Business pedagogy for social justice? An exploratory investigation of business faculty perspectives of social justice in business education

Abstract

What needs to happen in business schools to create a space for social justice? In this article I explore business faculty members’ perspectives on social justice as a means of illuminating the ideological and institutional forces affecting pedagogy and examining the future for social justice within business schools. Participants identified three hegemonic forces driving business programs: profit-driven business ideologies, the particular character of MBA programs, and bias toward quantitative research in business programs. These forces negated the ways in which faculty engaged with social justice concepts and the ways in which they could teach and research within their respective business schools. I review these hegemonic forces and suggest that in order for social justice to be realized within business schools there has to be institutional redesign which could, potentially, be triggered by disruptive institutional work.

Keywords

Business schools ideology MBA programs pedagogy social justice disruptive institutional work

Introduction

Current industry trends suggest a heightened awareness of social, ethical, and environmental issues in business, most notably in the area of corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Crane et al., 2008; Newell and Frynas, 2007; Orlitzky et al., 2011; Symonds, 2011; Vallario, 2010). These trends are also reflected in the academic community according to the Aspen Institute Center for Business Education (2007) who found the percentage of schools requiring students to take a course dedicated to business and social issues increased from 34% in 2001 to 63% in 2007. Christensen et al. (2007) similarly documented a five-fold increase in curriculum coverage since 1988. The teaching of CSR ‘is now as commonplace as the teaching of entrepreneurship on business’ (Symonds, 2011: 5), a trend noted elsewhere (Evans and Marcal, 2005, Isakson et al., 2007; Rusinko and Sama, 2009).

However, despite the clear growth of social and ethical curricula within business schools, scholars have asserted that recent incremental changes have not led to dramatic curricula reform (Giacalone and Thompson, 2006; Starik et al., 2010). Critical scholars have voiced similar concerns with the ability of the CSR agenda to solve pressing societal problems, indicating that CSR is more likely to perpetuate current business ideologies espousing profit and market dominance than to change them (e.g. Boyce, 2008; Marens, 2010). These scholars propose a hegemonic usurpation of the CSR concept by corporations (Cragg, 2010; Jonker and Marberg, 2007; Kletz, 2009) in which the power of large corporations is legitimized by narrow business interests and CSR is adopted because of strategic reasons that have little to do with perceived social responsibilities (Banerjee, 2008; Laufer, 2003: 255). Kuhn and Deetz (2008: 174) conclude that CSR’s adoption ‘can obscure the deeper contradictions and systems of valuation that enable corporate socio-economic domination and, in turn, that such activities actually prevent the creation of a democratic society’.

This concern regarding the ideologies and ideas business schools promote has grown in the wake of the global financial crisis as the political and ethical neutrality of business skills and schools has come under scrutiny (Alcaraz and Thiruvattal, 2010; Corbyn, 2008; Currie et al., 2010; Gempesaw, 2009; Gordon, 2011; Lavelle and Gloeckler, 2010; McCraw et al., 2009). As Smith and Van Wassenhove (2010: 4) point out: ‘business schools have been blamed for the economic crisis … chastised for not training them [MBAs] better, not least in failing to instill a clear sense of right and wrong’. Harney elaborates the need for faculty to take greater responsibility: ‘[t]he best business schools should be questioning themselves as to what part they might be playing in the current (financial) crisis’ (as cited in Corbyn, 2008: 5).

Indeed, Business School Deans have recognized that the financial crisis mounted pressure on business schools to make substantial changes to their program delivery (e.g. Gempesaw, 2009; Schmittlein, 2008). Proposals have been made for a rigorous code of ethics – such as the Hippocratic Oath – to professionalize business schools (Khurana and Nohria, 2008). The UN via PRME (principles of responsible management education) and the Aspen Institute have sponsored forums and conferences (i.e. the 2010 MBA Under Siege) to initiate discussion and action to recreate the future of business schools. Starkey and Tiratsoo (2007: 2) conclude that imaginative thinking is required to consider ‘a raft of much wider issues, up to and including such important considerations as equality, fairness and social purpose’. Where CSR has failed to expand beyond the boundaries of profit primacy or to make an impact on the collective good within society,¹ a focus on social justice would bring attention to society and humans as a whole.

Based on general conceptions (e.g. Gladwin et al., 1996; Margolis and Walsh, 2003), in this article I define social justice as a situation in which equality, human rights, and human dignity are protected, preserved, cared for, or sought after. However, it is important to acknowledge that the concept of social justice is contested and comes with significant historical baggage. Debates have waged between libertarian, contractual, and communitarian views of social justice (Caputo, 2002), and countless overviews and reformations have been proposed (i.e. Caputo, 2000; Konow, 2003; Miller, 1991; Sterba, 1999). One such recent reconceptualization relates to the principle of an ethics of care, which takes issue with the individualistic and rational assumptions of traditional theories of justice (Burton and Dunn, 1996; Engster, 2007; Gilligan, 1982; Held, 2006; Noddings, 1984; Tronto, 1993). It is a view of social justice where

the basis of a social order [is] predicated on expended capacities of free and equal individuals who include a capacity to care, and in doing so they seek to extend related rights to ensure the social stability and harmony essential for everyone in current and future generations. (Caputo, 2002: 356)

An ethics of care perspective adopts a relational rather than an individualist view of social justice, requiring concern for the other as well as the self.

Acknowledging these purposeful distinctions between ‘ethics of care’ as a justice of care and ‘social justice’ as a concept of equality/fairness, this article takes the view that social justice in practice can encompass both of these visions. I have adopted the term social justice throughout this project in a non-partisan and inclusive fashion, in order to ensure that the varied meanings within business schools can be expressed.

To summarize, the future of business schools is in need of a social ‘reinvention’ (Khurana, 2007) that moves beyond CSR to clarify the role of business in creating a society that is equal, fair, and just: in short, shifting the focus from corporate social responsibility to social justice. This raises at least two important questions:

Can business schools be transformed to foster values beyond those of profit mongering and to instil those of social justice?

