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Chapter 21
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61350-510-6.ch021
Luc K. Audebrand
University of British Columbia, Canada
John W. Burton
University of British Columbia, Canada
Nurturing Integrity in
Management Education
with the Development of an
Alternative Web of Metaphors
ABSTRACT
In recent years management education has sought to integrate into both undergraduate and graduate
programs a concern for ethics and integrity. If this goal is to be achieved management educators must
address the way in which an overreliance on mainstream metaphors (e.g., business-as-war) perpetu-
ates an approach to management which is at odds with ethics and integrity. They need to be mindful of
how metaphors are used and the images that they evoke. Part of the challenge in fostering ethics and
integrity is to challenge the preconceptions which students have about the nature of business activities.
Such attitudes are generally in line with these mainstream metaphors. In this chapter, the authors’ goal
is not to fnd the perfect metaphor; one which will best incorporate a praxis of integrity as a part of
management education. Rather they suggest that overuse of any metaphor has distorting effects and
that what is the needed is to develop a web of metaphors which will provide management students
with a capacity for seeing events from a broader perspective which includes considerations of ethical
and value implications. Exposure to different metaphors will lead to different lines of reasoning and
decision-making. By using different metaphors to understand the complex and paradoxical character of
management, students have the opportunity to see possibilities for action and implications of decisions
that they may not have thought about otherwise. In short, it is their claim that management education
needs metaphorical pluralism if it is to nurture ethics and integrity.