Unmasking Irresponsible Leadership

Curriculum Development in 21st-Century Management Education

Lola-Peach Martins, Maria De Lourdes Lazzarin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000763225
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book is unique given its scholarly angle in unmasking irresponsible leadership (IL) by focusing on its meaning. For the first time the concept of irresponsible leadership (IL) is explored in depth, the plethora of terms used in various disciplines is synthesised, and the ped-andragogy of teaching IL as a threshold concept of responsible leadership (RL) is discussed. The methodological approach adopted is creative and sound.

Following the call for business schools to do more in developing responsible leadership curriculum, the book is the first of its kind devoted to advocating a radical change in the management curriculum. It draws attention to the essence of developing a shared in-depth understanding of IL by addressing the misconceptions of theories and issues that have contributed to the epidemic corporate scandals worldwide. The authors provide a suite of reflective/reflexive tools for RL learning and development, including the first IL definitional framework useful for understanding IL perspectives. In addition the book is the first to introduce the ILRL board game, which increases the learner's flow state. Thus, the book highlights how various tools can be useful for engagement, and understanding curricula and ped-andragogical issues vis-à-vis corporate leadership practices and sustainability in turbulent times.

Our targeted audience: Academic researchers, final year undergraduates, and postgraduate (including Executive MBA) students and Higher Education Curricula developers/designers. The book provides many benefits, some of which include: Pertinent answers to important questions about responsible leadership and curriculum development; sophistication of qualitative research in management studies; in-depth understanding of irresponsible leadership from a cross-disciplinary perspective; support for leadership employability endeavours and equipping students with in-depth understanding of RL; assisting with developing reflective and reflexive practice; and in terms of ped-andragogy, encouraging innovation and creativity in teaching IL as a threshold concept of RL to reduce unnecessary management curricula bias.

Part 1
Setting the scene for creating an IL definitional framework

1
Introduction

Why this book?

Building on many years of research, and the work of the United Nations Global Compact initiative – the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), as well as participating in major conferences and special interest group (SIG) events,¹ we finally decided to focus our attention on developing a definitional framework² for irresponsible leadership (IL).³ IL, in all ramifications of the term, is pertinent and various aspects of it have been of interest to us for many years. For example, the maltreatment of workers during the early factory system of production to 21st-century management practices such as injustice in global supply chains, all of which are known to have vast effects on various stakeholders and negative environmental and social impacts. Given the rise in corporate scandals and criticisms directed at business schools, we became interested in the responsible management education aspect, which has been at the heart of the United Nations (UN) Global Compact initiative – the PRME.

By writing this book we join the PRME, which also addresses the criticisms mentioned above. While it is clear that our book is not the first to rise to the challenge of addressing these criticisms, we hope that our work will find a way to positively contribute to the successes of our predecessors, colleagues, and the PRME, the message of which is conveyed in the six principles⁴ below, and on which participating higher education institutions make a declaration:⁵

Principle 1 | Purpose: We will develop the capabilities of students to be future generators of sustainable value for business and society at large and to work for an inclusive and sustainable global economy.

Principle 2 | Values: We will incorporate into our academic activities, curricula, and organisational practices the values of global social responsibility as portrayed in international initiatives such as the United Nations Global Compact.

Principle 3 | Method: We will create educational frameworks, materials, processes, and environments that enable effective learning experiences for responsible leadership.

Principle 4 | Research: We will engage in conceptual and empirical research that advances our understanding about the role, dynamics, and impact of corporations in the creation of sustainable social, environmental and economic value.

Principle 5 | Partnership: We will interact with managers of business corporations to extend our knowledge of their challenges in meeting social and environmental responsibilities and to explore jointly effective approaches to meeting these challenges.

Principle 6 | Dialogue: We will facilitate and support dialogue and debate among educators, students, business, government, consumers, media, civil society organisations, and other interested groups and stakeholders on critical issues related to global social responsibility and sustainability.

(PRME Secretariat, UN Global Compact, p. 12)

