System-thinking. The new normal in management schools?
The pandemic has surfaced vocabulary that in many management school contexts sounded solemn and somewhat ‘altmodisch’ only a few months ago: system-thinking, solidarity, humanity, inequality and empathy. Today, these words are regarded relevant, urgent and necessary to discuss in those (virtual) classrooms filled with future leaders. As a reflection of this new turn, ‘system-thinking’ was one of the most frequently used words at the sessions I joined at the recent virtual Academy of Management 2020 Conference. System thinking is basically an appreciation of how one part of a system is interdependent on all parts of the system. And that changing one part of a system may affect other parts or the system as a whole in ways that are sometimes predictable and sometimes not. Fundamentally, system-thinking in the context of business and management education, is a way of appreciating that business is one among many parts that depend on each other and that together form larger systems on which they depend, and which depend on them. While this may seem pretty basic as a principle, it brings a high degree of complexity in practice, and it is not always an easily conveyed message in a classroom with a focus on toolkits and frameworks in siloed disciplines.
But the pandemic is showing the necessity of system-thinking in practical reality and bringing the need to understand how business is an integrated part of society in complex systems, where business inextricably depends on society and society on business. The pandemic has shown the need to set aside disciplinary differences and the upside of global agreements on how to best navigate our societies together through the crisis. Our business school students are witnessing how free-market actors are now asking governments for economic support, and how political leaders are being applauded for asking business to help society in new ways, including calling on industry to transform production in support of overcoming the crisis. They are witnessing how old political decisions to commercialize public health are now putting health at risk for entire populations. The global crisis demonstrates that by coordinating our efforts across regional, disciplinary and many other boarders, we will enhance the likelihood of overcoming it faster. Our students have over the past six months very concretely witnessed how solidarity and empathy at work is not ‘cheap talk’ but for many individuals and families the very reason they are still alive. They have experienced system-thinking in practice where the individual parts of the global society are interdependent and that by helping and protecting each other, all parts of society are more likely to prosper. This includes business. After all, we are in this together.
Some management schools have integrated system-thinking in the educational programs and in the way examinations, project work, and, for example, capstone assignments are designed. Here students are asked to explore how business and society may serve each other in the long-term. It is a big and exciting challenge how management schools will make system-thinking ‘the new normal’ in business programs, in a way that reaches even outside the traditional management disciplines and integrates knowledge from the natural and technical sciences and humanities.
Re-thinking the role of higher education: balancing ‘Bildung’ and ‘Ausbildung’ *
In a world that is searching for how to recover better and a university system that is severely challenged in a global pandemic, now seems to be a good moment to re-think the purpose of the “traditional” University. How can we educate responsible leaders that have the skills and the mindset to address urgent problems of climate change, rising inequality and disregard for human rights? It is often said that we already have the technologies and the skillset (i.e. via the ‘Ausbildung’) needed to solve these global challenges but we have not yet the global governance structures and the mindset (i.e. the Bildung) that enable us to actually do it. How do we develop educational programs and systems that enable a bridging of skillset and mindset to advance responsible leaders?
While much focus is rightly oriented to educating for an unknown future, sometimes we can also find inspiration in ideals from the past. One example of a university ideal has for long been the Humboldtian model of higher education, with its central notions of ‘Bildung’ and ‘Ausbildung’ to emphasize the dual role of higher education. The noble idea is to educate students to become world citizens with a holistic outlook, who are autonomous individuals developing their own reasoning powers to decide between right and wrong (Bildung), while at the same time providing them with more specific professional skills required through schooling (Ausbildung).
“There are undeniably certain kinds of knowledge that must be of a general nature and, more importantly, a certain cultivation of the mind and character that nobody can afford to be without. People obviously cannot be good craftworkers, merchants, soldiers or businessmen unless, regardless of their occupation, they are good, upstanding and – according to their condition – well-informed human beings and citizens. If this basis is laid through schooling, vocational skills are easily acquired later on, and a person is always free to move from one occupation to another, as so often happens in life.” (quoted in Profiles of educators: Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) by Karl-Heinz Günther (1988), doi:10.1007/BF02192965)
This noble aim seems of significant relevance for the Sustainable Development Goals. To address complex global challenges, there is a need for responsible managers to have not only the right professional toolkit but also to be able to engage in a systems-thinking mindset that can put together pieces in novel ways with a regard for longterm development.
