

learning that does not lean on ‘comfort and consensus or

certitude’ (Clegg et al. 2007, p. 109) is normalized. The CR

minor is also taken by non-business students (in this form it

is complemented by a special ‘Introduction to Corporate

Responsibility’ course), from disciplines such as sociology,

political science, development studies or theology, who

come from another University in the same city. The dif-

ferent knowledge, voices and final vocabularies that these

students carry with them as members of different linguistic

communities also set a very good stage for a ‘polyphony of

voices’ (Flyvbjerg 2001; Boje and Al Arkoubi 2009). CR

courses become a platform for dialogue, rather than a

normative map of best practice.

In 2009, the Australian business school introduced a

professional qualification, the part-time Graduate Certifi-

cate in CR, with a modest domestic take-up. This pro-

gramme is not based on functional specialism as in a

traditional MBA, but being multi-disciplinary it incorpo-

rates concepts of values, culture, management, and systems

thinking across all subjects. By linking with a partner

industry organization to incorporate workshops for credits,

students could avail themselves with an opportunity to

engage with industry while providing networking oppor-

tunities. In addition, a revised MBA embeds the PRME

across teaching and curriculum in all subjects as well as

introducing new subjects based on responsibility such as

Ethics, Business in Society and Responsible Leadership. At

the faculty level, with structural changes occurring, there is

additional discussion about how the PRME can be used to

more fully integrate ethics and responsibility concepts

across the whole suite of programmes. These are requiring

a breaking down of silos and it is evident that the recent

faculty structural changes have driven more dialogue and

communication across disciplines. These changes have

signalled to students that the university and its faculty are

legitimizing values of ethics and responsibility as an

acceptable paradigm in business education. Furthermore, at

the Australian business school undergraduate level courses

in ethics have been offered for many years in the man-

agement discipline. More recently, academics in traditional

courses such as Finance have begun to seek out specialized

ethics academic staff to assist in developing specific

courses for their programmes. This could be viewed in both

a positive and negative fashion; positive in that the staff

realized that they are not equipped to teach such areas

using what Gold (2010) refers to as a ‘add ethics and stir’

mentality; and negative in that they can then argue that

their specialism does not need such thinking integrated

with their own knowledge base, drawing on the oft-used

argument that other disciplines (i.e. liberal arts) are more

qualified to conduct such normative-based discussions

(Slater and Dixon-Fowler 2010). Slater and Dixon-Fowler

(2010) argue that due to their socialization and training,

business educators feel uncomfortable integrating ‘moral’-

based arguments into their teaching and that they feel it

jeopardizes their reputation and the legitimacy of their

discipline.

Final Vocabularies, Learning Methods, and New

Directions for Moral Imaginations

In both cases, our experience from developing courses

shows that as soon as social/political/environmental/human

rights problematizations are introduced, they cannot be

easily integrated with the ‘fundamental set of words’ pro-

vided by narrow business-minded theories. In this context,

we see that an important role of the enterprising educator/

facilitator is to expose students to the tensions created by

this and to open up and moderate discussions that relate to

situations that decision-makers have to navigate and come

to terms with. As Gold (2010) notes, challenging or even

opening up for discussion the fundamental set of words that

students use to justify their own position can provoke

strong reactions in the classroom. The staff teaching in

courses on business and society issues thus need to use

teaching/learning methods to unpack and develop students’

affective qualities (beliefs, values, dispositions and atti-

tudes), creating an environment where understanding is

gained. Educators do not profess their own preferences for

certain values and/or vocabularies but rather they ideally

act as ironists who can (1) moderate and facilitate the

exposure of values and vocabularies inherent in the setting

and students and (2) introduce alternative vocabularies,

making it possible for students to discuss whether they may

or may not work better for certain particular purposes in

certain contexts.

We now turn to a discussion of five examples, based on

our approaches in our respective business schools.

