Trying to introduce post-graduate management students to the world of philosophy is indeed no easy task. Not only is there a shortage of formal schooling in philosophy amongst business school or business management departmental academic staff, but there is resistance from many sides. Fellow academics question the necessity of such ‘wishy-washy’ issues for business and management students and institutional challenges make it difficult to create a syllabus that falls within the expertise area of another academic department. This paper tracks the development of a postgraduate module introducing students to philosophy and philosophical thinking, but this is not done under the auspices of a Philosophy department. Rather, it is the initiative of a Business Management department. The paper tracks the whole journey of how the module History and Philosophy of Management came to being under the auspices of the Department of Business Management at UJ and presents an argument for an increased focus on and sensitivity toward philosophy and the bearing it has on management research and practice.

Courses in business ethics are part of most Higher Education programmes in Management and Business Studies. Such courses are commonly aimed at providing students with knowledge about ethics, usually in the form of a set of ethical and meta-ethical theories which are presented as ‘tools’ for ethical decision making. This reveals an approach to the teaching of management and business ethics which is based upon a cognitive view of moral education – one which sees ethical knowledge as at least a necessary condition for moral action – and in which it is assumed that ethical practice in management and business follows from the application of ethical knowledge. In this paper we ask whether the teaching of management and business ethics can be done differently and, more importantly, whether it can be done in an ethical manner, one which focuses on possibilities for being ethical rather than knowing ethics. Our explorations are informed by the work of Emmanuel Levinas and centre on the idea that responsibility is the first reality of the (ethical) self. Through a discussion of the notions of ‘the face’ and ‘the third part’ (le tiers) we explore how ethical subjectivity might be possible. We then ask what it might mean to organise a curriculum for management and business ethics around the ‘experience’ of responsibility-for-the-Other.

The authors had been using a system for stimulating discussion and debate among professionals as part of their education and continuing professional development. Hand-held technology for gathering and reflecting upon individual judgements had been shown to work, and the participants liked it. But a theoretical foundation of why and how it worked appeared to be lacking.The authors find the work of Vygotsky extremely helpful in explaining why student-student conversations can be a positive support to the learning process. In this paper they present a description of one of the professional settings in which student-student conversations have been used in stimulating learning. They relate this to a theoretical framework of conversations in intellectual development drawn from Vygotsky, and contrast it with alternative frameworks that place greater emphasis upon the role of the tutor who knows the ‘right’ answers and ‘corrects’ the learners.

This paper questions whether managers truly need philosophy and for what end. It highlights the achievements of management before examining its deficiencies. Once some basic foundation to support a case for the teaching of philosophy to managers has been made, the paper considers two main issues:what types of managers are there; and what type of philosophy do each of these types need. Using primary experiential data and some management questionnaires analysed using pattern recognition Artificial Intelligence the paper identifies a typology of five well-defined clusters: Disaffected (Whiners); Converts (Shoppers); Tacticians (Cynics); Believers (Commanders); and Workers (Jobbers). For each in turn we identify the type of philosophy most suited to each cluster. The paper argues that in teaching philosophy to managers you must consider who you are teaching as the dangers include counter-productivity.