Art, science and the challenge of management education

This article is an attempt to contribute to a theoretical foundation for art in management education. I do so by building on Ernst Cassirer's relational, processual, and non-dualistic theory. I start by introducing Cassirer's main ideas and I try to relate them to management knowledge with a special emphasis on art and science as complementary forms of knowing. Thereafter I sketch some of the challenges we may face if aiming at developing two-eyed management education, that is, education based on a binocular vision that combines the “eye of science” with the “eye of art”. I argue in line with Cassirer that art is a way of knowing, and I claim that art has an important role to play if we wish to develop proficient, two-eyed managers.1