A significant challenge concerns the ability to hire or re-train educational and research faculty members who can create safe and effective collaborative learning platforms. Re-training existing faculty is one of the most important levers in the successful implementation of the 50+20 vision. Our recommendations focus on two core activities, similar to those of the Carnegie / Ford reports of 1959 which shaped business schools for the past 50 years:
- The creation of an entirely new doctoral program to be created in existing business schools.
- The creation of a training organization, specializing in the transformation of existing faculty.
We envision the creation of a global faculty development and training structure that provides a comprehensive offering around the globe, with many stakeholders collaborating in its execution and sharing best practices where relevant and possible. Such training and development would need to focus on enabling existing and new faculty members to develop skills and competences in a) coaching and facilitation, b) transdisciplinary collaboration, c) critical review and broadening of their individual subject specialization, and d) broadening of existing and development of future-oriented research methodologies.
Such re-training would serve to professionalize and raise the level of the current business school faculty, similarly to emerging new deans programs offered by leading business schools or accreditation organizations.
A new way to measure success
Given that we are moving into unchartered territory, we need to be very careful with newly adopted paradigms or the levels of thinking we set to measure the success for the management school of the future. Guiding principles that evaluate to what degree a management school has implemented a designed vision includes the following considerations:
- Recognition of the responsibility to provide globally responsible leadership for a sustainable world.
- Relevant measures of the three roles of management education, namely: educating leaders, enabling companies with research and engaging in the public debate.
A critical factor will involve evaluating to what degree an institution applies its strategy in a real-world setting, requiring relevant measures for the three proposed roles of management education. These measures will be demonstrated by the degree to which the roles are embedded in the activities of its administrative, teaching and research staff. Future curricula will be evaluated based on their content, pedagogy, actions, fieldwork, and their transdisciplinary approach to learning. The evaluation of acquired skills, competencies and attitudes of graduates requires both short- and long-term reviews. Further, collaborating with alumni and stakeholder organizations can open the pathway to establishing and monitoring an agreed-upon oath to uphold responsible leadership for the world.
We imagine the management school of the future as an organic, expanding, potentially multi-location, networking organization offering a variety of tools and techniques, including on-site, virtual, free, as well as blended-learning approaches, ideally resulting from a collaboration of several engaged and contributing organizations. The underlying organizing principle is simple: How will your contribution serve the vision of providing responsible leadership for a sustainable world? The answers will vary, and the organizational structure will need to remain correspondingly flexible to adapt to new dimensions and interpretations.