What needs to happen in business schools to create a space for social justice?

The purpose of this article is to explore whether or not a transformation focused on social justice is possible within business schools. Using a qualitative, inductive, and grounded analysis of eight faculty members in Canada and Israel, I examine the ways in which concepts of social justice are currently understood by faculty in two universities and whether they believe social justice can be realized in business practice and education. My aim is to reveal the opportunities or constraints for future transformation.

The article is organized as follows: I first present a brief review of the literature on business schools and social justice. I then review how participants understood social justice and contrast this with how they envisioned social justice in the context of business practice and education. Lastly, I present the hegemonic concerns participants identified within their business schools, and conclude with initial recommendations for the institutional changes necessary to include social justice within business school curricula.

Business education and social justice

To date, much research on business schools has focused on the content of the curriculum (Baetz and Sharp, 2004; Christensen et al., 2007; Gordon, 2011; Navarro, 2008), or on students (Isakson et al., 2007; Lamsa et al., 2008; Traiser and Eighmy, 2011) rather than the standpoint of the professors who work within these schools. If social justice is to become a component of business education, or an extension of CSR, it is imperative to understand how faculty make sense of this concept in the context of business.

Research has indicated that professors’ own teaching goals and beliefs influence how they present subject matter to their students (Ennis, 1994; Pajares, 1992) and that the professors’ instructional effectiveness ‘may not depend so much on what they do, but rather on the specific beliefs and knowledge that guide their decisions and actions’ (Fernandez-Balboa and Stiehl, 1995: 305). Thus, the way business faculty conceptualize social justice within business paradigms will shape the way in which curricula and ideological changes do, or do not evolve in business schools. Furthermore, business faculty have a significant impact on how and what students learn. Consequently, it can be stated that it is not enough to know what classes, or which individuals, are taught what in business schools. It is also imperative to explore how business faculty engage with concepts of social justice in their work and their belief systems in order to begin understanding how social justice might become a component of business education. Such an investigation can illuminate the types of knowledge and understanding transmitted to students, and further, what types of cultural and asymmetrical relations may be affecting business pedagogical constructs and the future for social justice within business schools.

As indicated in the introduction, there has been no shortage of critiques regarding the shortcomings of business schools in addressing issues of social justice. Gladwin et al. (1996: 15) have critiqued the ‘indifference to social justice manifest in so much of business theory’. Navarro (2008: 112) found evidence that business schools’ curriculum had a focus ‘along functional silo lines that continues to give short shrift to features such as soft-skill development, corporate social responsibility, information technology, and a global perspective’. Leavitt (1991: 143) called for business education to take a ‘more holistic posture’ and focus on the ‘total human experience’. Such critiques have brought attention to the fact that the business skills promoted within business schools are not politically or ethically neutral, and ignoring this fact results in serious social and ethical failings. In this regard, business schools have even been accused of educating immorality (Cragg, 1997; Crane, 2004; Ghoshal 2005; Isakson et al., 2007). Traiser and Eighmy (2011: 325) stated that with

the high incidence of cheating, the weakening of moral character, and the diminished view of the importance of social values, educators and employers may have cause for concern about the moral and ethical behaviors of business graduates when they enter the workforce.

Many business schools have responded to such critiques by adopting curriculum and program attributes focused on corporate social responsibility. However, while suggesting that some change was underway in business schools, the Aspen Institute (2007: 1) claimed that ‘the proportion of schools requiring content in core courses on how mainstream business can address social or environmental issues remains low’. Similarly, Alcaraz and Thiruvattal (2010: 542) stated that: ‘the full scope of the above-mentioned view [CSR] has not yet become embedded in the mainstream of business-related education’, and that ‘many projects consist only of “beautiful words,” lacking the necessary critical view to address real changes’. Thus business schools have usually treated ethical and social stewardship as considerations external to the strategic business decision-making model and based on legal compliance rather than moral integrity and ethical principles (Windsor, 2008: 507). This reflects sentiments espoused by other scholars who are sceptical regarding the type of transformation CSR education can institute in business schools and society at large in terms of a shift from being organization- and market-centred to human centred (e.g. Boyce, 2008; Doane, 2005; Giacalone and Thompson, 2006; Marens, 2010; Parker, 2003). In essence, these critiques suggested that CSR education has failed to address broader issues of social justice because it remains embedded in ideologies of self-interest and profit-maximization.

Some critical scholars suggest Critical Management Education (CME) as a means of challenging the fundamental problems that prevent the engagement of social justice in business practice and education. As Grey (2007: 316) explains, CME

is best understood as a reaction against mainstream and conventional approaches to management education in business schools which consist of the transmission of technical skills as if these were morally and politically neutral, and as if the goals of profitability and efficiency were universally shared within organizations and society.

This approach acknowledges that business skills are inherently value laden, and thus sees management education as a site that must invoke critical reflection if inequality, oppression, and exploitation are to be overcome in business practice (Grey, 2004, 2007; Learmonth, 2007). In this way CME has sought to bring attention to the relevance of social justice to business education in a different manner than CSR education. Borrowing from Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy, CME has focused on critique and emancipation as the tools to enact social justice. It is explicitly ‘a pedagogy of resistance, social justice and social transformation’ (Cunliffe and Linstead, 2009: 6). CSR, on the other hand, has continued to be critiqued for its focus on responsibility, profit, and corporate self-interest (Banerjee, 2008). While CME is present in some business schools (Currie and Knights, 2003; Fenwick, 2005) and has a strong theoretical elaboration, it has not seen the wide-scale adoption CSR has experienced, especially in the North American context (Learmonth, 2007; Perriton, 2007; Perriton and Reynolds, 2004).

