The holistic dilemma: Helping management students deal with risk

• Business success requires managing risk in increasingly complex business environments.
• A shared understanding of risk amongst business stakeholders is becoming more urgent.
• Understanding ‘holistic risk’ counters overly narrow responses to managing change.
• Management students need to be prepared to engage with this approach.
• Cross-disciplinary and thematic curriculum supports educator – industry collaboration.

Accumulating evidence suggests that business recognises its success depends on managing increasingly complex environments. Management educators and other stakeholders need to respond. To this end, we argue that a shared understanding amongst stakeholders concerning complexity and risk is both urgent and mutually beneficial. Ideally it would lead to collaborative design of curriculum and pedagogy and avoid overly narrow specialisation. We use the notion of ‘holism’ to explore the difficulties in comprehending the span of change in contemporary business, presenting ‘holistic risk’ as a vital but aspirational construct transcending boundaries, functions and disciplines. Specifically we address implications for teaching and learning holistic risk, for related program goals and curriculum design, and for embedding critical analytical skills into curriculum, arguing that students engage with holistic risk throughout the entire spectrum of problem-solving. Thus, educators must grapple with helping students in this effort. In support, we offer examples of our own practice in curriculum design and pedagogy. We conclude that the concept of holism might provoke a better understanding between educators and industry stakeholders concerning knowledge and skills to deal with risks associated with dynamic shifts in business environments. Such collaboration could help students operate more confidently in fluid, unpredictable business settings.