LITERARY FICTION AS MANAGEMENT PEDAGOGY: EMPATHY DEVELOPMENT IN MBA ETHICS COURSE

Abstract

We explore the enriching of empathy development conducted through literary fiction within MBA ethics courses, as there is an increasing professional need for soft skills to parallel analytical rigor in managerial education. The addition of literary fiction to MBA ethics education constitutes a novel pedagogical approach to develop the sense of empathy in future business people, which is one of the most crucial features for ethical decision making and responsible management. In an empirical study, hybrid content analysis of student reflections is combined with quantitative pre- and post-course empathy measures from MBA cohorts to which they were assigned fiction-based modules. The results suggest that reading literary fiction has primary benefits on students' cognitive and affective empathic engagement, narratively situating them in complex ethical challenges and alternative mindsets. These findings indicate that literary fiction offers a way of straddling the theory-practice divide between ethics in theory and ethics on-the-ground by cultivating empathic and morally intelligent managers for the modern era. The implications for curriculum development are also explored, being such that the humanities can be more integratively engaged to cultivate ethically-savvy and empathetic leaders in the 21st century. The paper concludes with suggestions regarding future investigations of scalable models and cross-discipline applications.

Keywords: literary fiction, empathy development, management pedagogy, MBA ethics education, moral reasoning, emotional intelligence, business ethics