Responsible Management Education in Time of Crisis: A Conceptual Framework for Public Business Schools in Egypt and Similar Middle Eastern Context

Since December 2019, nothing has been more important in the world’s socio-political and economic agenda than the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19). This virus has led to the death of more than 2.5 million people after by 1 March 2021 (Worldometer, 2020). It has been perceived by Khan (2020) as the most dangerous biological threat to humans in the history of the world. Carruthers (2020) highlights that the sudden emergence and later identification of this virus has assisted in its rapid spread worldwide, requiring an unusual and unexpected increase in the demand for health-care services and related industries and/or supplies. Xu et al. (2020) indicate that Corona phobia and the fear of getting infected by this virus as a serious threat that psychologists have to address. Ren et al. (2020) consider the consequences of negative prejudice against coronavirus patients as one of the unexpected outcomes of this virus. Economically, this pandemic has not only stopped work activities in both public and private organizations, such as universities, shopping malls, restaurants and factories, but also forced countries to suspend its normal and traditional life cycles or activities for long period of time. Khan (2020) considers the cuts to national sources of income, particularly those that depend on oil and tourism, as a serious threat to world peace.

From another perspective, over the past two decades, business schools have not fully exercised their pre-assumed role as a change agent for profit and not-for-profit organizations. In this context, Anninos and Chytiris (2011) elaborate that the majority of business schools equip their students only with economic and management theories that do not entail any social obligations that all organizations have. Topics such as climate change, carbon footprint, gender equality, unemployment, human rights and corruption are not listed as priorities in the research centres and curricula of business schools (Podolny, 2009; Petriglieri, 2012; Doherty et al., 2015). Consequently, Alvesson (2013) have called for business schools to revisit the content of their courses, fieldworks and exercises. Doppelt (2009) asserts that the main threat facing today’s business schools is deciding how and to what extent they are able to meet the social obligations of their stakeholders and develop environmentally friendly initiatives.

Consequently, and as a response to the aforementioned calls, accusations, and perceived extensive pressure, some business schools – particularly in the West – have started to include sustainability-related behaviour in their curricula. Others have developed some tailor-made courses on social and ethical themes, where academics have devoted considerable space to empirically incorporating CSR, corporate citizenship, societal citizenship, cultural equality, organizational inclusion among others into their research agenda (Steketee, 2009; Wu et al., 2010; Pless et al., 2011; Brower, 2011). Furthermore, universities have fostered agreements with some national and international NGOs to effectively address environmental threats and social interests. For instance, the University of Exeter in UK has initiated a “one planet MBA” programme in collaboration with a famous international NGO organization called (WWF International) primarily aims to deliver a new generation of responsible leaders, who can create, develop and disseminate virtues, wisdom and society-related knowledge into their surrounding communities. (WWF International, 2011). While the RME scenarios are quickly advancing the efforts of curricula development in the West, it is still a matter of concern for other countries in other regions including African countries and some countries in the Middle East, where previous findings show that academics in that regions still not very ready for curricula development of RME (Mousa et al., 2019), and that Covid-19 has not had any effect yet on the adoption of sustainable business education in the higher education (Mousa, 2020a), however some very recent findings show that the spread of Covid-19 has positively changed the situation and that the current socio-cultural challenges start to shape the minds of business students, academics and trainers (Mousa, 2020b).

Given the recent findings above (Mousa et al., 2019; Mousa 2021a, b), and using a multilevel view, in this paper, we elaborate and theoretically propose and predict the potential direction of RME that business schools in that region are to implement through identifying and articulating the main antecedents of RME before and after Covid-19, and considering both the information business schools should develop concerning the socio-economic and environmental impacts of Covid-19 and the change in working conditions.

