Dreams, visions, and values in fundamental business education

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of a pedagogy of aspiration – a focus on dreams, visions, and values in fundamental business education. The paper focusses on issues of motivation and creativity in a global and multi-cultural milieu. Business education is often viewed as fundamentally about rational and analytical thinking, but creativity and innovation are also central. Due to information technology and globalization, they may be even more fundamental to business success than ever before. Both educators and managers can benefit from thinking about creativity and innovation in this context, since both are responding to the same business trends, and developing the same people. Design/methodology/approach – Since business fundamentals should reflect business realities, global trends in information and communications technology and mass migration brought on by information and communications technology are explored, and their relevance to the imagination and creativity is developed. Educational innovations in motivation and aspirational capacity are explained, and their relevance to fundamental business education is postulated. Findings – Tapping into the imagination is a source of motivation and creativity. What would appear to be very minimal social-psychological interventions have had significant positive effects on educational achievement. Those same techniques may be useful in teaching the fundamentals of business, and may have the added benefit instilling of a holistic and ethical perspective on the part of students. Originality/value – The paper brings together threads of research in globalization, information and communications technology, the imagination and creativity, and motivation from a psychological and anthropological standpoint, and suggests applying that research in teaching the fundamentals of business and business ethics.