Best Symposium Award, a new international success involving SDA Bocconi

Today, more than ever, management education must look to the future. A tomorrow that is undoubtedly post-pandemic, but also one of major transformations in the socio-economic, demographic and environmental ecosystem. This forward-looking approach won the MED Global Forum Best Symposium Award for the management education symposium “The Future of Management Education: Changes, challenges and opportunities”. A team of university and business school faculty members from all over the world, including SDA Bocconi’s Leonardo Caporarello , submitted the symposium to the Academy of Management (AoM), which – together with sponsor Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris – awards their Best Symposium Award to the work that offers, in their opinion, the best opportunities of addressing global issues of major impact on management education and/or development.

This year’s winning symposium is going to be presented before the Academy on 31 July, and consists of 5 papers:

• The World Market and the Global Ecosystem for Management Education, by University of Western Ontario’s and Trinity College Dublin’s Geoffrey Wood;
• Internal and External Narratives: Business School Histories and Strategies, by University of St Andrews’ Paul Hibbert and University of Alberta’s William M. Foster;
• Educational Technology in Business Schools After Covid-19: Leveraging the Technological Pivot, by Imperial College London’s David Lefevre and SDA Bocconi School of Management’s Leonardo Caporarello;
• Beyond “The School” as the Object of Assessment: Sector Disruption and the Changing Nature of Business School Accreditation, by EBS University of Business & Law’s and XOLAS’ Ulrich Hommel and University of Antwerp’s Koen Vandenbempt;
• The Forgotten Subject of Management Education: Early Career Academics and the Future of Business Schools by University of the West of England’s Olivier Ratle, Open University’s Alexandra Bristow and University of Glasgow’s Sarah Robinson.

In particular, Lefevre’s and Caporarello’s paper addresses the topic of educational technology (EdTech) and the sudden acceleration and dissemination it has undergone during Covid-19 lockdowns, and underlines the transformative impact of this phenomenon on management education. Business schools will have to decide how to respond to this externally triggered change, which can be a great opportunity if it can translate into structural investments and cultural innovation. The paper highlights technological developments such as the use of big data and computational analytics to design “precision education” and the use of Artificial Intelligence to augment traditional management education.

The papers in this symposium align best with AoM’s Management Education and Development (MED) Division’s mission to analyze management education offer and its future. They address the numerous exogenous and endogenous changes impacting on the leadership, strategy and organization of business schools. All matters that AoM believes are of relevance to those responsible for leading and managing educational institutions and charting new directions in management education.

SDA Bocconi School of Management