Shareholder Centrality

An example from the Finnish business school which hints

at alternative vocabularies to shareholder centrality is the

use of a case study within an International Business (IB)

course where students spontaneously side with the US

objective of high Return on Investment while the Chinese

objectives of growth and employment are regarded as

unrealistic. This IB course, which is attended by students

M. Fougere et al.

123

with both management and marketing as a major, uses a

mainstream textbook, mainstream cases (typically from

Harvard Business School or Harvard Business Review),

introduces mainstream theories (on entry modes, cross-

cultural management) and applies them to the cases. The

setup of case sessions is very open to problematizations

arising from the use of different approaches, but still there

are clear incentives for using the mainstream theories

introduced in the course as students understand that these

may lead to higher grades. A session on International

Corporate Responsibility in this course after all the case

sessions have taken place provides an opportunity to revisit

the cases from new perspectives, thinking about other

stakeholders than shareholders and possible negative

externalities of textbook IB actions. Alternative views

develop through this discussion moderated by the teacher:

for example, that growth for the Chinese middle class will

eventually be good for society and most likely provide

market opportunities for those companies that have settled

in China over a relatively long period. Thus, some students

reach the conclusion that the narrow focus on short-term

shareholder benefits that is often privileged in mainstream

IB cases may prove to be counter-productive in terms of

both economic development in emerging countries and

business opportunities in the longer run.

The shareholder centrality vocabulary is also exposed in

an Australian MBA subject, Corporate Governance. Here

corporate case studies are not used but rather students are

presented with topics based on issues or problems facing

society which arise from corporate behaviours, such as

shareholder versus stakeholder approaches, executive

remuneration, environmental risk, industrial relations, and

banking profits. Groups are formed between international

students who are required to research and present on the

topic. Students are expected to engage in varying per-

spectives, provide examples and conduct the class as an

interactive tutorial. Some students find this challenging as

they desire from the teacher specific questions, frameworks

and examples; in other words for the teacher to present

wisdom and truth (Gold 2010). But the approach is based

on student-centred learning and the topics are required to

be presented by the students in the same class as the teacher

presents on the topic. Hence the student group must work

together prior to the topic being presented by the teacher to

develop their views which arise from various perspectives.

This approach thus does not present solutions but raises

important value tensions and alternative vocabularies. In

addition, the students develop alternative vocabularies

through the teacher’s questioning and prompting. In rela-

tion to one particular issue namely ‘Stakeholder perspec-

tive’ students are asked to look at the organization and its

decisions from different stakeholder perspectives and over

the short and long term.

Competition Ethos

Another approach used in Australia exposes the use of

‘competition’ as a privileged final vocabulary and proposes

alternative metaphors that may be used within the frame-

work of ‘responsible management’ and thus be in line with

the broad business school consensus brought about by

PRME. Business educators freely use metaphors to convey

a message (Audebrand 2010) with war metaphors espe-

cially used in regard to Strategic Management. Audebrand

contends that this can convey a bias in favour of adversarial

relationships between business actors. The complex inter-

action of war metaphors with anthropocentrism, individu-

alism, patriarchy, mechanism, and progress adds to the

challenge of looking for alternatives that problematize

student preconceptions about the nature of business

(Audebrand 2010). The MBA course in Australia attempts

to expand students’ final vocabularies by proposing alter-

native metaphors such as ‘earth is our home’, ‘steward-

ship’, ‘world as a garden’, which can be seen more broadly

as ‘caring metaphors’. While a proposed substitution of

war metaphors for caring metaphors would not really be in

line with a Rortian approach, the juxtaposition of the caring

metaphors with the more mainstream war metaphors makes

it possible to think about what types of metaphors may be

pragmatically better options for the purpose of promoting

broad ‘business responsibilization’ objectives such as those

promoted by PRME, or indeed, by pragmatist thinkers such

as Dewey and Rorty in terms of social justice and social

hope. That metaphors can ‘work well’ for a purpose is in

line with a Rortian understanding, as it acknowledges the

power of metaphors in shaping reality as experienced by

linguistic communities (Rorty 1989).

