Editorial: Grolar bears in responsible management: establishing partnerships toward sustainability
Year: 2023
Type: editorial
Abstract: Grolar bears in responsible management: establishing partnerships toward sustainabilityIn June 2021, CBS International Business School in Cologne, Germany and the German University in Cairo (GUC), Egypt co-hosted a global panel entitled "Grolar Bears in Responsible Management Education: Futurism, Hybridization and Sustainability in a Post-COVID-19 World" at the United Nations -Principles for Responsible Management Education (UN-PRME) Global Forum.The panel aimed at raising debatable questions around the future of responsible management education.The analogy of a "Grolar bear", which is a hybrid between Grizzly and Polar bear (Turner, 2021), was used to represent unusual hybridization that could present unique opportunities as a consequence of global mega trends, such as climate change.Hybridization could take the form of novel teaching methodologies or pedagogies in responsible management education that could match future occurrences (e.g.online tools and the use of artificial intelligence, amongst other methodologies).It could also take the form of innovative concepts in the responsible management education literature that are advocated by researchers as a result of foreseeing certain future trends affecting management scholarship (e.g.diversity and multiculturalism, spirituality, etc.).Another interesting hybridization as a necessary consequence of the global poverty, inequalities and climate change trends is sustainable business models (SBMs).Such SBMs are also a hybrid that blendpotentially conflictingcommercial and welfare institutional logics (i.e. a mix of purely profit-oriented and purely nonprofit, societal business model).The panel, therefore, linked the three important notions of futurism, hybridization and sustainability to the surfacing and stipulation of "Grolar bears" in responsible management education.According to Dixon (2019, pp.205, 256), "sustainability will be a dominant theme for 300 years" where over $50 trillion will be invested in green technologies.In his book, The Future of (Almost) Everything (2019: 11), the six "faces" of the future are as follows: Fast with high-tech speed of change; Urban yet Tribal with social networks and nation brands; Universal with an ever-evolving globalization; Radical with trends like activism and sustainability and (fortunately) Ethical with good values and an increased spirituality (e.g.Smith, 2011;Amin, 2017).Despite this rather positive outlook, unfortunately, there are witnessed setbacks from the excessive evolution of technology for example such as the weakening of human relations, especially family (Dixon, 2019, p. 149).Whether or not there is a relationship between wealth and happiness, with "1% of humanity (owning) 65% of wealth", there will be an increased "search for purpose" (Dixon, 2019, pp.64, 296).This research is relevant to what is now termed "the sustainability mindset" (Kassel et al., 2016;El-Bassiouny et al., 2022).This mindset, which represents a mode of thinking, being and doing toward sustainable living and a more sustainable future, requires concerted efforts from academia, the private sector, the third sector and the public sector.A question we had raised, but not yet answered, at the end of our UN-PRME panel was as follows: Can sustainability objectives, and the realization of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs), be aligned with the Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP) which is necessarily linked to a myopic view of CSR or do we need a whole new paradigm (Kilbourne, 2004), one that has sustainability concerns at its core?
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4313495239