Enhancing the circle of life: Management education and indigenous knowledge

Abstract

Prevailing values in management education are coming under increasing scrutiny for a deeper understanding of their connection to endemic poverty, institutional violence, and environmental degradation that are no longer just the expressed concern of critical organizational scholars. Attempts to name and transform values that are deemed to contribute to this dark side of global development are more accessible than ever to the management educator. Examples of such commitment include the rise in interest and competency in the area of corporate social responsibility, the amplification of the views of advocates of business as an agent of world benefit, and various sustainability discourses. There is a symbiotic relationship between these ideas and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and the subsequent generation of Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME). The Journal of Management Education (JME) has taken a leadership role in developing and advocating these principles based on a commitment to a closer examination of the values that are implicit and explicit in management education (see Schmidt-Wilk, 2009). Among these commitments is an emerging interest in and amplification of the voices of indigenous peoples. This emergence draws attention to another document of the United Nations: The Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—rights and responsibilities made explicit by influential organizations such as the World Bank (Sarfaty, 2007).