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2025 AOM Annual Meeting

ENT

OMT

23426: Addressing ‘Grand Challenges’ Through Art-Based Experiences: From Case Studies to Improbable Pedago

Friday, July 25, 2025
16:15 - 18:15 CEST (GMT+2)
Location: Bella Center: Hall D- D3-m7
Session Type: PDW (workshop)
Orientation: Teaching,Practice
Shareable link: https://cdmcd.co/9WnXj8
Grand Challenges, which can also be labelled “wicked” problems, are characterized by their ill-defined nature, conflicting stakeholder interests, incomplete information, and systemic complexity (Rittel & Webber, 1973; Buchanan, 1992). Examples of these systemic problems are multiple: climate change, geopolitical tensions, disruptive effects of artificial intelligence, democratic crisis, digitisation or social inequalities. Business schools do not offer satisfying answers to these challenges (Shantz et al., 2023). Three main barriers can be highlighted for business schools: their curricula remain heavily rooted on disciplinary silos, they adopt analytic perspectives that are reductionist by design, and they avoid addressing the moral and political dimensions of managerial decisions (Shantz et al., 2023). The majority of teaching practices within business schools falls short of fostering the holistic, system-level thinking many scholars advocate (Keim et al., 2024); meanwhile, experiential approaches designed to promote deep engagement with complex systems have gained limited traction in business schools (Harrison, 2023). In this context, how can teaching and learning approaches evolve to address these Grand Challenges? This PDW advances the potential of art-based practices to address Grand Challenges within business schools. Embodied first-hand experiences and evidence-based approaches will be discussed to consider how art is well suited to help deal with this pressing need to go beyond a limited economic lens and help students and participants make sense of a complex world.