Literature to date has clearly indicated that there is a need for business schools to embrace principles of social justice, be it through the practice of CME, CSR, or other means. However, engaging pedagogies for social justice in business schools requires an overarching question be asked: how can such a social transformation be engaged in current business schools? Matten and Moon’s (2004) study of CSR education in Europe found that one of the main drivers was the individual professor – a point supported by Navarro (2008). Yet while business faculty have a crucial role in making the transition to a more social justice-focused business school,

most business school faculty are too busy doing their work of teaching and research to consider the broader environment in which they are working, and even if and when they do so, their ability to change that environment is severely constrained. (Pfeffer and Fong, 2002: 91)

To what extent can we expect business faculty to adopt or institute change centred on notions of social justice? Are they just too busy to be concerned about social justice? And if they are concerned, what constrains their ability to engage social justice in the classroom? More basically, how do they even understand the concept of social justice?

Given the growing scepticism regarding the ability of business schools to address issues of social justice – and the scepticism regarding the ability of CSR curriculum to meet this objective, there is a clear need to investigate the potential for transformative change in business schools. To do so, it is imperative to understand the ways in which faculty currently conceptualize and interact with concepts of social justice in business. The remainder of this article proceeds with this objective, and presents the inductive findings as elaborated by the research participants.

Methodology

I investigated the perspectives of business faculty members regarding social justice and business in two cultural settings, Canada and Israel. The findings reported here are part of a larger research project seeking to investigate whether cultural or religious conceptions of justice influenced faculty’s conceptions of social justice in business. Canada and Israel were purposefully selected as contrast sites to explore this component of the research. While there was very little difference across countries in respect to conceptions of social justice, what did emerge was that individuals expressed notable differences regarding social justice realization. It was also evident that the participants’ understandings of social justice in business contexts clearly excluded their own broader personal convictions for social justice. Accordingly within this work, both the Israeli and Canadian narratives are spoken to collectively and without distinction. The focus of the findings reported in this article is on differences within individuals rather than across cultures.

As is appropriate for exploratory research, I employed a qualitative design (Gephart, 2004), conducting semi-structured interviews and collected follow-up questionnaires. The follow-up questionnaire elaborated upon questions and themes discussed in the interviews, and allowed for further probes on topics of interest or issues requiring greater clarity. I asked all participants to review their final transcripts, to ensure they felt comfortable with what they discussed, and did not feel misrepresented or misunderstood. Using purposeful sampling, I interviewed eight professors in business faculties in Canada and Israel. Purposeful sampling is a sampling strategy that focuses on a small number of intentionally selected participants (McCracken, 1988) based on the anticipation that they would be able to provide in-depth reflection on the topic of investigation. As Gephart (2004: 455) elaborates: ‘qualitative researchers … seek to explain research observations by providing well-substantiated conceptual insights that reveal how broad concepts and theories operate in particular cases’. Thus, while the number of participants in this research is small, purposeful sampling is used to elicit meaning making and depth – rich and thick descriptions – rather than generalizations (McMillan and Schumacher, 2006; Patton, 2002). Furthermore, I embrace the belief that the ‘personal is political’. Personal stories are often reflections of larger social constructs, and working through large social/political issues on a smaller scale can lead to deeper understanding (Lewis, 2005). These participants’ reflections and experiences, although not ‘generalizable’, are engaged in the larger context of business education. As Lewis (2005: 13) pointed out: ‘the conditions that make these personal events possible have their basis in the larger social structures that have the capacity to produce particular events’. In this way I have created the opportunity for ‘someone interested in making a transfer, to reach a conclusion about whether transfer can be contemplated as a possibility’ (Lincoln and Guba, 1985: 316). This allows the reader to do the generalizing based on their reading of the findings (Kennedy, 1979).

I selected participants from among those who responded to the invitation, based largely on their potential to encompass different business disciplines within their schools (Marketing, Organizational Behaviour, Accounting, Operations Research, and Management Information Systems). While these participants did not represent all of the disciplines, they did represent the majority of the departments within these respective schools. Of the participants, seven were tenured, two were women, and three had been employed at their respective universities longer than 10 years. One of the business schools had CSR curriculum and programs integrated and embedded within the business school, and one of the business schools had not yet adopted a formal CSR education component.

The aim of this research was to highlight what areas of interest and concern arose in the in-depth interviews, in order to illuminate what might require further attention and research in business pedagogical constructs. In seeking to ensure that the meanings participants assigned to social justice were preserved, I analysed the interview data using an iterative and grounded approach to analysis in which themes were allowed to emerge from within the data during a repetitive process of engagement (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Locke, 2001). As Suddaby (2006: 634) has explained, grounded theory is an approach to analysis which is suitable when the objective is ‘to understand the process by which actors construct meaning out of intersubjective experience’, and ‘when you want to make knowledge claims about how individuals interpret reality’.

Accordingly, the findings reported here were not determined a priori, but emerged organically through an iterative process of coding. The coding involved reviewing each interview transcript multiple times, allowing new codes to emerge upon each review. Once no new codes emerged, I sorted and categorized the codes, looking for emergent themes. On identifying potential themes, I sought congruencies and divergences from those themes; actively reporting negative cases and discrepant data to contest findings (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Rubin and Rubin, 2005), returning to or revisiting coding and thematics as was necessary. I recorded the entire process to provide a chain of evidence for inspection and confirmation by outside parties, as is recommended by McMillan and Schumacher (2006). Throughout the entire project I kept a reflexive journal, where I posed critical questions and recorded my personal reactions and thoughts to events that occurred, ensuring I remained reflexive and critical of my role as the researcher.

The meaning and engagement of social justice motives in business contexts

Participants were asked to personally reflect on the concept of social justice, and then to consider how they believed social justice could or should be engaged in business practice and education. From these questions a clear distinction emerged between how faculty conceived social justice in business practice and education, and how they conceived social justice in more personal terms. I review these individual conceptions, and then explore the participants’ rationales for these differences by outlining the participants’ concerns regarding business ideology, MBA programs, and their institution’s preference for quantitative research methods.

