Abstract
With a historical acceptance rate of approximately 11%, the Journal of Management Education (JME), ranks as a top-tier management education outlet in the scholarship of teaching and learning space. Articles published in JME bridge theory and practice while simultaneously encouraging scholar practitioners to challenge current thinking in management education.
The MOBTS Fritz J. Roethlisberger Memorial Award is named after Fritz Roethlisberger, whose groundbreaking work in the early 20th century shed new light on constructs such as worker motivation, satisfaction, and participation. Roethlisberger’s movement from a scientific approach to a multidimensional approach offers a new lens on human relations and captures the essence of this award.
In this spirit of rejecting the status quo, the Fritz J. Roethlisberger Memorial Award is given annually to the best article published in JME in the previous year. For the 2018 award, 27 JME articles published in 2017 were considered; a committee of 28 reviewers accepted the difficult task of selecting a single article for the award. Criteria for the award were as follows:
Potential for reaching across disciplines
Ease of adoption in courses
Potential to reach the greatest number of students
Longevity: Will the concept apply 5 to 10 years from now
Significance of the article to make a contribution to the field of management education
Originality/innovative nature of the work
Assessment of scholarship, including how well articles are grounded in the work of others (but they do not necessarily need to agree with others’ work), whether they reflect the authors’ understanding of the work that precedes this publication (again, not necessarily buying in to dominant paradigms but at least acknowledging their existence), and how clear and rigorous the research and writing are
We are pleased to announce that the recipients of this year’s Roethlisberger Award are Denise Linda Parris (Northern Arizona University) and Cecilia McInnis-Bowers (Rollins College) for their article, “Business Not as Usual: Developing Socially Conscious Entrepreneurs and Intrapreneurs.”
This forward-thinking article addresses an identified resistance to change from management educators to integrate sustainability into existing curricula and syllabi. In doing so, it transitions the catch phrase, “business as usual” to “business not as usual,” by introducing a five-module template for incorporating social entrepreneurship into an introductory management course. By helping students reframe business as a force for good through work in sustainability and social impact as well as encouraging collaborative innovation, this model also promotes students’ critical thinking skills. In particular, it encourages a shift from causal logic with a set of predictable outcomes to effectual logic in which imagining new possibilities and questioning the status quo are the norms.
This article and the template that it provides for the course bridges a gap across which industry has navigated but higher education has yet to demonstrably engage. It is well-organized with an easy-to-follow justification, a template with relevant content, and data to support student learning outcomes. The inclusion of quotes from students (see Table 6 in the article) attests to the transformative student learning experience that this course provides. Overall, the rich theoretical development, clear pedagogical objectives, and enthusiastic exhortation for other management educators to adopt this approach provides a compelling model for reframing management education.
We would also invite the readership to look at two other articles that were very competitive for the Roethlisberger Award this year: (1) “Risky Business: Understanding Student Intellectual Risk Taking in Management Education” in Issue 3 by Alison Dachner, Rosanna Miguel, and Rachel Patena; and (2) “Teaching Behavioral Ethics: Overcoming the Key Impediments to Ethical Behavior” in Issue 4 by Mark Schwartz. Both these articles also contain profound insights for management educators and contribute to us rethinking the approaches we take in the classroom.
This year’s committee was chaired by Kevin D. Lo (University of San Francisco) and consisted of the following reviewers:
Shontarius Aikens
Cristina Arroyo
Bob Bonner
Russell Clayton
Kathy Duncan
Steve Edelson
Felix Fan
Patrick Flynn
Demetria Henderson
Mark Julien
Opal Leung
Matt Lozykowski
Sue McNamara
Carrie Blair Messel
Gloria Miller
Ken Mullane
Jason Myrowitz
Terry Nelson
Jane Parent
Cyrus Parks
Tammi Redd
Sabrina Speights
Gary Stark
Jasmina Tacheva
Emily Tarr
Marcus Valenzuela
Chantal Van Esch
We recognize also JME Associate Editor Debra Comer, who managed the manuscript from submission through to publication, for her developmental support of the winning article, as well as Tom Hawk, whose internal editorial comments helped define the paper’s gem and directions for its polishing.