Erskine and Johnson (2012) confirm that sustainability was the main driver behind the emergence of the 2004 principles of RME. Economic growth is perceived to be sustainable when “it meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland commission, 1987, p. 8). This indicates that sustainability not only concerns the natural environment but also human prosperity and economic development (Erskine & Johnson, 2012). Holliday (2010) describes sustainability as a novel growing trend in RME. However, Bridges and Wilhelm (2008) assert that the top 30 business schools devote 25 per cent of their curricula, research and coursework to sustainability-related aspects. Dean and Beggs (2006) highlight that many academics continuously reveal their urgent need for well-designed training in order to effectively teach social responsibility and ethics-related ideas. Accordingly, in 2004 and in an attempt to embed sustainability, ethics and social-related challenges (e.g. safeguarding human rights, fighting corruption, promoting gender equality) within management education, the United Nations (UN) launched its global voluntary initiative known as the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME). This initiative is the result of years of collaboration with business schools, accredited bodies and associations, such as the AACSB, European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), the Academy of Business in Society and the Aspen Institute. PRME has been perceived by author such as Sterling (2012) as an opportunity for business schools to rethink the content of their courses, teaching pedagogy, research scholarships and even their engagement with stakeholders. The following table presents the principles of REM developed by the UN. Table 1

Mintzberg (2005) elaborates that the functional specialisation of MBA programmes which only export financial information is no longer sufficient to form student awareness. Moreover, focusing only on maximizing profits hinders any attempt to deliver student communication skills, leadership ability, emotional maturity and global orientation (Slater and Dixon-Fowler, 2010; Fougere et al., 2014). This has caused authors such as Ghoshal (2005) and Giacalone and Thompson (2006) to question the expected value, benefit and outcomes from only paying attention to agency and transaction costs.

According to Brookes et al. (2014), there is a shortage of empirical studies that address the implementation of RME in different business schools. However, the situation is even worse in business schools in the Middle East, and the authors concur that they also discovered a dearth of academic publications on this issue in the region. Alnodel et al. (2018) indicate that economic stability is the main determinant for Middle Eastern business schools not engaging with their surrounding stakeholders. Accordingly, neglecting RME in these schools comes as a result of the economic instability in those countries. In a Jordanian study, Abu-Alruz et al. (2018) found that students in Jordan maintain a very positive attitude towards the three axes of sustainable development – economic viability, society and education. In 2014, a regional discussion at the ESCA School of Management in Casablanca, Morocco ended with the following four challenges and considered them as the main barriers to business schools in the Middle East implementing RME: 1. Curriculum development and content sharing, 2. Research including anti-corruption; 3. Outreach on the sustainability literacy test; and 4. Women on boards in the Arab Region (Fourth PRME MENA Regional Forum, 2014) (https://​www.​unprme.​org/​how-to-engage/​display-working-group.​php?​wgid=​3168).

In the Egyptian academic context, which according to the 2017 Global Competitiveness Report (www.​weforum.​org/​) was ranked as having the lowest quality management education, Mousa et al. (2019a) and Mousa et al. (2020), have elaborated that unlike many Western business schools, tackling global responsibility and environment-related themes such as climate change, human rights, poverty, unemployment and carbon footprints are identified absent from the agenda in Egyptian and Middle-Eastern public business schools. Moreover, if authors (e.g. Rabasso & Rabasso, 2011; Waddock et al., 2010) highlight that the inclusion of sustainability in teaching and research scholarships at business schools has become the cornerstone in all accrediting bodies, such as Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) evaluating business schools, the matter is seen different in the Middle East. Mousa et al. (2019) indicate that public business schools in the Middle East are only accredited by the local governmental ministries of education in their countries. Accordingly, these schools can function without paying attention to or even being aware of some regulatory bodies, such as the AACSB. Such ongoing guaranteed local accreditation indicates why those business schools choose to limit their attention to lectures and course work on finance and business-related research problems in their institutes and research centres (Mousa, 2019b), which is not in line with Ackoff (2004) and Giacalone (2004), who assert the importance of social knowledge besides financial literacy in securing a future for the school and employment for their graduates. However, it is worth highlighting that all public business schools in the Middle East are funded by the governments of those countries, and the question remains on how is it possible to direct the efforts towards sustainability in business education in these schools? Understandably, Corley and Gioia (2000) and Slaughter and Rhoades (2004) link any attempt to activate RME with the sufficiency of financial capabilities and/or resources. Otherwise, any discourse about sustainable business education will look like planting in a running river.

