Pixel International Conferences

Over the last several decades, the world has been affected by continuous and unpredictable changes, producing uncertainty that has meaningfully influenced both the social life and economic activities of individuals, groups, and especially firms. The implication of this “storm” affecting the business world is that managers must be able to make their strategies and firms more flexible; be aware that success is dependent on human beings more than ever before, and emphasize the creation and dissemination of knowledge. In other words, managers have to take the way of a humanistic perspective based on the awareness that organizations are first of all a “community of persons”.
With this phenomenon in mind, one critical question is how management education can shift from the classical paradigm based on the homo economicus concept, that means based on the rationality, to a paradigm based on the values of human beings and the necessity to adopt the humanistic management perspective. It is not an easy problem to solve and, in fact, it often remains unresolved: for this reason, it is one of the biggest, most pressing challenges for business schools and especially for teachers.
Due this state of affairs, teachers face a significant challenge to overcome their teaching design and craft a process that more accurately provides students with knowledge that can help them become managers well-equipped to address the needs of present and future firms and lead them to success. It means that teachers have to take a new approach and, more specifically, they must be actively engaged to include new teaching areas in business schools (e.g., sustainability, ethical management, social responsibility, etc.).
Furthermore, to favoring the acquisition by students of the elements that characterize the humanistic paradigm, it is essential also to innovate the teaching style to better interact with the increasingly "digital" students. These are challenges that cannot be lost: in which way business schools and teachers are preparing to win this challenge?

Keywords: Education, humanistic management, management paradigms, digital students;