Participant definitions of social justice

All participants were asked how they interpreted the concept of social justice, and their responses articulated what I refer to as the participants’ personal convictions towards concepts of social justice.

In this regard, all the participants used concepts of fairness, equity, and/or equality in their conceptions of social justice. Within this general theme, there were three broad distinctions in the ways participants understood the concept of social justice. These were: equity in distributive processes, equality in opportunities, and justice in communicative processes. These themes are outlined in Table 1, along with representative quotations.

Table 1.

Participants’ personal definitions of social justice.

Social justice is:	Equity in distribution	Equality of opportunity	Justice in communicative processes
Examples of Participant Statements	Social justice is a mechanism that provides minimum and fair access to society’s resources. Access to greater available resources is made on the basis of a person’s capabilities and merit.	Social justice is equality of access to the opportunities in society.	Social justice is a constant search for ‘win-win’. This is achieved by listening and invoking communicative discourse. Social justice is achieved in the process of egalitarian and moralized discourse.
	‘Social justice is a fair distribution of society’s resources among its people’.	‘Well, as a society, I would say social justice would be a kind of system, kind of a social order that allows to try to minimize systematic structural inequalities between people. That is, in a different way, that would mean structurally allowing everyone the opportunity, or all opportunities … I would like to have a social order where it doesn’t matter how wealthy your parents are. The social order itself, the structure, would allow you minimum, a decent minimum of opportunities. From there onwards it would be a question of your own motivations and capabilities and stuff like that. So, social justice would be a structure that allows … that minimizes inequalities in terms of opportunities’.	‘Striving to apply win-win approach in everything I do. In every dealing that I have with other people in the world, whether they are students or clients buying my services, try to really understand what they want, to ask myself honestly, do I have something in common here with the other person and create it. Whatever will be created will be just, doesn’t have to be equal, it will be just because it promotes the deep interest of all parties involved. So I see that the discipline of searching win-win in every action that you do in the world I see as the, is my definition of justice, and I think this approach will bring peace if politicians will use it … The skill that requires to execute it [social justice] is the skill of true listening. So applying true listening is a pre-requisite for social justice’.
	‘To me, social justice means that offices, outcomes, and positions are distributed on the basis of merit, and that all have reasonable opportunity to acquire the skills on the basis of which merit is assessed’.	‘The groundwork of social justice would be equity. So equity in the way, in the opportunities people have in a given society, in the way they are treated, in how they are respected for who they are regardless of their background. Equal access to the resources of that society, whether it is educational resources, job opportunities given skill levels and so on’.	‘I think social justice is where that balance sheet is balanced, both at the individual level and at the societal level, at every level. That you don’t have one group of society which is taking and not giving, and one group of society that is giving and not taking. Enabling individuals so they are put in a situation where they can give and take as necessary, and that would be my concept of social justice’.

It is important to note that in all cases I avoided providing any a priori conception of social justice, either mentioned or alluded to within the interviews. I introduced the term as a ‘blank slate’, and invited the participants to elaborate the meaning it held for them. The participants adopted different perspectives on how social justice could be realized, varying from a more traditional, individualistic, and rational equity in distributive processes, to a less common relational perspective of social justice as a form of communicative interaction. Furthermore, the three themes of equity in distributive processes, equality in opportunities, and justice in communicative processes, clearly demonstrate that the participants had clear notions of what social justice entailed, and what it meant when engaged in society.

Some participants viewed social justice primarily in terms of equity in distributive processes. They suggested that social justice was a mechanism to provide minimum and fair access to society’s resources and qualified their concern for distributive equity by saying that fair access to greater available resources is made on the basis of a person’s capabilities and merits.

Equality of opportunities was a different conception of social justice, emphasized by other participants. In this case, social justice primarily meant providing equality to access the opportunities available in society. As such, the participants espousing social justice as equality of opportunity believed that judging a person’s ‘effort’ ignores the well-recognized fact that humans are not born with equal access to resources. They suggested that, because equal opportunity to access resources does not exist structurally in the social, political, and economic spheres of society, social justice was the process and/or structure which enabled this type of equality to exist.

A third group of participants emphasized social justice in terms of equality in communicative processes, explaining that social justice could be achieved in the process of egalitarian and moralized discourse at the micro level of human interaction. Here, participants had a more relational perspective on social justice, in which social justice was realized in daily human-to-human encounters.

While there are clear distinctions between these three understandings of social justice, all the participants’ conceptions related at some level to notions of equity, equality, and fairness. However, when I shifted the focus of the interviews to how social justice was relevant in the context of business, and how or whether it could be engaged in this context, the participants surprisingly did not utilize their original conceptions of social justice to elaborate the role of business and social justice.

Engaging social justice: The role of business and business education

After the participants elaborated their conceptions of social justice, I invited them to discuss how business practice and business education might play a role in achieving it. The participant responses to this question demonstrate what I refer to as the ‘practical’ sphere of social justice meaning.

All participants felt that business, as a discipline and practice, could play a role in achieving social justice but there was limited agreement on what that role should be. Some were unsure of how business could fulfil a role; others suggested the role was already enacted; while still others posited that change was needed in order to enable business to play a role in achieving social justice.

Curiously, many of the participants’ earlier conceptions of social justice did not appear in their reflections regarding the role of social justice in business practice and education, despite the fact that the question was asked directly after the participants’ broader reflections on social justice. Only one of the participants mentioned that business could assist in social justice by enabling the same type of equality he had previously defined as a necessary component of social justice. This participant defined social justice as equality of opportunity, and stated regarding social justice and business:

The positive side of business [is] to achieve things that no other institution I can think of in the past has allowed and to do so in a very equitable way. So in theory, that just based on your ability, not your gender, your skin colour or whatever, you can be successful, and … break from an ascribed status sort of thinking … which will say because you are from this background you will never achieve anything beyond that. So if you can overcome the many negatives, I think it [business] is an incredibly powerful institution with a lot of potential to deliver social justice in terms of delivery opportunities, distributing wealth, creating wealth, creating innovative solutions to problems that we have always faced as humans.