Therefore, drawing on recent work on the socio-economic implications and environmental impact of Covid-19 (Khan, 2020; Helm, 2020; Carruthers, 2020), we seek to theorise on the direction Middle Eastern business schools can take in implementing RME. In other words, we seek to provide an answer to the following question: What are the main antecedents stimulating the implementation of RME in Egypt and similar regional Middle-Eastern business schools before and after the emergence of Covid-19?

In this paper, we used the method of ‘multilevel research’, as our analysis goes beyond statistical techniques (Hitt et al., 2007), and consider other important elements. Multilevel research includes the development of multilevel theory by combining different theoretical approaches at different levels and establishing relationships between constructs at different levels (Molina-Azorín et al., 2019).

To develop our multilevel theory, we first turn to recent publications on managing sustainability during crisis and the emergence of infectious diseases, maintaining human resources during pandemics, and some academic works on learning for sustainability, learning from poverty and exposing values in management education (Erskine & Johnson, 2012; Fougere et al., 2014; Neal, 2017; Carruthers, 2020; Aburumman et al., 2020). Second, we integrate institutional theory (Zucker, 1987) and stakeholder theory (Ullmann, 1985a, b) into the discussion on what has motivated the initiation of RME before and since the Pandemic. Institutional theory helped the authors in entailing a discussion (before the Covid-19 pandemic) about what is appropriate and widely accepted in terms of business schools pursuing RME, while stakeholder theory urges us to account for what direction business schools should currently take in order to revitalise and modernise RME to meet the new demands and expectations of stakeholders post Covid-19.

The authors’ propositions here are consolidated and summarised in Fig. 1, which elaborates the main antecedents of RME prior to Covid-19 and how the identification of Covid-19 prioritises the needed information regarding the socio-economic impact of Covid-19 and changing work conditions as two new antecedents for RME.

In our paper we explored how will RME be affected by the identification of Covid-19, and what are the main antecedents of RME particularly after the emergence of Covid-19. Drawing on recent literature on management education (Fougere et al., 2014; Moosmayer et al., 2019; Parkes et al., 2017; Décamps et al., 2017), poverty (Neal, 2017), learning opportunities for sustainability (Erskine & Johnson, 2012) and on sustainability in the areas of infectious diseases (Aburumman et al., 2020; Carruthers, 2020; Khan, 2020), we advance a multilevel theoretical analysis that identifies the main antecedents for RME before and after Covid-19. Through focusing on institutional theory (Zucker, 1987), we explore how the widely accepted institutional practices derived from coercive isomorphism (fears of sanctions) and/or mimetic isomorphism (imitating successful competitors) and/or normative isomorphism (adopting the right practices) promote the implementation of RME. Our analysis proceeded via stakeholder theory, which suggests that business schools should not only prepare their students to lead socially adult lives but also to exert a continuous effort in meeting the social obligations and environmental priorities of their stakeholders. In doing so, this study secures a theoretical and practical contribution to academic literature concerned with management education.

