Abstract:

In 21st century, many questions clutter our horizon. The way business is passing through sudden and continuous changes; the new business management norms are created every day. The business management education should follow the suit; rather provide lead to the business. Visibly the technological disruptions, social expectations and globalization demands better understanding of its impacts on economy, society and environment in terms of the costs, and benefits. This paper constructs argument emphasizing on core principle of business management education that any course delivery should integrate with triple bottom line. The opportunity costs are enormous if industry or institute fails to do so. Spender rightly poised the questions in his research. What are business schools, and what should they be? What are the social, business, or personal purposes of management education? And how might management education evolve next to meet society’s present needs (J.C. Spender, 2016)? The key questions business school should address revolves around subjects that should be included in syllabus, content of the courses, teaching pedagogy or learning mechanism and recruiting students with right aptitude, attitude and temperament. Business schools attempts to address one or all those ingredients. The more important missing element in business management education is integration of course delivery with the triple bottom line. The existence of business is economic or accounting profit. To be a sustainable business; social and environmental performance of business cannot be ignored. Each course included in the syllabus has a purpose; to help business to enhance triple bottom line. 

Each business problem is unique and one must be able to find solution optimally that fits to the unique situation. There is no one solution which is best to solve a problem. You must be persistent to solve problems on a continuous basis until desired result is obtained. Teacher can guide student, can ignite student’s mind to think beyond horizon. A teacher can expand thinking horizon of the student. In real life situation, a teacher will not accompany student. Student must equip himself to solve the business problem. Therefore, the business management pedagogy seeks involvement of the student while learning. Your solution must be feasible and acceptable to your economic and social surrounding. To solve a problem, you must have information. Scarcity of information is not a problem but abundance information is rather a big challenge. The current age is full of information accessible on public platforms, big challenge is to recognize and extract relevant and reliable information from the information ocean. The next level challenge in this endeavor is to identify real life problems, the application information, and to solve them efficiently and effectively. Learning is a lifelong process. You have to improve your skills on a continuous basis. Without mastering ability to learn new skills, one will become irrelevant. Technology guides you but it also misguides you. It is your ability to judge veracity, relevance, reliability and usefulness of information to churn out the right information.  

Business problems are now seen from prism of economic, social and environmental aspects. Twenty-first-century learning encompass mastery in content producing, synthesizing, and evaluating information from a wide variety of subjects and sources with an understanding of and respect for diverse cultures beside economic understanding. The pillar of success in the 21st century is about knowing how to learn independently. The learning now is eventually be “learner-driven.” The 21st century learning builds upon such past conceptions of learning as “core knowledge in subject areas” and recasts them for today’s world, where a global perspective and collaboration skills are dynamic, critical and focused. It’s no longer enough to “know things”, but to know things to find solution that is economically feasible, socially acceptable and environment friendly. It’s even more important to stay curious about finding out things. We have powerful learning tools at our disposal that allow us to locate, acquire, and even create knowledge much more quickly than our predecessors. Ability to recognize and acquire skills to fit in ever-changing environments is sine-qua-non. No one will tell you what skills are required and the way to acquire it. The self-management is the key to succeed in 21st century. We strongly argue that business management course content should be rich, contemporary, reflecting real life situation, relevant and providing lead to future industry. The course delivery should be learner centered and integrated with triple bottom line.

Vrajlal Sapovadia (Ph.D.)
United States