The role of business in society is thus explored from

these differing perspectives—namely competition versus

caring—and alternative corporate visions, strategies,

actions and performance objectives are developed by the

students as they attempt to uncover and understand dif-

ferent corporate behaviours. By engaging in this approach

students discuss short-term versus/and (as both tensions

and congruence should be reflected on) long-term decision-

making, salient stakeholders and stakeholder priorities,

shareholder versus/and stakeholder corporate objectives,

financial, environment and social objectives, the position of

labour as a cost versus/and as a resource, types and amount

of executive remuneration, competitors versus/and part-

nerships and networks, and the community of the corpo-

ration. Moral imagination entails the ability to understand

one’s situation from different perspectives, enabling stu-

dents to recognize options and vocabularies that may not be

obvious from within the dominant paradigms and contex-

tualize these situations within the moral realm (Werhane

and Moriary 2009, pp. 3–4). It is not that the teacher

Values in Management Education

123

defines what is responsible or not but that a deeper

understanding of business practice is developed. By pro-

viding a safe environment to explore tensions and con-

gruence between these alternatives, students can see how

responsible management can be understood and

implemented.

Liberal Individualism

In the Finnish business school a course introduces different

International Relations (IR) theories—mainly the four most

dominant ones, i.e. Realism, Liberalism, Marxism and

Constructivism—in order to understand globalization,

global governance and the changing role of business in

relation to these processes. Of the four most dominant IR

theories, the only one with which most business school

students are usually familiar with is Liberalism, but they

are not used to reflecting on the contingency of liberal

values, which they may often take for granted. Thus,

importing the other three IR theories represents as many

opportunities for exposing students to alternative vocabu-

laries about globalization, which makes possible more

reflexivity on liberal values. One case relating to a recent

significant trend in IR—such as the rise of Private Military

Contractors (PMCs), which was used this academic year—

is used to illustrate all four theories in turn and show how

each vocabulary illuminates the case in a different way that

is as much a way of seeing as a way of not seeing. Thus,

each theory is used to understand different phenomena to

the extent that it is useful for this purpose, no matter how

sympathetic to possible normative aspects of the theory the

educator and the students may be.

This general setup provides a rare opportunity to intro-

duce Marxian perspectives (without advocating more

normative Marxist views and without privileging this

vocabulary over the other vocabularies) in a business

school context. Marxism is first presented in conjunction

with an introduction to the context in which Marx and

Engels thought about the articulation of collective interests

during the industrial revolution. The discussion then turns

to whether Marxian insights may be relevant today, and if

so, how. Many business students are spontaneously skep-

tical regarding the potential usefulness of Marxism in

relation to contemporary globalization, but after a discus-

sion in small groups some suggestions are usually made,

particularly relating to the notion that the Marxian articu-

lation of collective interests during the industrial revolution

can be seen as having contributed to the gradual

improvement in labour standards, the development of a

middle class and a reasonably fair distribution of welfare in

developed countries. The initial discussion of the industrial

revolution thus serves to show that Marxian perspectives

can be useful in understanding—and perhaps addressing—

contemporary challenges: exploitation of low-cost labour

in developing countries today is posited by some students

as similar to exploitation of the working class during and

after the industrial revolution. For instance, the exodus of

the poor from rural areas to work in assembly plants in

large Chinese cities provides an excess supply of potential

workers, which is reminiscent of the situation during the

industrial revolution. This excess supply does not put

pressure on employers to improve working conditions,

while on the other hand the big corporations they work for

impose very strong pressure to keep the costs down. This

discussion makes it possible for the students to articulate

the notion (rarely spontaneously articulated in business

schools, without exposure to a Marxian vocabulary) that

one way to lead to significant improvements in working

conditions in developing countries may be through an

expression of collective interests uniting the workers, much

as unionization historically improved working conditions

in Western countries.