PRME leaders have relentlessly sought to address the criticisms against business schools in various ways, and have been at the heart of responsible management and responsible management education for over a decade. More recently they created a platform for a series of publications focusing on the subject. The book Educating for Responsible Management: Putting Theory into Practice, edited by Sunley and Leigh, more specifically, Chapter 2, written by Ross Hayes, Carole Parkes, and Alan Murray, draws attention to the PRME successes, and succinctly covers the history of responsible management education on a global scale. It draws attention to Manuel Escudero’s 2006 paper in an engaging way. In his paper he outlined “a new vision for business schools to meet the changing demands of the decades to come.” His work, and earlier work that we refer to in our book, emphasised the shortcomings of business schools, i.e. “failure of traditional approaches to be able to prepare graduates to respond to demands for a more responsible way of managing companies” (2017, p. 14). Furthermore, Hayes et al. provide useful information about working groups, regional chapters, relevant responsible management literature, and they provide a table highlighting the differences between traditional and responsible forms of management pedagogy. Another book titled Responsible Business: The Textbook for Management Learning, Competence and Innovation (2016) written by Laasch and Conaway, also PRME leaders (Laasch is Co-Founder of The Center for Responsible Management Education), also captured our attention. Their book also reflects Escudero’s comment. That is, Laasch and Conaway suggested a competence based approach to teaching RL. They highlighted teaching responsible knowledge was insufficient and that “it does not lead to the type of resourceful and competent responsible manager we need to make the transition toward sustainable, responsible and ethical business happen.” In this regard our book also focuses on IL ped-andragogical matters, but in addition we draw specific attention to the essence of irresponsible leadership (IL) knowledge and meaning, which enhances responsible leadership⁶ (RL) understanding. As advocates of critical and alternative approaches to LMD (Edward et al., 2013), we posit that such approaches are essential if students are going to effectively engage in learning about IL, and develop a shared understanding of the same.

In line with the PRME principles, we began to focus on responsible management and leadership (RML) curricula development, and became committed to writing a book about developing a definitional framework for teaching irresponsible leadership (IL), hence the focus on unmasking IL⁷ as well as defining IL. This is also linked to our earlier research (which commenced over two decades ago) concerned with management and leadership behaviours and practices from pre-industrial revolution to the 21st-century era, organisational injustice, and supply chain management practices.

Regarding the management curricula, we observed an unnecessary bias on a global scale. More specifically it was clear to us that a considerably large amount of attention had been paid to RL in the management curricula without much attention given to IL. This has implications for continuous professional development (CPD) and life-long learning vis-à-vis RL behaviours and practices. Given the rise in the number of corporate scandals and the importance of thoroughly understanding what managers should do, and fundamentally should not do (Armstrong, 1977), we became passionate about developing management curricula and teaching IL as a threshold concept of RL. Adapting Meyer and Land’s (2003) definition, in the context of education we define the “IL threshold concept” as differentiating between IL and RL learning outcomes⁸ so that IL can represent seeing RL in a new or clearly defined and holistic way, and pinpoint those factors that hinder such learning. Continued rise in the number of corporate scandals is an indication that the concept of RL is centred around what Perkins (1999) described as “troublesome knowledge” (Perkins, 1999 in Meyer and Land, 2003, p. 1). Our study, which also involved in-depth critical analysis of these scandals, produced a plethora of terms used to describe leader behaviours and practices (including CEOs) linked with unethical and/or illegal practices. Furthermore, it soon became clear that neoliberalist/economist views have added to the confusion regarding the meaning of IL as a concept, and in terms of behaviour and practice, hence masking IL to portray it as something that is positive and sustainable. Also, despite the numerous terms used to describe the behaviours of leaders who fail to perform their leadership⁹ role responsibly, this plethora of expressions had not been synthesised coherently, i.e. in such a way that could be useful for developing IL curriculum. In other words, until this publication there was no definitional framework, let alone an IL definition based on a synthesis of interdisciplinary discourse on leadership, business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and social responsibility. Therefore, this book has been written so that it can be used to support teaching IL as a threshold concept for gaining in-depth, shared understanding of RL. The definitional framework for teaching IL is based on the premise that understanding the meaning of IL and associated behaviours leading to IL practice can add clarity to the meaning of responsible leadership (RL), and hence impact management education and practice.

Overall, the four key motivations for writing this book are:

1. Our passion for the subject RL, hence research, teaching, learning, development, and practice in this regard;
2. The United Nations Global Compact and PRME Initiative and call for business schools to do more to improve responsible management education for sustainability, following the phenomenal increase of extremely costly corporate scandals particularly in the last decade;
3. The absence of a definitional framework for teaching IL as a threshold concept of RL;¹⁰ and
4. The need to address unjustifiable management curricula bias (such bias suggests that intellectual integrity is compromised when ignored). According to Sadker and Sadker (2015, p. 1), curricula bias is concerned with how a body of knowledge is transmitted in business schools, i.e. “perpetuating only one interpretation of an issue, situation, or group of people. Such accounts simply distort complex issues by omitting different perspectives.” For example, how the management curricula is designed and developed, what courses are on offer, how they have been selected, and how they are delivered.

Corporate scandals and the irresponsible leadership definitional dilemma

Irresponsible Leadership (IL) behaviours and practices in large corporations have been increasing at a phenomenal rate worldwide, costing the UK and USA billions in revenue per annum (Kirton, 2015; Gallup, 2013). Many authors have wr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• This book can be used for …
• About the authors
• Acknowledgements
• Disclaimer
• List of abbreviations
• PART 1 Setting the scene for creating an IL definitional framework
• PART 2 Contextualising IL: An interdisciplinary approach
• PART 3 IL curriculum development contemplation
• Appendices
• Index