The paper suggests three steps we could work towards as we “seek to give our students a vision of seeing their business practices as bringing glory to God-- hoping to participate in the redemption God seeks, as we engage in business to transform culture, society and the world itself.”
The first step would be to seek a reformation of the teaching model that seems to hold hegemonic sway over business pedagogy. Trying to search the prevalence of Alison King paper about “sage upon the stage and guide on the side” brought up about 224,000,000 results (on May 10, 2017). The virtual universality of the King’s model has a great deal of value, but the model leaves out what it means to be human and what ought to be the goal of learning. The paucity of the model is best seen if it is put next to T. S Eliot’s poetry, Charles Dickens” fiction, Sumantra Goshhal (2005) paper, and Pope Francis, The Joy of Gospel (2013).
To salvage the model one could change it to read: “Sage upon the stage, the guide on the side, as Dante to Virgil and Krishna to Arjuna.” Implementing this suggestion would be facilitated by importing the Jesuit Examen into the business curriculum to a great degree making student realize the skills learned and knowledge acquired is aimed at making them better human beings.
The second suggestion is to impress upon accounting students the import of Wallace Stevens’ “Anecdote of the Jar.” In this poem of 72 words, a socially constructed artifact, a jar, “neither bird nor bush” is placed atop a hill in an uncharted wilderness. The introduction of the human artifact, the product of imagination and cognition, turns what was wild into something that is no longer slovenly and uncharted. Similarly one may infer that Accounting is to an Organization what the jar is to the wilderness.. Accounting is not just about COUNTING! It also allows accounting for the organizational REALITY, measures its assets, and assigns accountability.
The third suggestion is to teach an entire course to account for the costs attributed to implementing the myth-turned policy known as the “Clash of Civilizations.” Such a course in the context of accounting and business policy would at the least make academic discipline less insular and at best it would let students re-examine the putative otherliness of the Islamic Other.
The rationale for the course is to demonstrate costs can accrue when decisions are based on incorrect perceptions resulting from faulty information. The course will help students do an accounting for what has been the most expensive war in the history of United States. The widespread perception of the Islamic Other facilitated the war on Iraq, which is now well established as being an unnecessary exertion. The course would like to help students deconstruct the notion of Islamic Other at the same time help them see the connection between information, behavior, and decision-making. It would be the goal of the course to help student decide if Islam Is really the Other, or perhaps the enlightenment of 7th century made possible much of what came since!