Why business schools are teaching the wrong lessons to future business leaders

It is said instructors can do whatever they want in classrooms, as long as students are happy. For example, they could discuss what they did last summer and what their plan is for next summer, as long as students find it interesting; because that reflects a great return on investment for the administrators of the institution. 

Under the current neoliberal organisational approach prevalent in business schools, greater people skill or the ability to deliver motivational speeches could bring higher student satisfaction, even with less academic input into students' learning experience.

All this stems from looking at students as customers in the contemporary world. 

"Are the 'customers' of business ethics courses satisfied?" In response to this question, researchers argue that there is "a negative association between business ethics courses and student evaluations. In a recent study, researchers looked at the implications for business ethics education in a situation where pedagogical objectives (educate!) and market prescriptions (satisfy!) point in different directions". 

Because of the lack of focus on pursuing academic excellence and emphasis on marketisation, business academics frequently refer to their students today as customers (but not students or junior scholars). This is alarming when we consider that these 'customers' are the future business leaders who will be tasked to address the societal, environmental and industry - or sector-specific global challenges related to the sustainable development goals (SDGs). 

We need strong ethical standards to pursue global SDGs. 

Even when we are teaching a course like business ethics,  if we teach only in order to satisfy customers and not students, how do you think future business executives will make ethical considerations when they have to prioritise between self-interest and societal or communal interest? 

This is just one aspect of what is wrong with our business schools. Besides, the actual scholarly impact on society of the ranking-based publication competition across business schools is questionable. Furthermore, voluntary academic reviewing and editing services are no longer a priority in business schools' performance management today. However, such academic endeavours are instrumental to pursue academic excellence, in order to increase the practical value of business research. 

This marketisation-led organisational doctrine propels business academics to undertake numerous micromanagement tasks under an organisational structure, which some academics described as "driven by financial targets".

To cope up with this corporatised structure of the contemporary business schools' operations, it is alarming to see that academics in business schools are tending to become better at managerial skills instead of pursuing more academic excellence. 

The growing socio-economic inequality is a social, ethical, economic and political concern. Such inequalities can be influenced further by power and resources. Research demonstrates that the role of power and resources in business schools today is pervasive.

Consequently, business schools are serving powerful interests, and teaching tomorrow's business leaders to think and act on behalf of those who control resources and power. This mission of today's business schools is not only lessening the scope of business students' unprejudiced thinking prospects, but also contributing to global inequality. 

 Isn't this method of prejudiced learning and thinking/training (not teaching) and the eventual academic myopia lessening the universal views of tomorrow's business leaders, whilst training them to prioritise personal interest mostly? 

Without unprejudiced thinking and universal views, how will tomorrow's business leaders feel the distress (not only the needs, wants and expectations) of their customers across the world? 

If the future business leaders focus only on satisfying stakeholders' needs without looking at their distress (i.e, inequality in various contexts of daily-life), how will the business leaders successfully pursue the SDGs, considering that without equity in unprejudiced thinking the SDGs would not be achievable? 

Taking the contemporary business schools' prejudiced mission, the question is, why are we sidetracking the focus of tomorrow's business leaders from meaningfully pursuing the global SDGs. 

These fundamental moral shortcomings and operational myopia of the contemporary business schools have contributed, perhaps to a deep extent, to compromising the business schools' fundamental mission of research, teaching and knowledge exchange, to underpin the social-economic and ecological welfare whilst pursuing the SDGs. 

Today, "business schools are at a crossroads between staying true to their original calling as professional schools or following political and market pressures". At this crossroads, what business schools need to address is how not to deliver curricula merely to stay ahead of the market competition, but to reconsider their fundamental mission. 

This mission is to serve different stakeholders, including students, based on business schools' excellence in knowledge creation and its impact, and less on valuing performance through abstract publication numbers, treating students as customers and pursuing success through managerial skills and financial gains, instead of academic thirst for knowledge. 

If the contemporary business schools intend to adopt the United Nations' Principles for Responsible Management Education, and subsequently teach the future graduates how to pursue the global SDGs, they should remain authentic and responsible to their fundamental mission. 

Reinstating the fundamental responsible mission of business schools will be instrumental to stop compromising their research and knowledge exchange endeavours. Thus, it is high time business schools return to their original academic goal, instead of following market pressure and escaping from free-thinking practice, as ensuring a free-thinking culture for students and academics is a core academic principle.

Dr Riad Shams teaches marketing at the Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.