Integrating diversity, equity and inclusion in management education: an empathy framework

Are future managers well equipped to drive the transformation towards more inclusive and just societies? This paper presents the perspectives of business school students on integrating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) principles into management education. We engage students as participants, co-researchers and consultants in a student voice-informed, multi-method qualitative study taking place in the United Kingdom (East and West Midlands, South East and West and North regions) and in the United States (Midwest region), focusing on marketing as a case discipline. Findings illuminate student critiques of the prevalent normative coverage of DEI, to the detriment of applied knowledge and action-oriented learning. We draw on the concept of empathy as a foundational lens for understanding and conceptualizing student expectations and develop a theoretical framework for holistically integrating DEI into management education. Our framework offers a theoretical understanding of shortcomings in current DEI learning in business schools and advances empathy as integral to both DEI and responsible management education. It proposes a novel direction for pedagogical innovations addressing social justice broadly and DEI specifically and showcases the value of student-voice-informed methodologies in education research for curriculum change.