Ignatian Pedagogy in the Strategy Classroom: Experience, Reflection and Action Towards Better Managerial Decisions

Ignatian Pedagogy has been an integral part of Jesuit education, functioning as an anchor that has guided teaching and pedagogical research in Jesuit univer- sities in many areas, such as service learning (Kloppenborg, Hahnenberg and Prosak-Beres, 2012; Driggers, 2012), social justice (Chubbuck, 2007), leadership (Lowney, 2005), leadership training (Lecourt and Pauchant, 2011), among others. Indeed, an Ignatian approach has also been used in business education, including creating an accounting ethics course (Van Hise and Massey, 2010), teaching busi- ness ethics (Balotsky and Steingard, 2006), and writing re ective assignments (Hidding, Scheidenhelm and Milligan, 2014). However, prior research on Ignatian Pedagogy has not examined its use towards solving the complex managerial issues that are studied in the strategy classroom. This lack of research is surprising given the prominent role that strategic management plays in the curriculum of most business programs, and the applicability of the Ignatian approach in important life decisions. This paper seeks to ll this gap by describing one way in which the basic tenets of Ignatian Pedagogy can be translated into the strategic management classroom. In summary, we believe that the Ignatian approach is uniquely able to incorporate the analytical and the practical components needed for effective strategic management teaching, and to help train business professionals by exposing them to a time-tested process that can lead to better managerial decisions. The main contention of this paper is that Ignatian Pedagogy offers a more robust teaching approach for the strategy classroom than the traditional case method.