In another issues-based topic in Australia—Industrial

Relations—the lecturer provides students with a platform

to engage in thinking around the ‘other’ and unsettle the

individualistic bias that tends to predominate among busi-

ness students, who often see themselves as free and

employable individuals. They often look at the employ-

ment relationship as between themselves and the organi-

zation rather than as between themselves, other workers,

the organization, and other state and non-state actors.

Individualism presupposes that they do not need collective

actions, networks or partnerships. Issues are presented by

the teacher in terms of individual versus collective action;

low-cost labour versus corporate profits; the impact of

corporate decisions on employees; labour market flexibility

versus labour rights; power of skilled and unskilled labour;

contracts versus employment. Exposing the individualist

vocabulary and allowing students to think about the ‘other’

perspective provides students with a platform to think

about the effect of their own and corporate actions on

others within the organization, within their peer group, and

within the national and international community of work-

ers; hence delving into varying viewpoints of what a

‘responsible’ organization may look like.

Consumer Centrality

In the CR minor in Finland, the students are challenged in

the use of one of the most fundamental student vocabu-

laries—that of consumption and consumer society. The

problematization of consumption is in line with a phronetic

approach as it directly engages with the students’ own

experiences as consumers, a subject position that they can

more easily adopt than for instance management-related

subject positions due to their lack of management

M. Fougere et al.

123

experience. A typical notion that surfaces when discussing

CR issues early on in the minor is that people can make a

difference through their consumption choices, that they can

‘vote with their wallets’. This assertion is put up for dis-

cussion in order to give a chance for different voices to be

expressed on this issue of the power of consumers.

Sometimes strong objections are expressed but usually the

notion that consumers in a country like Finland are pow-

erful and exert power over business through ethical con-

sumption choices remains dominant in this preliminary

discussion.

In order to challenge this in a simple and straightforward

way, a clear example of a consumption choice that virtually

all Finnish consumers are familiar with is provided: a

picture of two bananas, one with a well-known fair trade

label, the other with a well-known brand and a label from

the Rainforest Alliance—this has become the standard

offering in many Finnish supermarkets. Asked about which

banana they buy when faced with these two possibilities, an

overwhelming majority of students honestly answer that

they buy the cheaper banana. Further, when asked about

what the two labels mean and how that may impact on their

consumption choice, most if not all students are unable to

specify what the difference may be between these two

labels, which are among the most famous CR-related labels

in distribution in Finland. Some of the limitations to the

almost unanimous assertion that consumers make a dif-

ference through their ethical consumption choices thus

become obvious to all. It is then important to ‘help students

come to terms with the implications their own final

vocabularies have for the moral issues’ (Gold 2010, p. 305)

faced in this example. Thus, through the question ‘if we

took our potential power as consumers seriously, what

would we need to do to realize that power, for example,

when buying a banana?’ students are invited to reflect and

come up with at least the minimal idea that consumers

should strive to understand what the different labels con-

cretely mean, socially and/or environmentally speaking. As

many students then come to the conclusion that in fact

consumers do not have so much power at present, the

question ‘how else could people make a difference?’ then

becomes relevant. By discussing this question, students can

develop a moral imagination and think in terms of other

subject positions, such as citizens and activists, which may

complement and support the power exerted as consumers.

Compliance Approach

Another method used challenges the compliance approach

to ethics. CR students are reluctant to challenge sustain-

ability norms which have been developed over time and

adopt a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to a discussion of alter-

native views; notwithstanding that these can result from

sustainability or responsibility thinking. In this vein in

Australia, a problematization perspective is adopted in the

CR programme where students are presented with issues

such as ‘food miles’ or ‘purchasing local’ with different

perspectives encouraged and called for. Students often

profess that purchasing local is best as it cuts back on

transportation and greenhouse emissions. But when other

perspectives are provided by the teacher about the impact

this may have on developing economies they find this

challenging as they also profess to be ideologically in tune

with ensuring that developing economies are sustainable.

