How management education offer can meet competences demand by firms? Critical approach to management education to took up the challenge of the economic crisis

The main purpose of the paper is to investigate the evolution trend of management education in Italy in a critical perspective by analyzing both business schools offer and firms’ competence demand. This approach allows highlighting the universities and business school strategies and innovative paths of firms to enhance intellectual capital resources. The research is part of a broader project, which proposes to identify new development paths for management education in South Italy shared with a panel of “enlightened” managers. For this purpose we have used a mixed method exploring in the first step the Italian context of management education through a desk analysis, then in a second step we have conducted a focus group with a panel of 15 managers, from these data we have developed questions for a web survey conducted in the third step with 70 managers. We try to contribute to an advanced understanding of the changing context of management education in Italy. We propose a collaboration between academics and managers aimed to co-design a new educational experience in south Italy with critical teaching practices, experiential learning and reinforcing behavioral, humanistic and in particular ethic fields in order to face the challenge of the economic crisis.