Re-Designing, Humanizing and Globalizing Higher ducation: Disruptive Strategies for Business School Leadership from the Bottom Up

Abstract

This paper highlights disruptive strategies to move students from the classroom and traditional business education to using their skills in impoverished villages in the Third World. Beginning in the late 1990s, innovations were designed by faculty and students to roll out a pro-poor agenda that includes the following: Student-led microfinance NGO spinoffs, accounting school faculty and students offering financial training and services, MPA student initiatives that assist African village leaders, annual social entrepreneurship conferences, the establishing of a campus center for economic self-reliance, and more. We will describe the leadership processes that evolved as these and other campus programs were established and rolled out to effect real social change across the globe. As described below, many of these efforts began at the lower level of the university, among students and professors, not at the top. However, this kind of higher education leadership from below promises exciting and path-breaking new strategies for higher education scholars and practitioners everywhere, especially within the context of schools of management.