26th Annual IAJBS World Forum
in conjunction with    
the 2021 CJBE Annual Meeting 
The Future of Jesuit Business Education: Serving the World with Inspired Business Education

July 20-22, 2021 / A Virtual Conference 

2021 Call for Papers
Abstract submission deadline - April 23, 2021
Abstract notification deadline - May 14, 2021
Full paper deadline - June 12, 2021
Full paper notification deadline – July 2, 2021

All events times are Central Time

ACCESS INFORMATION:

Please contact jcrodriguez [at] iteso.mx for access to the event portal. The event's website is: https://iajbs2021.mx.chime.live/

Your user name is your email address and the password is ITESO2021

 

The global situation and the need for a new paradigm of business education

The white paper, A New Inspired Paradigm for Jesuit Business Education, recognizes that despite significant economic progress in recent decades, extreme poverty persists, and environmental degradation continues across the globe. This is especially tragic for millions of people on the margins— the silent and unseen – including women, children, minorities, migrants, refugees, and indigenous communities excluded from the market system's benefits. The paper also addresses the impact of labor market disruptions due to outsourcing, artificial intelligence, and automation replacing work formerly done by humans, feeding into rising inequality. The economy's financialization has fostered idolatry for money and increased speculation in markets on behalf of a very narrow group of influential individuals at the top.

Additionally, during all this year 2020, the world has been suffering the terrible consequences of the Covid-19 pandemics. Signa-Lab, a center for big data analysis at ITESO University, finds that although the virus can make anyone sick, the social and economic asymmetries and inequalities both between nations and within countries have distributed the spread very unequally against the poor. 

 

Arturo Sosa, S.J., the superior general of the Society of Jesus, says the global coronavirus outbreak is a wake-up call to recognize the world's injustice that does not let millions of people live a dignified human life. This is an invitation for Jesuit universities, in particular business schools, to reenergize their mission and build opportunities for positive change.

In Laudato-Sí, Pope Francis says, "Business is a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving our world. It can be a fruitful source of prosperity for the areas in which it operates, especially if it sees creating jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good." 

 

The white paper asserts that the responsibility of Jesuit business schools, at a minimum, is to raise student awareness and to provide a framework for reflection while supporting students and faculty as they develop concrete ways in which they can become part of the solution to the world's pains. We must find how Jesuit business schools become instruments of mercy, providing compassionate frameworks to understand the world and change it.

 

The business students' hunger:

  • A Hunger for Integrated Knowledge: Students today appreciate having so much information at their fingertips, and yet they long for a more robust formation that integrates their intellectual, affective, and volitional capacities.
  • A Hunger for a Moral Compass: Our students are not looking for recipes, but instead display a desire to acquire an ethical foundation and a method for moral discernment.
  • A Hunger for Community: Students today value meaningful communities with genuine connectedness and incorporate engaged civility.
  • Hunger for a Global Paradigm: Having seen the limitations and the dangers of ethnocentrism and nationalism, our students want to embrace a more cosmopolitan community perspective.
  • A Hunger for an Adult Spirituality: Tired of the polarizing debates between lifeless secularism, on the one hand, and dogmatic fundamentalism, on the other, our students long for a spirituality that sustains and empowers.
  • A Hunger for Meaningful Impact: It is not enough to create a small, local impact. Instead, there is a desire to scale and share and spread positive change.
  • A Hunger for Dignified Work: Work is not just about earning one's daily bread. In the words of Pope Francis, it is also "part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to growth, human development and personal fulfillment."
  • A Hunger for Experiential Learning: Jesuit Business Schools must adapt to the learning styles of 21st-century students while remaining grounded in an Ignatian approach; we must emphasize the experiential process in action.

 

Papers and other forum activities will address the "hungers" for a renovated education in Jesuit business schools. Help us build a new paradigm that makes business education more relevant, useful, and meaningful—and truly Jesuit.

 

Consider the following possibilities for inspired change:

Re-creating the economics and business curricula—new curricula are needed in business education (management, finance, accounting marketing, etc.) based on Jesuit anthropology, ethics, governance, and sustainability. Economic activity must serve the common good, especially by meeting the poor's needs and the excluded. Emphasize the universal destination of goods instead of viewing private wealth creation and accumulation as the ultimate goal of business and the economy.

 

Use of the Ignatian pedagogical paradigm. All education and research in business schools recognize the importance of context, experience, reflection, action, and evaluation. The Ignatian paradigm is a holistic formation that includes ethics and sustainability at the base of all business activities and decisions. It seeks to teach the right attitudes and values in our students, based on the premise that "becoming" is more important than simply "knowing".

 

A vision of the essential skills needed for this new kind of leadership, Jesuit business education must build on the vital foundation of humanities and technical education and include the essential skills required for a new leadership type as an opportunity for service to others the common good.

 

The role of critical stakeholders includes faculty, alumni, and the broader business community. Jesuit business schools must engage and inspire the faculty to develop and deliver these new business alternatives. Research on the impact of these changes and the teaching of these new concepts must become widespread.

 

Each academic field—marketing, finance, accounting,  leadership, followership, management, human resources, etc. – acknowledges that the current approach to business education, emphasizing the profit motive while neglecting social good, contributes to an unstable and unsustainable economy. Each academic field should then offer an alternative vision based on ethical principles and the promotion of virtue. Interdisciplinary work among two or more disciplines is desirable for the development of the new educational paradigm. 

 

Note – Abstracts and papers submitted to the 2020 World Forum are also welcome. We need confirmation from the authors.

 

Before postponing the 2020 event due to the pandemics, we called for papers presenting empirical research results, case studies, business practices, and pedagogical knowledge related to the central theme and general interests of the IAJBS-CJBE community. The central theme and the topics were:

 

Serving the World through Innovative and Sustainable Business Models.

  • Alternative Marketing
  • Social Economy
  • International Business & Multiculturalism
  • Leadership and people flourishing at organizations
  • Sustainable entrepreneurship
  • Financing a Better World

 

 

General Submission Guidelines:

  • Submissions should be in Spanish and English, single-spaced, 12-point font, Microsoft Word file format.
  • Abstracts should not exceed 500 words.
  • Full papers should not exceed 7000 words.
  • A full article must be submitted at the time of the abstract submission or after the abstract is accepted by the conference, but no later than May 8, 2021 deadline.
  • We should wait for future pandemic phases across the world to determine the feasibility of authors' physical attendance at the conference.
  • We will use a double-blind review process. The author's name(s) and information should not appear anywhere in the abstract, full paper, and document properties.
  • Submit your abstracts here

Abstract Guidelines:

  • The abstract should discuss the importance of the topic and explain the method, data, and data source used for the study when applicable. It is also helpful to state the stages of the research and preliminary results.
  • Do not include references or links in the abstract.
  • Additional tables and figures may be submitted as a file attachment with the abstract submission.
  • Notification of abstract acceptance will be sent out on a rolling basis please check the Paper Submission Information for further guidance. All full papers of accepted abstracts are eligible for presentation at the conference.