Another problem they are challenged with is ‘child labour’

with their initial point of view based on it being exploit-

ative. In a class with international students other view-

points are brought to the fore in regard to the need for all

members of the family to work to provide a living wage as

well as it being better than begging or prostitution. Ques-

tions raised by the teacher provide alternative scenarios

where children are provided with a living and health and

schooling on-site. Students are then provided with discus-

sion points allowing reflection to occur. As Marshall et al.

(2010, p. 478) note, from a Western perspective sweat-

shops are bad and should be eliminated, but for developing

countries the opposite may hold. In the approach used in

class, Western values are often questioned with debates

arising between students contrasting approaches, values

and frameworks.

In Table 1, we list a number of final vocabularies we

encounter in mainstream business education literature and

in classroom discussions, the learning methods we use to

expose these final vocabularies and unsettle them, and

some of the new directions for moral imagination that may

be opened up for students and faculty members as a result.

It should be noted that such a ‘list’ does not allow us to

provide enough context in order to fully understand how

moral imagination may be developed in each case. How-

ever, it is worthwhile to include the table here to display a

variety of issues to which we have applied the approach

described in the article.

Polyphony of Vocabularies

In all these examples the role of the teacher is to accept the

political nature of the discussion and respect the values that

students hold and express. The teacher typically acts as a

moderator providing a safe environment that allows dis-

cussion to occur, facilitating as much as possible the

expression of different voices. This does not mean that

such ‘teacher-moderators’ may not have some commit-

ments that they might be tempted to favour in the class-

room, and indeed in some of our illustrations it may be that

some of our own relative preferences become somewhat

visible, if only because certain alternative vocabularies are

Values in Management Education

123

Table 1 Exposing and unsettling final vocabularies

Final vocabularies Learning methods New possible directions for moral imagination

Shareholder centrality:

Investments are worthwhile if the

returns are high

The focus of managerial decision-

making is profits in the short-term

Subverting a mainstream case by emphasizing

the problem from the other’s perspective

(1) Short-term profits may be at odds with benefits

for society

(2) Even from a business perspective, long-term

development may pay off more and be win–win

(3) Making long-term decisions to benefit

stakeholders may bring about better resource

allocation and improved stakeholder engagement

and in turn long-term profitability

Competition ethos:

Business is all about competition

Problematizing mainstream war metaphors and

using alternative metaphors

(1) What if nature was a relative?

(2) What if the central organizing principle was

caring?

(3) How would decisions be made if using a caring/

stewardship/earth metaphor?

(4) What stakeholders would be engaged with if an

alternative metaphor was used?

Liberal individualism:

As free, employable individuals we

have no need for unions

Labour market flexibility is a good

thing for organisations

Employee relations are about the

relationships between the individual

and the organisation

Introducing Marx and the articulation of

collective interests during the industrial

revolution and asking for a reflection on

whether this can provide insights to understand

exploitation today OR

Using an issues-based approach to understanding

employee’s perspectives

(1) Think about the role of collective action in

history

(2) Marxian understandings may be useful in

understanding/addressing contemporary

challenges

(3) What is the impact of these decisions on

employees?

(4) What is the outcome of labour flexibility for

peripheral and employees without power?

(5) How should the fruits of labour be distributed?

What is the right mix between profits and labour?

(6) How do these employees co-exist with business

in society?

(7) Employee relations are about the relationships

between the individual, other workers, the

organization, and other state and non-state actors

Consumer centrality:

Nowadays we can make a difference

as consumers

Placing students in front of concrete

consumption choices exposing price-driven

and non-enlightened consumption

(1) If we took our potential power as consumers

seriously, what would we need to do to realize that

power?

(2) If consumers have no or little power, how else

could citizens make a difference?

