ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
BIOGRAPHIES
the Journal of Management Studies , entitled Strategy Can No Longer Ignore Planetary Boundaries: A Call for Tackling Strategy’s Ecological Fallacy . Here, students learn to treat constraint as a starting point, not as a footnote. • Treat unfamiliar perspectives seriously by integrating into all modules those disciplines that are not usually present in management education, such as the humanities or natural sciences. Also, involve minority communities, along with those directly affected by planetary disruptions, and engage with positions and examples that seek to develop themselves outside dominant managerial discourse. This is not about adding ‘more voices’; it is about letting those perspectives reshape what students consider legitimate knowledge and action. The question, then, is how imagination should be situated within management learning frameworks. Framing imagination as a measurable skill risks domesticating it into observable performance and predefined outputs. Even competence- based approaches, while more integrative, typically presuppose relatively stable environments in which the criteria of effectiveness can be specified in advance. Yet the emerging planetary regime unsettles precisely that presumption of stability. In this context, imagination is more adequately understood as a capability: it enables individuals and collectives to reopen what counts as relevant knowledge, legitimate action and meaningful performance under conditions of deep uncertainty. It does not simply contribute to solving problems more creatively; it reshapes how problems are framed in the first place. In other words, imagination is not simply a higher- order cognitive skill; it is a capability that reaches the level where the criteria of relevance, value and action are themselves debated. technique, the pedagogical implications become clearer. They require careful facilitation to avoid two common failure modes: paralysis in the face of a pressing and dramatic situation, or premature closure through superficial, ready-made solutions. Imagination develops not in abstraction, but through sustained and productive tension between what is already established and what is not yet created. What matters is not simulating the future, but practising the work of reframing. Turning imagination into pedagogy If imagination is understood as a capability rather than a For business schools navigating the planetary imperative, this entails a recalibration of ambition. Rather than positioning themselves primarily as providers of ready-made answers or optimised tools, they can – indeed, they must – become spaces in which the future is actively envisioned and worked on within planetary boundaries and on an already damaged planet. In this sense, imagination offers a pathway beyond business as usual, not by promising mastery over an unstable world, but by preparing learners to engage seriously with what remains fundamentally unknown and unprecedented. This is the shift that management education can no longer postpone.
Rania Serhal, PhD, is professor of marketing and head of accreditations at Rennes School of Business. With over 15 years’ experience in higher education, Serhal conducts research in consumer behaviour, branding and digitalisation, while also advancing scholarship on pedagogical innovation in business education, competency development and assessment design. Her work bridges marketing research, learning sciences and accreditation frameworks, exploring how quality assurance mechanisms can support the transformation of management education in response to societal and climate challenges Kévin Pastier is associate professor and director of the Future-Ed Centre at IDRAC Business School, where he leads pedagogical innovation, assurance of learning and research in management learning & education to support the school’s academic strategy. Pastier holds a PhD in Management from the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers. His research explores new management and governance practices through political and democratic lenses, with a growing focus on how management education must shift in response to climate and planetary disruptions
Ambition • ISSUE 4 • 2026 41
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