Furthermore, in some cases the participants’ reflections were explicitly contradictory to the definitions of social justice they had originally espoused. To illustrate this contradiction, I present one participant’s conception of business and social justice in detail. For the purpose of clarity, I will refer to this participant as Issac.

When describing how business can play a role in social justice, Issac explained that business ‘can certainly play a role in the enabling of the individual to attain empowerment, which is a necessary component of social justice’. He suggested that empowerment meant enabling a person by giving them ‘power’, and that with this power, persons could take responsibility for their decisions to produce outcomes that resulted in their improved situation, for example, by creating more wealth. During the interview, Issac told the following story to illustrate how empowerment was a means to achieve social justice through business:

The absolute empowerment that [students] get from learning how to behave in a business organization, in a business framework, it’s amazing. I want to tell you two things that stunned me, well, there were many things that stunned me. One was when we were interviewing a group at the end. This little fellow, this little guy, he was the CEO, nice little kid. I said how many children started the program? ‘Oh we were about 18 at the beginning’. [the italics indicates the quoted responses of the child] And how many finished? ‘Oh about 12’. What happened to the rest of them? ‘Well we had to fire them ...’. And I said, well, you fired them, how did you manage that? ‘We fired them’. Are they still your friends? And he said Yes. That is stunning to me that somebody, that a manager can actually fire somebody out of his friends, from his social group, at school and still remain friends struck me that he learned something that was going to last him for his lifetime.

This applied meaning of social justice in the context of business is strikingly different from the personal definition of social justice he held when he said that social justice entailed ‘preventing people from using their positions of power for their own benefit to the detriment of others’. In Issac’s story, the youth is commended on that very act: using the power of the CEO position to fire six members of his team for the benefit of himself and the successful outcome of his project (since the elimination of these members made them a more competitive team in the children’s business competition). If Issac employed his personal notion of social justice, justice in communicative processes (theme 3 as outlined above), a possible application in this scenario might have involved asking the young CEO about working with underperforming fellow students to find a way for them to participate and gain from the experience also. Instead, Issac approves wholeheartedly of a purely utilitarian commendation, where the outcome of the individual is weighted most seriously at the expense of another: firing the children instead of working with them for a ‘win-win’. This difference is a notable contradiction in Issac’s meanings of social justice, and is demonstrative of the contradictions apparent in the participant interviews.

Not all participants held the same view as Issac regarding the role business should play in the pursuit of social justice, but some did. Some participants suggested that business results in the promotion of social justice by empowering people to pursue their own self-interest through market-based activity. For these participants, business allowed individuals to pursue their own interests and, thus, obtain the outcomes they desired: an outcome that was usually economic. What these participants also alluded to was that business is currently playing a role in achieving social justice, by enabling individuals with economic opportunities. These participants made no mention of concepts of equity, equality, or fairness in their elaborations.

One participant noted that social justice needed to be more than ‘giving a man a fish … you had to teach them to fish’, so that charity was not social justice. However, the same participant later explained the role of businesses in social justice by giving an example of a business offering charity:

And Company X, every week, basically usually Thursday night, they have a van which goes around all the restaurants, and all the wedding halls collecting all the leftover food and then takes it to the central depot where it is distributed to the poor.

For this participant, business’s role in social justice was achieved through the distribution of its wealth to society; social justice in the context of business could be about charity. As is clear, this suggestion for charity was a direct contradiction from the participant’s earlier contention that social justice was not achieved through charity.

Not all participants defined social justice as relevant to economic outcomes. Some of the participants believed the role of business in achieving social justice was only possible if change was made in business education and practice. These participants focused on changing current business ideologies in order to enable a role for business to pursue social justice outcomes. One participant noted the importance of academic groups in developing research, scholarship, and communities that are focused on social justice in business practices. This participant referred specifically to groups of business school professors who intend to incrementally change curriculum content in business schools. He saw the practice of positive organizational scholarship (Cameron et al., 2003) as one way to bring social justice to business schools:

Yes. There is internationally a small group of people in business schools that recognize positive organizational scholarship as a … responsibility, as a mission, and the fact that some of these people are sitting in leading universities such as Harvard, or University of Michigan gives hope that this is not a fad, this is something that will, in the time of a generation, will span into education in all business schools.

Another participant indicated her desire to change business education to make social justice possible. She stated that it was her aim to open students’ eyes to issues of social justice not typically explored in business education. She wanted to ‘help students see’ and

to convince them that they care about it, that it’s important enough for them, that all of us will gain if we will live in a social order that is more, that is more comfortable for this kind of social justice.

Two other professors mentioned the potential of evolved CSR to bring about change that enables business schools to engage in social justice. These professors spoke of an evolved CSR because they believed there were/are significant limitations regarding the potential of CSR currently. As they explained:

There is a very large backlash happening against issues of social responsibility and business right now. Of the early part of this decade, there was a huge upswing and everyone was doing it, and now there is a growing backlash towards it. There is a growing cynicism, even amongst our own students, in the business community as well, because there has been a lot of greenwash, lies, and just PR campaigns, and in the end, you know, greenhouse gases are still being emitted, and nothing is really changing … So there is a growing cynicism to CSR in general. And so there is a need to move to maybe called version 2.0 CSR, you know to the next version, where it is more authentic within organizations.

Despite the differing conceptions participants had regarding social justice realization in the context of business, their conceptions, with the exception of one participant, could not be inferred from their personal reflections on social justice. Whether they based their recommendations on economic well-being, positive organizational scholarship, or CSR, the expectations participants had for the possibility of enacting socially just practices in business contexts were less comprehensive in scope than their personal understandings of the concept of social justice, in which they had focused on issues of equality, equity, and fairness. This difference uncovers an important aspect in understanding how conceptions of social justice are embodied in the business context in which the participants worked. The participants’ personal conceptions of social justice were separate and distinct from their social justice conceptions in business contexts – a potential concern for implementing social justice in business pedagogy. The possible reasons for this separation are now discussed.

