Building belief in business education

At a recent conference of US and Canadian business schools to discuss sustainability and societal purpose in management education, a common thread linked many of the participants: a religious tradition.

From the Catholic St Joseph’s University in Philadelphia on the east coast to the Protestant Seattle Pacific University on the west, a significant number of business schools that were focusing on people and planet alongside profit had foundations in faith.

That is also true of some of the largest and best-known US institutions, such as Georgetown University in Washington DC. A Jesuit school open to all creeds, it was founded by the first Catholic bishop in the US in 1789, at a time when many other colleges in the country were not accessible to Catholics.

While some notably more fundamentalist Protestant universities take very different and less aligned perspectives on tackling climate change and societal problems, other more moderate Christian schools are at the vanguard of a broader movement to embrace these challenges.

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This story is from the MiM report publishing on September 9

For example, Georgetown McDonough School of Business — part of the IgnitEd network of Jesuit schools in the US and beyond, and linked to the Vatican’s Laudato Si’ initiative embraced by Pope Francis — has built a wider movement around ecology and sustainable universities.

Paul Almeida, the dean, says: “Lots of people will talk about purpose today, when it’s cool, and not tomorrow, when it isn’t,” he says. “We will always talk about it. It’s in our DNA, it’s deeply embedded in who we are, in our programmes, in the way we address each other. Learning, engaging and reflecting is very, very Jesuit. Our duty is to affect our students, staff, faculty and set the world on fire.”

Prof Almeida points to “a focus on the common good”, enshrined in initiatives including students’ outreach projects into prisons and social impact consulting projects that they undertake as part of their coursework. “Most others think of ‘Do no evil’; we think about how to proactively discover what’s in you to do good,” he says.

However, Michael Pirson, a professor in the Gabelli School of Business at New York’s (also Jesuit) Fordham University and a pioneer in humanistic management, points out that there are long-established similar approaches in Asian schools embracing Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as in secular European universities.

“Many schools that do not have religious links may be equally or more open to humanistic development because it’s pragmatically better for business,” he says. “The US is all over the map: there is no school I would see aligning integrally to all these aspects.” 

Prof Pirson defines humanistic management as challenging the short-term, profit-maximising “homos economicus” that came to dominate many business-school curriculums in the latter half of the last century, in favour of a more human-centred approach. At his institution, that is embedded in courses focused on wellbeing, dignity and collaboration.

“It’s about the intrinsic value of human beings,” he says. “The ultimate goal is not becoming rich but becoming contributors to the common good.” He points to examples of family-owned businesses reflecting that tradition, as they are less dominated by the short-term pressures of public markets to generate rapid financial returns.

Ross Stewart, dean of the Seattle Pacific University School of Business, Government and Economics, founded by the Free Methodist Church of North America, says that all his faculty are expected to acknowledge Christianity and are evaluated on how they integrate it into their courses. The school includes a Center for Faithful Business and develops teaching cases of Christian businesses.

Stewart says that while some Baptist schools take a free-market approach to business and the dominance of man over nature, his teaching centres on “human flourishing” and “the [practice] of business for the common good, not just shareholder maximisation”. Similar values are reflected in Islamic business schools, long suspicious of usury, he adds. While about half of his students are Christian, there is a significant minority of Muslims who “like us for our values”.

Franz Heukamp, dean of Iese business school in Spain, which was founded in 1958 in Barcelona at the request of Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, the Catholic priest who founded Opus Dei, says: “I think the fact that we have a Christian background is important,” he says. “Our view of management is based on Christian ideals. You avoid very narrow interpretations of success and understand there is no such thing as a purely financial problem: there are clients, teams and collaboration.”

But, like his peers in other faith-based and humanitarian-influenced schools, Heukamp struggles to identify a large number of businesses built on the model, or evidence that his students go on to pursue related careers or demonstrate their commitment professionally.

“We say all business is important and needs to have good people,” he points out. “In banking, you need socially, sustainably oriented people. You don’t want to leave it to people only interested in their own gain. We want people to do well and to do good.”

That is a clear aspiration for others, even if it remains as much an act of faith as a proven fact among their alumni.