The misalignment of management education and globalization: conceptual, contextual and praxeological issues

As globalization intensifies attacks on management education have become increasingly more critical. Business school programs have been vilified for being dysfunctional with the charges becoming so damning against the current ‘condition’ of management education that a uni-causal link has been made between the dystopia of management education and a dystopian corporate world. The chapter unravels and discusses the intense and immediate criticisms against the current state of management education. It argues that the paradoxical nature of conflicting, often contradictory tensions that have to be incorporated and managed in a sophisticated curriculum design have instead created confusion; further fuelling the charges of instability, amateurism and irrelevance of many management education programs. The central thesis is that the fast changing unpredictability and hitherto unknown problems facing managers in the workplace requires more focus on conceptual learning (not to be confused with too much theory badly taught). A different education and curriculum design is proposed which interweaves two parallel pedagogies of conceptual and contextual learning with personal and professional development