Factors marginalizing social justice motives within business schools

Throughout the interviews, consistent concerns arose which highlighted potential reasons why the participants’ personal conceptions regarding social justice were left out of their concepts for business. The participants voiced concern about their ability to teach their own visions of social justice and that of an alternative purpose for business. They indicated that teaching about these alternative understandings of business and social justice was difficult due to various institutional and ideological constraints.

Participants suggested that their attempts to teach and engage concepts of justice were marginalized within their organizations. As one participant stated: ‘I think that I personally swim a little bit against the current here [at his university]’. The participants identified three main marginalizing forces within their institutions. These were: the deep seated ideologies rooted in management education, the influence of their institutions’ MBA programs, and the preference for quantitative research in their business programs. The participants explained that these three constraints limited their ability to teach alternative conceptions of business and social justice, and subsequently influenced their ability to engage their personal conceptions of social justice into business contexts.

Participants’ concerns with business ideology

Many of the participants felt that the ideology embedded in and underlying business as a construct prevented change or liberation from purely profit-driven motives in business contexts, and blocked the inclusion of notions concerning social justice. Participants continually noted that the presence of the profit-dominated ideology within business schools was problematic, as it prevented students from pedagogically engaging with ideologies espousing values other than profit. As this participant voiced:

If I step back, traditional business thinking … is all about profit. Part of, underlying this traditional business thinking, is that the nature of humans is that we are opportunistic. That is part of that profit motive thinking, so ‘if you don’t watch yourself I am going to take advantage of you somehow’, and ‘if I can make a profit off you I’m going to do so even if that is to your detriment’. There is a zero-sum game thinking mentality. So if you have all these business school students graduating out of business schools with that thinking: believing that is what human behaviour is all about. Well guess what? You start enacting that human behaviour when you’re in business, and business starts becoming opportunistic, almost opportunism with guile, kind of behaviour, its zero-sum gain, you know we can only win if you lose. There is no mutual gain here, so everyone is out watching their back.

Participants clearly expressed concern with current business ideology, and indicated that they believed alternative notions of business and social justice could not be engaged in their institutions, and in business practice as a whole, so long as this ideology continued to dominate their organization’s practices.

I think the capitalistic worldview is (pause) incapable of dealing with all these issues [of social justice], because the only way it can incorporate all these issues into the discourse of capitalistic society is by convincing you that it will pay off. That’s not, that doesn’t come from the right place. So we see now all these social accountability, and we see, (short pause) goes together with caring for the environment and everything, right and you see all these papers and research trying to make it, trying to show that firms or organizations that take care of the environment, or practice more socially responsible, practices make more money. They are trying to sell, that it pays off, but that’s not the right, I don’t think (short pause) that’s the right motivation, so it will require more dramatic and a more deeper change, in the business school curricula and the business school thinking more generally.

In addition to this, several participants indicated concern with the nature of the MBA program in preventing change and, thus, social justice realization within business schools.

The MBA program and profit hegemony

Both universities offered MBA programs. The participants explained, as many other scholars have noted (Currie and Knights, 2003; Welsh and Dehler, 2007; Zell, 2001), that the structure of these programs constrained their ability to engage with social justice concepts in their teaching.

A similar discussion regarding the role MBA programs play within the university came up at various points throughout the interviews. As one participant noted:

The MBA portion starts to drive more and more of the teaching in business schools, because of the money that they bring in: because they pay quite huge fees. So a lot of teaching energy goes into putting material together for MBAs as opposed to undergrads or PhDs, which offer far more creativity and breadth. So business education can end up becoming quite institutionalized in the way that you get these set text-books with the same kind of models going over and over again, driven by that MBA model.

Pfeffer and Fong (2002) have also critiqued the pedagogy that emerges alongside MBA curriculum, and suggested that the MBA curriculum is partly a response to the student satisfaction ratings that are a key component of MBA external rankings. This concern similarly appeared in the interviews. As another participant stated:

I think that the biggest impact in terms of the way business schools have changed in the last, maybe, ten years or so would probably be the instantiation of rankings. And I think that has led, because there is a lot of marketing mileage to be taken out of the rankings, I think it has led to the schools really playing almost like a game to do well on the rankings … The schools don’t have any input on it … There is no real accountability on who really sets the criteria, and you know it seems to me, the person in the Financial Times who comes up with the algorithm to come up with the score is probably the most important person in business education now, or one of. Which just seems like an odd … an odd thing.

Business school rankings report on student satisfaction, which is determined by student evaluations of their institutions. Pfeffer and Fong (2002) stated that these rankings reform pedagogy and teaching, and result in what they call ‘student friendly’ teaching. Student friendly teaching is a pedagogy focused on teaching inputs as opposed to learning output. The teacher gives: the student receives. The participants in this research expressed similar views, and mentioned the influence they saw MBA programs having on business education and curricula in their institutions. The participants all felt that the MBA students demanded a technical and one-directional pedagogy, which prevented the possibility of engaging notions of social justice. In order to obtain satisfactory rankings, the faculty, thus, appeared to cater to the student demands.

MBA has to be more hierarchical, more driven by the teacher. Now there you may use a number of case studies, so case study method is very important. But, ultimately it can’t just be a free flowing discussion the way it could be in a PhD program; there needs to be the hierarchy. The teacher needs to provide a framework and a structure, and very clearly at the end guide the students through: ‘this is what you have learned’.

The participants in this research noted how they changed their pedagogy to suit the MBA students. Participants could not use an interactive pedagogy to encourage discussion on social issues. Instead, as the above interview indicates, they employed a model where the students were ‘spoon fed’ the curriculum. Pfeffer and Fong (2002: 85) suggested the problem with this style of education: ‘[w]hen students are relieved of any sense of responsibility for their learning and much involvement in the learning process, the evidence is that they learn much less’.

