MANAGEMENT EDUCATION AND INTERPERSONAL GROWTH: A HUMANIST TRANSCENDENTAL-PERSONALIST PERSPECTIVE

This chapter critically addresses the direction toward which management education (ME) should evolve in the future. Drawing from transcendental personalist anthropology, it explores what constitutes us as human beings and argues that future ME should address students’ moral selfhood and their disposition toward interpersonal growth to construct a better future with others. After a critical exploration of current humanist proposals in ME and their philosophical bases, we argue for a renewal of anthropological foundations of humanistic ME in light of three personalist principles: (1) the person's intimacy and dignity, (2) the transcendence of human beings, who grow as persons through free and caring interpersonal relations, and (3) a view of human action as the manifestation of the person's intimacy and transcendence, and as her arena for interpersonal, virtuous development. The last section explains how these three personal dimensions could be addressed in future ME, namely by fostering future managers’ moral selfhood through self-reflection, by proposing an interpersonal pedagogy of the gift, and by promoting personalist practical wisdom. These practices constitute possible paths toward renewed ethical management education that goes beyond traditional “know-what” and “know-how” content to include ethically informed “know-why” and “know-for-whom” knowledge. Ultimately, they facilitate future managers’ disposition for interpersonal growth.