Management as a calling—Reimagining purpose in business education

Management as a calling

Reimagining purpose in business education

March 18, 2026

As a new faculty member at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business in the early 2000s, Andy Hoffman experienced a rude awakening. After WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers was convicted of fraud and conspiracy in the largest accounting scandal in US history at the time, Hoffman overheard two senior colleagues describe the 25-year prison sentence as “ridiculous.” One quipped, “It’s not like he killed someone.”

*Andy Hoffman leads workshop in the Geddes Hall Coffee House*

Through this incident and others like it, Hoffman realized that the standard business school curriculum creates business leaders who prioritize the bottom line over the common good, triggering not only a societal crisis but also a personal one for the students.

“We are graduating students who are technically proficient but vocationally adrift,” says Hoffman. “They know how to calculate a Net Present Value, but they don’t know how to calculate the value of a life well-lived.”

Hoffman’s experiences inspired him to work to reform business education. Now the Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the Ross School of Business, he has created a popular and award-winning course for MBA students called Management as a Calling and has distilled his insights into a book of the same name.

Moral formation and vocational discernment are central to the work of the Institute for Social Concerns. Out of their overlapping commitments, Suzanne Shanahan, the Leo and Arlene Hawk Executive Director of the institute, joined forces with Hoffman to bring the vision of management as a calling to life as a faculty workshop hosted at Notre Dame.

As the home of Virtues & Vocations, the institute hosts workshops, curates forums, and cultivates learning communities for professors from pre-professional schools and programs from dozens of colleges and universities around the world to integrate character and virtue in their curriculum.

*Samantha Deane, senior research associate at the institute, leads a discussion*

Virtues & Vocations is rooted in the University of Notre Dame’s founding commitment to vocational formation and guided by the storied tradition of distinctively multi-disciplinary virtue education and scholarship. Since 2024, the Institute has also partnered with faculty in Notre Dame’s School of Architecture, College of Science, College of Engineering, and Mendoza College of Business to integrate character formation into profession-specific courses, equipping students with a vision for how their vocational commitments can contribute to the common good.

With grant funding from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, 31 participants from 28 institutions, including Harvard Business School, Cornell University, and Northwestern University, traveled to Notre Dame in February for the three-day Management as a Calling workshop.

“Societies flourish when professionals are imbued with character as well as competence,” said Shanahan. “The Virtues & Vocations initiatives at the Institute for Social Concerns are committed to catalyze the development of good character, and this has been a fantastic opportunity for Andy to reach more educators of business professionals to share an amazingly effective program.”

Participants learned practical strategies to infuse meaning, purpose, and moral clarity into business curriculum. Hoffman and other expert presenters discussed motivation and purpose, evaluating impact, and putting ideas into action. Participants also received stipends to implement and adapt the Management as a Calling ethos in their context, whether through a course redesign or the launch of a new program.

*Workshop participants share ideas in table groups*

“This workshop has been a gift to me as an academic leader committed to making every story matter,” said Nouman Ashraf of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. “I appreciated the chance to gather with fellow academics who want to come together to challenge the dominant narrative about management education and to create something truly helpful for our moment.”

In the workshop, Hoffman described how he leads students to integrate their personal identity with their professional aspirations. His course includes seminars where students learn from business leaders who exemplify management as a calling. The Management as a Calling course ends with students developing actionable strategies for maintaining their calling after they enter the workforce.

“I was inspired by the content and ideas presented and heartened to know so many brilliant educators are exploring the same questions, ” said Andrew Hilger, former president of Allegis Group who now lectures on business leadership at Duke University. Hilger expressed gratitude for the chance to engage “with incredible speakers and a panel of thoughtful and impressive program participants who showed us what’s possible.”

Reflecting on critical advice for faculty who are committed to joining this counter-cultural movement to place purpose in the driver’s seat of business education, Hoffman reminded the group of a line he tells students who join the course: expect unfinished business. Indeed, the business of finding a purpose and discerning a vocation is the ongoing work of a life well-lived.

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