In this research, the participants’ discussions of the MBA and its curricula indicated an area of concern for faculty expression. If MBA programs are driven by students who have power within the institution to demand one-directional pedagogy focused on profit and expediency, then the programs are likely to emphasize those values. The resultant MBA programs, as the participants noted, are focused on financial outcomes; making it difficult if not impossible to discuss and voice alternative ideological and curriculum concerns regarding social justice, and the broader purpose of business. If the participants who desired to express their concerns with business ideologies and their perspectives on social justice in business could not do so in their MBA classrooms, there is reason for concern regarding the potential for social transformation within the MBA programs of their institutions.

Hegemony in research methodology: Business programs and quantitative preference

The third issue the participants highlighted was their business program’s preference for quantitative methodology. The participants thus indicated that their means of expression through research was limited as a result of this institutional preference, as was the case with MBA curriculum.

Seven of the participants interviewed were engaged in various research endeavours in their discipline. Of that seven, four stated that they preferred and often conducted qualitative research. The remaining three employed quantitative methods of research. The participants who conducted predominantly qualitative research felt that this work was less preferred, and not as well rewarded² in the North American context, in which both Canadian and Israeli academics were expected to publish. One participant said: ‘I think that the mainstream research outlets, and type of research really privilege quantitative, scientific research, not anything which looks at values or more humanistic constructs’.

Cunliffe et al. (2002: 492) have also noted that ‘the dominance of quantitative approaches to research seemingly satisfies the unreflective business demand for “hard” data’, a preference reinforced by business school and journal rankings, such as that of Financial Times and Business Week. Dunne and colleagues (2008) conducted an analysis of over 2000 articles published within the ‘top’ 20 business and management journals and suggested that almost 85% of the articles failed to examine issues of business ethics or corporate social responsibility. They stated: ‘we argue that mass scholarly ranking mechanisms … create a general state of myopia on the part of business and management scholars … even making virtue out of ignorance in this regard’ (Dunne et al., 2008: 271).

The participants in this study indicated that they felt qualitative inquiry was well suited to pursue research questions investigating understandings and engagements of business practice that are related to social justice, and alternative to solely profit-based motives. The problem was that while the participants interested in qualitative inquiry may certainly still be able to publish in credible journals, they identified much less choice in what they might publish in ‘top-tier’ journals:

In Accounting there are sort of five main [top-tier] journals, I think most people would say there are five main journals, and three of them you couldn’t publish anything qualitative in regardless of the quality of it. One of them publishes a lot of qualitative work, and the … the final one is sort of half-half, well not half, it is more quantitative but it does include qualitative research.

The participants explained that since publications are the main category for evaluation and promotion of faculty in their schools, the qualitative researchers have fewer opportunities to share or develop their ideas in top-tier journals and, thus, gain entry into ‘top’ faculties, quicker promotions, and/or career security. Lewis (2005, 2008) has identified the power and control that is wielded, often silently, in higher education institutions regarding research agendas. Lewis suggested that by accrediting value to research and research methodology through means such as research funding, evaluation, and promotion, a new form of hegemony is employed within universities. Grey and Willmott (2005: 8) have also noted that: ‘[b]usiness schools continue to appoint and promote faculty on the basis of what they publish. To be sure it is still the case that the “top” journals publish primarily mainstream work’.

Beyond the limitations with regards to publishing qualitative work in top-tier journals, the connection between quantitative research in business and the sidelining of social justice seemed to run deeper. In both mainstream and the more marginal and critical journals, there is a paucity of quantitative research that evaluates issues related to social justice. While sociologists have been applying this methodology to study issues of social justice for some time, it appears that in business schools the quantitative research bias acts as a serious limitation for work on social justice. This does not necessarily have to be the case, as Perriton (2009) pointed out in her call for more quantitative data in Management Learning. However, it appears that as one participant reflected:

I have done, certainly in my PhD I did do experimental based research, and more of the traditional quantitative, but I have found that fairly limiting in the types of questions I ask.

This was a sentiment shared by other participants, who felt that the structure of quantitative methodology, and perhaps some of its epistemological roots, prevented the pursuit of social justice in research projects. Participants believed these types of questions were just not quantifiable. It may be that understanding questions of human dignity, rights, and equality in the context of business requires the subjective and interpersonal experience that qualitative research is so vividly able to highlight.

In summary, the participants in this study voiced concern over the preference for quantitative research and scholarship in the business discipline, and within their business schools. This research preference may act as a hegemonic apparatus of control within the business schools investigated, preventing the faculty from engaging notions of social justice within their work.

The participant concerns with the business ideology and institutional elements indicate that there are hegemonic forces latently shaping the domain of research and education in their Schools. This appears so despite the presence of faculty who hold personal conceptions of social justice which are rooted in values of fairness, equity, and equality; despite the presence of faculty who actively desire to change business ideologies towards concern for social justice; and it prevails despite the presence of already existent CSR courses, programs, and research centres. These hegemonic forces may, thus, through the use of institutional powers and conformity (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983), be forcing those inclined to educate or research social justice conceptions for business to adhere to the profit norm, or else be excluded from it.

Discussion

The research shows that all the participants thematically addressed fairness, equality, or equity, as fundamental concerns for social justice. Surprisingly, however, the personal meanings these participants brought to notions of social justice were strikingly different from the meanings of social justice they employed in the institutional context of business practice. Thus it was revealed that the participants brought an understanding of social justice to business that excluded the personal conceptions of how they envisioned social justice as relevant to their own lives. The participants revealed hegemony driving business programs: profit-driven business ideologies, the particular character of MBA programs, and the business program’s quantitative research preference, all of which appeared to reinforce a narrow scientific conception and profit-based logic within the business school. In essence, the extant hegemony identified within the participants’ universities was preventing faculty from integrating their personal conceptualizations of social justice into the dominant logic of their business schools. The participants felt prevented from expressing their personal convictions regarding businesses’ purpose in their work and teaching.

