Advice to Christian Professors of Business

[...]they are still primarily justified by their positive effects on profit, calling into question the true motivation behind them. [...]the social (non-financial) value they purportedly create can be minimal and/or difficult to measure because of imprecise or overly broad definitions.2 Given these...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Christian scholar's review 2022-01, Vol.51 (2), p.221-231
Main Author: Wong, Kenman
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Business
Business education
Capitalism
Career development
Employers
High technology industry
Mission statements
Profit maximization
Students
Teaching
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Summary:[...]they are still primarily justified by their positive effects on profit, calling into question the true motivation behind them. [...]the social (non-financial) value they purportedly create can be minimal and/or difficult to measure because of imprecise or overly broad definitions.2 Given these kinds of obstacles, what might it mean to allow our faith to animate our work as Christian Professors of Business? In addition to the earlier noted pressure to narrowly tailor our curricula to train "plug and play employees," we may feel the pressure to escape "ivory tower" criticisms by shaping our research agendas to be more "relevant" to the immediate interests of practitioners.6 I received a stark reminder of the distance between academics and industry when attending an enormous (6-7k attendees) annual conference with a faculty colleague who had spent several decades as a corporate executive. [...]there has been much recent discussion about ways to make business scholarship more practical.7 There could be much to gain from tilting our research toward the concerns of practitioners. [...]even if tenure and promotion expectations to publish in non-practitioner-friendly ("highly ranked") journals could be changed, my concern is that the interests of businesspeople will reflect the still-dominant profit maximization orthodoxy. [...]more "applied" research may further ensure the prevalence of studying the effects of specific models, practices, or techniques on profit.
ISSN:0017-2251