In a pandemic-struck world with an alarming rise in unemployment, today, many students are looking to develop a professional skillset that can provide them with a job despite the circumstances. This has brought a renewed demand for ‘Ausbildung’.
Only a few months into the pandemic, business is already offering a helping hand to educate students with relevant skillsets to enter professional jobs. At a fast pace, a number of companies are developing their own university-equivalent educational programs. Google is now offering a new professional career certificate on digital skills that can be completed within six months at the cost of a monthly fee of USD 49. Prior experience and higher education are not prerequisites, and Google hiring managers say they will treat the program as equivalent to four-year degrees and consider favorably their students for the future workforce. LinkedIn, Microsoft and National Retail Federation (NRF) have similar low-cost educational offerings, and the message is clear: the lack of a university degree is no longer the obstacle to a skilled job. Business is offering a relevant and inexpensive education option to prepare students for an ever-transforming digital job market that also promises high economic opportunities.
This is a promising development for youth and prospective students and will allow for low-income populations and minority groups who may have found access to university programs difficult for a number of reasons.
However, it is important to understand how the focus in these educational programs appears to be specifically on Ausbildung. These programs will deliver focused training for specific types of jobs. This is good news, but there’s a caveat. These programs are not designed to educate global citizens. For this purpose, we look to the Management School and the University. We need management schools to engage in educating students who are able to embrace a broad multi-perspective both on the organization as a whole and on the role of the organization in society. Management schools play an urgent role in developing new ways of engaging students in rethinking the social impact of the processes, products and services delivered by market actors, and importantly, to think of themselves as change agents for longterm sustainable development. Management schools need to continuously redefine and nurture their expertise on Bildung to educate world citizens, who will understand how to integrate the Sustainable Development Goals into their daily decision-making.
So, one central question lingers: how can management schools find the right balance between Bildung and Ausbildung to develop responsible leaders? This is not a trivial question.
Mette Morsing
* Ausbildung refers to the role of higher education to educate and train students in specific professional skills, whereas Bildung refers to education and training of students to become autonomous individuals with a world citizen mindset.
Racial equality Is not an ‘add-on’ in higher education
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends” Martin Luther King (1965)
The killing of George Floyd has brought a new global attention to the conspicuous racism that millions of black individuals are exposed to everyday. But it has also raised attention to the everyday implicit systemic racism that informs and legitimizes racism to continue and in some communities even thrive. It is a racism that is so deep-seated in our institutions that it has become a norm and is taken for granted in ways where its unacceptable scope and negative impact goes unnoticed by even ‘good-hearted’ people.
Let me echo the words of the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “my position on racism is crystal clear: this scourge violates the UN Charter and debases our core values. Every day, in our work across the world, we strive to do our part to promote inclusion, justice, dignity and combat racism in all its manifestations”. Yet, the Secretary-General also realizes that the world is very far from the target. He has called for an action plan to engage a focused debate on how to fight racism.
Now is the moment for higher education to do the same. Because, unfortunately, systemic racism is also happening in higher education. In fact, some say that higher education is a big part of the problem. That higher education is re-producing the silent systemic racism that is happening in society instead of challenging it. We like to think of universities as racially just and inclusive institutions working to educate youth to create a better world, but research shows again and again a systemic oppression of people of other color than white. It is time for academe to move beyond the sterile comfortable language of ‘diversity and inclusion’ and inform, first ourselves, and then our students about the history and prevalence of racism around the world. And how the silence of decent and nice white people perpetuates racist systems that redound to their benefit. It is difficult to make true gains in the former without the latter.
If we believe that management schools and universities are among the most influential institutions in the world to set the standards and create the mindsets for responsible leadership in our organizations, then our deans, chairs, chancellors and senior administrators need to have a racially and culturally literate leadership. Because it is a leadership challenge to fight the structural nature of race inequality with its prejudices, stereotypes, and unconscious biases, which must be debated and integrated into policies and processes at institutional level. If any global institution ought to show a first leadership on racial equality, it is higher education.
Mette Morsing