In relation to the potential for transformation within business school education, the findings reveal that the ability of faculty to foster an educational environment focused on social justice is limited by the institutional pressures prevalent within their institutions. Profit-driven ideologies, the limited focus of MBA programs, and an institutionalized preference for quantitative research hindered the participants’ ability to engage social justice in their business pedagogy and research. Thus even the most social-justice focused pedagogical initiative may fail to realize its objectives in such a marginalizing context. For example, CME is clearly aligned with bringing social justice into the classroom because it ‘promotes both a social awareness of work relations and, perhaps the crucial prerequisite of this, a self-awareness of the impact of one’s own conduct upon others and upon the completion of the work task’ (Grey, 2004: 183). However, such an agenda has limited potential if the institutional features identified continue to marginalize faculty members’ desires and efforts to achieve it. The capacity of CSR education to engage social justice can be expected to be similar – the marginalization documented in this research was experienced by faculty members in schools with existing CSR pedagogical initiatives.

This research indicates that the factors marginalizing social justice realization are institutionalized and embedded within the structure and dominant institutional logic of the business school. As such, implementing new pedagogical programs will be ineffective so long as the hegemony of existing structure and logics exists. Accordingly, business schools similar to those investigated in this research will require critical ‘institutional work’ to ‘disrupt’ the existent hegemony.

Institutional work is defined by Lawrence et al. (2009:1) as ‘the intentional actions taken in relation to institutions … through which institutions are created, maintained, and disrupted’. Disrupting business schools critically would involve the development of, and subsequent change to, an institutional environment ‘based upon critical theory and motivated by enriched processes of communication that engender authentic … participation, incorporate various social values, and operate within a process that constructively engages in conflict to inspire creative solutions’ (Kuhn and Deetz, 2008: 190). Utilizing conflict constructively, and working through diverse meanings for the relationship between business and social justice is essential to ensure an institutional environment that embraces multiple perspectives. In such an environment, pluralism in the institutional structures and in the logics practised within the business school would be encouraged and rewarded, thereby enabling faculty to apply their personal concerns for social justice to be realized in their classrooms and research.

While much research has focused on developing pedagogical skills and the content and type of course material to be covered in business schools to initiate change (Baetz and Sharp, 2004; Bain, 2004; Dehler, 2009; Gentile, 2010; Prichard, 2009; Roca, 2010; Schneider et al., 2010), the findings reported within this article suggest a macro approach to change is also needed. Yes, social justice should be a theme embedded in all pedagogical initiatives be they CSR or finance. However, without educational institutions that create the possibility for these pedagogies and courses to be realized, we can expect limited transformation. So while future research should certainly continue to outline pedagogical skills and course components, I propose that the important question for future research is how ‘disruptive’ and critical institutional work can be engaged to develop a more open environment in business schools. As Lawrence and colleagues (2009: 9) explained: ‘the practices associated with actors attempting to undermine institutional arrangements are not well documented’. It appears, thus, that more research is needed before the processes by which ‘disruption’ occurs are completely understood. To what extent can active resistance shift or re-shape the dominant institutional logics and paradigms within business schools? What forms of disruptive work have been, or may be, more successful than others in educational institutions? I propose these questions as an important call for future research in business schools to move the focus from issues of pedagogical development to questions of institutional redesign.

While the findings are representative of those participants who were interviewed they suggest further research is needed to determine whether similar concerns exist in other business schools. This research also focused specifically on business schools. However, the business schools themselves are part of a larger institutional environment. The extent to which the broader institutional environment of the market, corporate society, and regulatory bodies reinforce, exasperate, or alter the pressures and logic within business schools is an avenue of inquiry not elaborated in this article, but it is equally important to explore.

Conclusion

This study suggests that the ways faculty perceive and interact with concepts will influence the ways in which they are able to teach and research these concepts. Accordingly, we can expect that faculty perspectives of social justice must be understood and articulated before social transformations are, or can be, implemented within business schools. The findings suggest that the ideologies affecting conceptions of social justice are dominated by profit-based conceptions. While these findings reflect concerns similar to those voiced before regarding the dominance of the profit paradigm, this research contributes to the discussion by indicating that these issues still exist even after CSR education practices have been adopted. More importantly, however, these findings indicate that the dominance of profit-based ideology has marginalized the meanings and conceptions of social justice held by participants who sought to change established approaches to business practice, pedagogy, and research.

The results also reveal the hegemonic forces driving business programs that influenced faculty conceptions of social justice. More specifically, these hegemonic forces limited the participants’ ability to engage the meanings of social justice they sought to espouse in their own teaching and research on business. As such, many of the participants in this research were not ‘blind’, as Khurana (2007: 379) suggested, to the domination of the market logic within their business schools. Rather they were aware of, and felt repressed by, this ideology. They identified these marginalizing forces as profit-driven business ideologies, the particular character of MBA programs, and bias for quantitative research in business programs.

There is a clear need for change in the way business schools deal with issues of social justice. However, if current institutional and ideological drivers for business pedagogy and practice remain unchanged in business schools, attempts at engaging social justice will be empty, and will stagnate. The findings indicate that while there are professors who are aware of their broader environment and have articulate notions of social justice, as Pfeffer and Fong (2002) predicted, there are significant constraints to the realization of their personal conceptualizations. I suggest that curriculums and pedagogical approaches may not change unless the existing hegemony institutionalized in business schools also changes. Accordingly, what is needed within business schools is critical and disruptive institutional work, to liberate marginalized participants’ goals for social justice and business practice, and to enable their expression and influence within business schools more broadly.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Anne Cunliffe and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback and assistance. I am indebted to Magda Lewis, Marianna Fotaki, Patricia Bradshaw, and Ajnesh Prasad for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of the article.

Funding

This research was supported by the Social Science and Humanity Council of Canada.

Notes

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