About the Project
The Project
Recent environmental disasters accompanied with corporate scandals and managerial incompetence suggest that business schools, and management pedagogies in particular, are becoming inadequate to develop managers with a duty of care to their natural environment. Failure to acknowledge the coexistence of the enterprise within its natural environment along with its impact is likely to threaten public life and, ironically businesses』 future too. Environmental degradation at the hands of businesses is raising several questions for business schools in producing managers who are responsive to the intensifying pressures of the natural world around them; and who have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to act according to planetary considerations.
As argued by critical scholars, promoting sustainability thinking that encourages an ethics of care towards the natural environment beyond woke hypocrisy and moral justifications of CSR is critical to developing the next generation of managers. We are, therefore, inviting PhD proposals which seek to challenge the limits of orthodoxy to understand how business schools can balance the paradoxical perspectives on profitability and environmental sustainability as part of the managerial development process. Proposals should look to advance non-linear management thinking by integrating theoretical perspectives, inter/trans-disciplinary ethical approaches, and analyse the epistemic drivers of environmental sustainability in business schools.
Ideally, your proposal should address ways to:
1. Investigate new/existing business school pedagogies, curricula, and practices that converge/diverge from traditional managerialist rationalities.
2. Problematize epistemic foundations of management thinking around change that solely focuses on the well-being of the enterprise.
3. Examine the discrepancies between what business schools commit to and deliver to society as part of their social responsibility.
The aforesaid areas should draw on and contribute to at least one of the following themes in relation to developing managers or managers-to-be:
· Biodiversity risks, degradation of ecosystems and net zero carbon.
· Climate migration, indigenous communities, EDI, or issues of social justice.
· Climate action and activism in business schools.
· Climate capitalism and the role of business schools in society.
· Climate literacy, policies, and change initiatives.
· Globalization, decolonization, and climate change in the global South
Proposals logically integrating multiple themes with a clear rationale will be preferred.
We aim to adopt a three-paper route, where the PhD student is expected to draft three publishable studies for high quality journals (with our collaboration and feedback). In terms of the methodology, the structure of the data will mainly comprise of a mix of the following qualitative methods (to be included in your proposal with justification of the sample, context, method, and access to data):
- Interviews
- Focus groups
- Case studies