Management education as an identity construction: the case of Estonia and its transition economy background

摘要

In this paper, we discuss how university education in entrepreneurship and management actually supports students' efforts to build their professional identity in the current, changing business environments. Today's global business world requires professional identities that are flexible and broad-minded. There is a need for generalist skills, social skills and the ability to create and sustain new, complex trust-based business networks; business education should be able to promote these abilities. Business ethics is also relevant, because the managers-to-be act according to learned ethical business codes but new ones are also needed. Estonia and its command-economy history is a special case in this paper, and we refer to an empirical comparative study of Estonian and Finnish students' values in order to show the special Estonian cultural background for management education needs. We discuss a few pedagogical issues that are relevant when developing management education with identity construction needs.