Our first theoretical contribution lies in a multilevel analysis addressing the antecedents that affect RME before and after Covid-19. Considering Boxenbaum and Jonsson (2008) and the AACSB International (2004) to highlight that the continuous calls and even pressure from accreditation bodies such as EQUIS and the AACSB were supposed to drive the efforts of business schools in Egypt and similar countries in the Middle East towards sustainability and a reliance on the principles of RME. We join authors such as Bennis and O’Toole (2005), Ghoshal (2005), Kashyap et al. (2006), Grayson (2010) and Moosmayer (2015) in emphasizing the active role different businesses play in activating the adoption of sustainable business education by Western business schools. However, whether business schools in Egypt and similar Middle Eastern context have received calls from employers regarding undertaking responsible education and whether they responded or not was not one of the objectives this paper addressed. We extend the analysis of the main motives and/or factors affecting the implementation of RME by confirming that poverty, which is a barrier to economic prosperity in many developing nations (World Bank, 2016), was also supposed to stimulate business schools as the main producers of tomorrow’s policy makers and decision-makers (Neal, 2017) to utilize RME as a paradigm in fighting against nepotism, corruption and other poor managerial practices exercised in their business settings.

Our second theoretical contribution lies in expanding the discourse on RME and its presumed roles post Covid-19. Since business schools should act as change agents for commercial and non-governmental organizations, we highlight the need for business schools in Egypt and similar Middle Eastern countries to create, develop and maintain research-driven programmes that may facilitate coping with the social, economic and political impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic. We also come in line with Helm (2020) in questioning the environmental consequences of Covid-19 in both the short and long run. We shed light on the changing working conditions in some leading corporations, such as Google, YouTube and Microsoft, and the growing trend of inviting employees to work from home (Aburumman et al., 2020). This should encourage business schools to revisit what they teach their students as crucial elements for career planning, career success and entrepreneurship.

Our third contribution lies in extending the theoretical scope of stakeholder theory by Ullmann (1985a, b) by showing that in the context of a crisis, stakeholders’ needs might change and hence the organization should regularly redefine its pool of social obligations. In our case, given the crisis the labour market is currently passing through, business schools should employ RME to redefine and re-explore and then balance their students’ needs according to the changed requirements in society (Garriga, 2009; Mintzberg, 2005; Rabasso & Rabasso, 2011; Mousa et al., 2020). Accordingly, focus should be given to some educational programmes while others should be suspended or pared back.

This article opens up several research opportunities. First, this study calls on other interested researchers to empirically investigate the propositions posed here by the authors of this paper in different business schools, and accordingly determine the main antecedents for RME across cultures. In this regard, others may choose to empirically address our propositions in the context of a group of business schools in a single country through a qualitatively holistic case study (Gelman & Hill, 2006), or they may proceed with a multi-case design that compares the main antecedents of RME in business schools across countries (Eisenhardt, 1989).

Some researchers may find themselves interested in determining what outcomes Covid-19 may have in the context of business schools. In this case, researchers could either adopt a theoretical multilevel analysis similar to the present paper, or proceed with an empirical exploration of such outcomes through a qualitative study in a number of business schools. In addition, the effect of Covid-19 on the labour market or in other words the association between Covid-19 and changing work conditions may also be perceived as a preferable research opportunity for human resources management scholars who can emphasize the effect of this virus on personnel selection, career planning, talent management, performance appraisal and promotion opportunities.

Given the rapid worldwide spread of Covid-19 and the pessimistic expectations regarding some viruses in the near future, we suggest that business schools in Egypt and similar Middle Eastern countries establish units for sustaining RME. This unit will maintain a systemic set of practices to ensure academics understand what is appropriate and what is expected of them (Mousa et al., 2019). This will secure widely accepted ethical academic practices and contribute to the process of rebuilding the legitimacy of business schools (Scott et al., 2000). The authors of the present paper consider that the main objective of such a unit lies primarily in producing academic research that include information and suggestions for dealing with the socio-economic and environmental impact of Covid-19 (Helm, 2020; Lee et al., 2016; Rudd et al., 2018). Furthermore, this unit should manage a zone for collaboration between business schools with different stakeholders, who may assist in mitigating the huge negative outcomes of Covid-19 on the future of those schools, and on a global context, the focus on Middle-Eastern business schools, which remains an little-known context, facilitates the mission of Western business schools seeking either to establish research cooperative activities in the Middle East or develop partnerships with educational bodies and/or civil society associations.