Preparing Future Workers for the Future of Work: Using the Integrative Justice Model in the Jesuit Business Classroom to Facilitate the Common Good

In Jesuit Business Education, we pay particular attention to the poor with the overarching goal of amplifying their voices such that their desires, values and perspectives are not only heard by, but inspire the work of our students, the future workers. In this way, our students are prepared for work that facilitates the common good. We surmise that connecting western culture, non-poor, usually working, students with the perspectives of refugees, migrants and otherwise forgotten people at the margins of society can transform quality of life for both parties. We will discuss varied classroom applications of the Integrative Justice Model (Santos & Laczniak, 2009a, 2009b), a normative ethical framework for marketing that can be utilized as a tool to measure the extent to which justice is evident in a marketplace exchange, in a business, within a supply chain, or in the context of community peace and justice perceptions. The Integrative Justice Model is grounded in moral philosophy, Catholic Social Thought, and contemporary management theory. It is based on five core tenets including 1) authentic engagement with non-exploitative intent, 2) value co-creation 3) representation of stakeholder interests, particularly the impoverished, 4) investment in future consumption without endangering the environment, and 5) long term profit management rather than short term profit maximization. The IJM should always be rooted in the voices of the consumer or beneficiary, thus amplifying the voice of the (impoverished) consumer. We will discuss teaching the IJM in varied contexts with examples. We identify the justice components that are significant predictors of the extent to which an intervention, namely higher education provided by Jesuit Worldwide Learning (JWL), actually transforms quality of life (TQL) for refugee students and alumni who benefit from the organization’s offering. Other examples of teaching the IJM include in the context of an undergraduate course entitled Microenterprise in Impoverished Markets, as well as a capstone Sustainable Marketing course. We will discuss graduate level applications in MBA courses including Sustainable Marketing Management and Sustainable Product Development, and in an Executive MBA course with a fellow Jesuit university in India, Xavier Institute of Management University (XIMB). The course, Transition Strategies for Sustainability, was comprised of primarily engineers. We will discuss teaching the IJM online in marginalized student contexts including JWL’s Entrepreneurship course and in Social Innovation Research and Analysis, a graduate level entrepreneurship course designed to train entrepreneurial refugee researchers in Rwanda and Pakistan as part of the UNHCR supported Voices of Refugee Youth research project. Students receive three graduate level credits and a credential from John Carroll University in the USA. We offer a general history of the development of the IJM in the literature and reflect on the numerous global presentations throughout the Jesuit and Catholic networks. We will cover consultative engagements using the IJM, classroom “justice auditing” assignments and exercises, and the availability of IJM teaching and learning materials on Ignited.global, a result of the Inspirational Paradigm Project.