Should responsible management education become a priority? A qualitative study of academics in Egyptian public business schools

In this paper we investigate why responsible management education (RME) should become a necessity in Egyptian public business schools. A total of 80 academics from three universities were contacted and interviewed in six different focus groups. Three types of motives were identified from the interviews: extrinsic local, intrinsic school and extrinsic global, which inspired academics to believe in the importance of implementing RME in their business schools. Most respondents consider implementing RME is crucial to rebuilding their schools' legitimate and ethical role. Focusing only on academics rather than the executives of the selected business schools, is perceived to be a limitation. Moreover, addressing only public business schools and excluding private ones may limit the authors’ ability to generalize results. Thus, the authors of this paper invite researchers from the fields of cultural diversity, CSR, sustainability and higher education (HE) to collaborate in producing more interdisciplinary and/or trans-disciplinary papers on the same topic. Future researchers may seek to investigate the perceptions of management in the addressed business schools. Replicating this study with private business schools in Egypt may be considered another research opportunity. The educational authorities need to develop a framework for implementing and assessing RME in public business schools. This paper contributes by filling a gap in HE management, responsible leadership, and sustainability literature in which empirical studies on RME and the responsible practices of academics have been limited so far. •Should responsible management education (RME) become a necessity in Egyptian public business schools.•Three types of motives for RME were identified: extrinsic local, intrinsic school and extrinsic global.•RME is crucial to rebuilding Business schools' legitimate and ethical role.•Researchers are invited to produce more interdisciplinary and/or trans-disciplinary papers on the same topic.•Educational authorities need to develop a framework for implementing and assessing RME in public business schools.