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Educating for an Inclusive Economy: Cultivating Relationality Through International Immersion

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Abstract

As the gap between the world’s rich and poor grows wider and the limitations of institutional solutions such as foreign aid continue to be exposed, students of development are shifting their focus toward individualistic business-based solutions that seek to draw members of marginalized communities into the global marketplace. This focus on the individual, however, raises three interconnected issues: it privileges a view of the human person as individualistic versus relational, it proposes isolated solutions that are not scalable, and it can leave would-be change agents feeling hopeless. Drawing on insights from sociology, political philosophy, and Catholic social thought, the current paper presents an alternative path to educating for an inclusive economy by arguing that our greatest structural challenges require us not to abandon institutional solutions but rather to develop better institutions rooted in a fuller notion of the human person. Specifically, by cultivating a mindset of relationality through immersion experiences and mindfulness practices, we propose that business education can empower students to develop hope-filled solidarity with the marginalized, understand their role in the global economic system, and as future business leaders, build virtuous institutions for the common good.

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Notes

  1. The debate around foreign aid yields particular tension in the context of Catholic social teaching, wherein tenets such as a just (re)distribution of wealth through charity, an emphasis on participation and respecting national sovereignty, and good governance may come into conflict (for example, see Philip Booth, Catholic Social Teaching and the Market Economy, The Institute of Economic Affairs, Booth 2007).

  2. See for example Andreas Widmer’s (2012) discussion of the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurship in addressing poverty in emerging markets.

  3. Already in Eyler et al. 2001 (Eyler et al.), Campus Compact produced a 121 page annotated bibliography surveying and summarizing service-learning and immersion programs in higher education. Besides increased student learning and development, the literature overwhelming demonstrates an increase in the students’ appreciation for diversity and sense of social responsibility.

  4. It should be emphasized that these strategies are intended to counterbalance the prevalent individualism in business education, not to entirely supplant it. Nor do we think it possible to attempt a ‘division of moral labor’ in which we separate the values we seek in our personal lives from social institutions’ obligation to pursue justice (Nagel 1995; Scheffler and Munoz-Dardé 2005). Similar to Meghan Clark’s (2014) defining the virtue of solidarity as the Aristotelian golden mean between individualism and collectivism, our goal here is to pull business education back from one extreme without giving way to the other.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers as well as those at the Common Good Conference, Building Institutions for the Common Good: The Purpose and Practice of Business in an Inclusive Economy, who provided feedback on an earlier draft.

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  1. Anderson College of Business, Regis University, 3333 Regis Blvd, K-24, Denver, CO, 80221, USA

    Abigail B. Schneider

  2. Institute on the Common Good, Regis University, 3333 Regis Blvd, K-24, Denver, CO, 80221, USA

    Daniel P. Justin

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Schneider, A.B., Justin, D.P. Educating for an Inclusive Economy: Cultivating Relationality Through International Immersion. Humanist Manag J 5, 133–151 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41463-019-00078-2

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