The moral hole at the centre of business education

19 June 2026

Elena Liquete reflects on the closing session of the 2026 EFMD Annual Conference in Seville, and what Andrew Hoffman’s challenge means for business schools.

If you attended the EFMD Annual Conference in Seville in early June, you will probably have left with plenty to think about. Around 550 representatives of business schools gathered at Sant Telmo Business School for two days of sessions on AI, internationalisation, faculty models and student wellbeing, all organised around a deceptively simple question: what should management education stand for?

It is the kind of question that can be answered very safely (innovation, sustainability, purpose) or very honestly. Andrew Hoffman, Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, chose honesty.

His closing session was, as I put it in my notes that evening, as uncomfortable as it was necessary. The question he started with – how can business schools address systemic challenges such as climate change and inequality? – could easily have led to a familiar list of initiatives and pledges. Instead, he turned it around and asked something harder: are business schools part of the problem?

His argument starts with capitalism. Drawing on voices you might not expect – Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, former Unilever CEO Paul Polman, Salesforce's Marc Benioff – Hoffman argued that the version of capitalism we have built is, in his word, faltering. "The version of capitalism we have created works for only a minority of people," he quoted Peter Georgescu. These are not activists making this point. These are business leaders. And yet the institutions that train future business leaders have been largely silent on the question.

The reason, Hoffman suggested, is that business schools have retreated from their original purpose. Citing Rakesh Khurana's From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, he reminded the room that business schools once had a different purpose: to train managers who would serve society, not just the market.

The evidence he shared is difficult to look away from. Research shows that management education attracts students who score high in a desire for power, status and social dominance in the workplace[1]. MBA programmes then enhance self-monitoring and self-oriented values[2]. And the output? A study found that managers with a business degree reduced their employees' wages by 6% in the US and 3% in Denmark over five years, with no discernible increase in profits or sales. Managers without a business degree showed no such effect[3].

None of this is entirely new, of course. What Hoffman did in Seville was say it plainly, in a room full of people with the power to do something about it.

There was, though, a more hopeful slide in his presentation – and I was glad there was, because the room needed it. Eighty per cent of college graduates want a career with purpose. Sixty per cent of Gen Z and millennials are concerned about climate change. Seventy per cent want course content that reflects real changes in society, from diversity and inclusion to sustainability and poverty. The next generation is not apathetic. They are, in Hoffman's words, "ready and waiting."

[1] The Dark Triad across academic majors - ScienceDirect

[2]Impact of MBA Education on Students' Values: Two Longitudinal Studies on JSTOR

[3] Eclipse of Rent-Sharing: The Effects of Managers’ Business Education on Wages and the Labor Share in the US and Denmark