Event Details

Lisa Guenther, the postgraduate researcher from the department of OWT will present this research seminar. This seminar is hybrid, both online via Teams (Meeting ID: 365 421 116 393 / Passcode: NYHtfT ) and face- to -face in LUMS WP B007.

Abstract:

Amid the rapid progress of artificially [intelligent] technologies such as large language models, machine learning and algorithmic decision-making systems, the prospects of AI’s ability to fundamentally transform management practice and education entices and threatens the higher education sector in equal measures. Might these developments serve as a wakeup call for management schools in particular, to address the fundamental question: What is management education for? According to mainstream management discourses, management schools have long been ‘sleep-walking’; churning out unethical and inadequately trained managers (Bennis and O’Toole 2005), with students learning “the wrong things in the wrong ways because they are being taught the wrong things in the wrong way” (Küpers and Gunnlaugson 2017: 10). In recent decades, the notion of phronēsis (or practical wisdom), has been cited as a possible antidote to the ethical and moral failures of management practice and education, signalling a renewed concern for ethical decision making, the capability to handle complexity and unpredictability and an awareness of personal limitation (see, for example: Bachmann et al 2018, D’souza and Introna 2023, Hadjimichael and Tsoukas 2023, Wolcott 2020). In the hope of cultivating the skills, aptitudes and attitudes which enhance the reflective and contextual decision-making capabilities of aspiring managers, phronēsis is often positioned as a supplement to more traditional subjects, but as such, often fail to gain traction in our students. Drawing on the findings of empirical research conducted at LUMS, I argue that the future of management education lies not with AI technologies but rather with management educators who, in an effort to drive students’ reflexive dispositions and reflective capabilities, deploy innovative pedagogies that help cultivate managers capable of practically wise business judgements.

References

Aristotle, 1926. Nicomachean Ethics trans. Rackham, H. (Revised. ed., Loeb Classical Library; 73 Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bachmann, C., Habisch, A. and Dierksmeier, C. 2018. Practical Wisdom: Management’s No Longer Forgotten Virtue. Journal of Business Ethics, 153(1): 147-165.

Bennis, W. G. and O'Toole, J. 2005. How business schools lost their way. Harvard Business Review, 83(5): 96-154.

D’souza, S., and Introna, L.D. 2023. Recovering Aristotle’s Practice-Based Ontology: Practical Wisdom as Embodied Ethical Intuition. Journal of Business Ethics.

Hadjimichael, D., and Tsoukas, H. 2023. Phronetic improvisation: A virtue ethics perspective. Management Learning, 54(1): 99-120.

Küpers and O. Gunnlaugson 2017 (Eds). Wisdom Learning: Perspectives on Wising-Up Business and Management Education: Oxon: Routledge.

Moser, C., Den Hond, F., and Lindebaum, D. 2022. Morality in the Age of Artificially Intelligent algorithms, Academy of Management Learning & Education, 21(1): 139-55.

Shotter, J. and Tsoukas, H. 2014. In Search of Phronēsis: Leadership and the Art of Judgment, Academy of Management Learning & Education, 13(2): 224-243.

Smith, B., 2019. The promise of artificial intelligence: Reckoning and Judgment. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Wolcott, G. 2020. A bar too high? On the use of practical wisdom in business ethics. Business Ethics, Environment & Responsibility, 29: 17-32.