Compliance approach:

We should always take a zero

tolerance approach to child labour

Opening up discussion to different perspectives

looking at effects for all as well as potential

effects of such decisions on developing

societies

The issue of child labour needs to be considered in

light of the effect on the developed and developing

society and the individuals and family

CR paradigm shift:

Today firms have adopted triple

bottom-line thinking

Asking for concrete measurements of the other

two bottom-lines

(1) If social and environmental impacts are not fully

measurable, should they be called bottom-lines?

(2) If social and environmental issues mainly appear

as costs, should they be called bottom-lines?

(3) How does it affect actions as opposed to

measurement?

Partnership orientation:

Collaboration between business,

governments and NGOs is the way

to tackle environmental and social

challenges

Debate involving two student teams representing

(1) a multi-stakeholder governance initiative

and (2) an adversarial watchdog

(1) Adversarial relations may lead in certain cases to

more radical/sustainable action than collaborative

relations

(2) Adversarial relations and collaborative relations

are not mutually exclusive, they can contribute to

each other

M. Fougere et al.

123

brought up rather than others. We believe that this is to

some extent inevitable but that it may be fine as long as

alternative vocabularies are articulated as useful for a

certain purpose (cf. Rorty 1981) and not necessarily as

meant to systematically replace more mainstream vocab-

ularies. In our illustrations above we have for instance

made it clear that Realism, Marxism and Constructivism

are not posited as vocabularies that should be privileged

over Liberalism (more dominant in business schools) in

understanding globalization. Similarly, in our discussion of

the power of consumers, the healthy questioning of this

power does not necessarily lead to the rejection of the

notion that consumers have power but generate thinking on

both the conditions under which the consumers may have

power and the other subject positions that citizens may

draw on in order to have their voices heard. Alternative

vocabularies should be construed as complementary to

dominant vocabularies rather than meant to replace them

completely. In trying to understand the issues better, stu-

dents are not meant to seek a universal truth but rather to

negotiate a path through tensions, contradictions and sim-

ilarities. In our Rortian understanding, what is right is not

the discourse used, but rather what is useful to talk about

(Gold 2010, p. 301) so that we develop ‘empathy with

members of differing linguistic communities in order to

extend our level of human solidarity and foster social

hope’.

Discussion and Conclusion

It is noteworthy that just signing PRME is not as such

indicative of systemic change or an internal value reflec-

tion. For example, the only requirement of PRME

participation is to ‘share information… on the progress

made in implementing the Principles’ with approximately

25 % of signatory schools failing to produce such a report

within set deadlines (Solitander et al. 2012). In addition, as

Benn and Martin (2010, p. 398) argue in the face of faculty

and student resistance to curriculum reform in sustain-

ability, ‘activists within business schools have resorted to

tactics such as ‘‘how can we fit in’’, or ‘‘what can we do for

you’’ rather than ones that challenge established values’.

Thus, whether PRME leads to significant change heavily

depends on how it is pragmatically used locally. In our

respective business schools, we have chosen to take PRME

seriously as a platform for change and more specifically for

bringing about more diversity of vocabularies in manage-

ment education and alternative pedagogical approaches. As

Gold (2010, p. 300) puts it, the point is ‘to jump into the

political fray that is the classroom and provide useful tools

for students to understand the implications and limitations

of their own final vocabulary’. This means that the ‘new

directions for moral imagination’ that we provide in

Table 1 and through our discussed examples should by no

means be imposed on the students. Rather, as teachers we

should accompany the students in their exploration of the

implications and limitations of different vocabularies,

including those which we as teachers may be more prone to

using.

Our approach thus has to differ from those of scholars

who promote ‘values-based education’, such as Springett

(2005) and Grootenboer (2010). In linking how to what

Springett (2005) demonstrates how sustainability education

can elevate values-based education: ‘a critical theorization

of education for sustainability in the business studies cur-

riculum influences not only the content, but also the

philosophical and values base of the course, the

Table 1 continued

Final vocabularies Learning methods New possible directions for moral imagination

Faith in innovation:

The best way to tackle environmental

and social challenges is to

incentivize private actors to innovate

Asking students to search for information about

sustainable innovation incentives, the new

products they have led to and their overall

effects on nature (e.g. Finnish biofuel example)

(1) Lower emissions here may mean much

higher emissions upstream in the supply chain

(2) Narrow incentives for innovations may need

to be positioned within a broader context (e.g.

emissions trading not being universally applied

may lead to perverse effects; a rise in overall

emissions)

(3) What is the role of governments in society?

White Man’s burden

It is our mission to empower

communities from the developing

world

Mirror versions of cases showing the

patronizing, essentialistic and ultimately

exploitative nature of Western development

‘missions’

(1) Supposedly ‘value-neutral’ business cases

may hide exploitative dimensions which need

to be exposed

(2) We may need to learn from ‘them’ as much

as (or even more than) we think they need to

learn from ‘us’

(3) Adopt the position of the ‘other’

Values in Management Education

123

pedagogical approach and the goal of student self-reflec-

tion’ (Springett 2005, p. 156). The main goal in his course

was to ‘help learners to understand that ‘sustainability’ is

not only a discourse about ecology and economics, but is

essentially ideological and political’ (ibid, p. 152). Simi-

larly, we argue that the use of techniques from values-

based education provided as examples such as modelling

(Grootenboer 2010) is problematic. The approach pro-

fessed where teachers need ‘to passionately hold and dis-

play the affective attributes that they desired for their

students’ as it is ‘the strongest form of communication

about what is important’ (Grootenboer 2010, p. 732) cre-

ates a teaching-centred approach that attempts to teach the

right values rather than make the development of moral

imagination possible. We do not aim to merely teach stu-

dents another value set which we would expect them to adopt.

In line with Rorty (2006) and Gold (2010), we believe that

in order to develop moral imagination it is important to use

narratives. Case studies, fiction and documentary films, for

instance, can all be used in supporting the development of

both the students’ and the teacher’s moral imagination—and

we have used all these means, although we cannot discuss all

in the present paper. But we want to emphasize three addi-

tional types of tools, not strictly or only narrative, which we

use in order to enhance moral imagination in a fruitful way.

First, we ask students to identify to certain perspectives, by

asking them to think from the viewpoints of certain stake-

holders or by asking them to play the roles of certain actors

in a role play or a debate. Second, as discussed in relation to

the competition ethos, we propose alternative metaphors,

which resonate with Rorty’s (1989) own way of presenting

different vocabularies as metaphors that are better or worse

in illuminating particular issues. Third, we do introduce

alternative vocabularies ourselves, but not as absolute

authoritative ‘solutions’ to the issues; rather, these alterna-

tive vocabularies we put forward are merely presented as

tools to see the world differently, from a perspective that

may be traditionally overlooked, suppressed or even dis-

credited in the business school environment, as in the case of

the introduction of Marxian vocabulary to think about the

issue of the workers’ collective interests. Alternative final

vocabularies should be allowed to develop: shareholder and

stakeholder approaches, individual and collective, compe-

tition and caring, I and they, private and public, business and

society, and consumption and advocacy. As Gold (2010,

305) notes this approach relies on an understanding on the

part of the teacher as to the power relations evident in the

classroom and should consider the learner as an ‘organic

intellectual’. The teacher becomes just one voice in the

classroom, in line with certain types of critical pedagogy

(e.g. Freire 1970).

In conclusion, we have provided examples of two busi-

ness schools approaches in exposing, problematizing and

unsettling values that are often dominant among business

school students and in management education. We have

illustrated this by concentrating on how learning is achieved

rather than what curriculum is introduced. Our examples

show the types of final vocabularies students come to class

with, how these are unpacked, the learning methods used,

and possible new directions for moral imagination that may

result through the juxtaposition with alternative vocabular-

ies. We believe that mobilizing and stimulating the students

and faculty members to imagine more socially responsible

and sustainable futures requires grappling with these final

vocabularies and continuously seeking to develop others’

and one’s own moral imaginations.

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