Creating a Pragmatic and Legitimate IB Curriculum: The Case of the GMMS pedagogical tool

This presentation revisits the need for faculty to create International Business (IB) courses driven by a pedagogical approach that embeds legitimacy within a pragmatic perspective. Contemporary IB pedagogy has been criticized (PETTIGREW & STARKEY, 2016; Schworm et al., 2017) as becoming distant from the reality of the global business environment, it serves. The institutional environment in which courses are nurtured has also been criticized (Bennis & O'Toole,2005) for moving away from pragmatic teaching and the provision of realistic evidence-based pedagogy. However, international business pedagogy is expected to include a transformative process using curriculum and research to influence and positively change its stakeholders, (Bartell,2003). A possible avenue of enforcing rigour and legitimacy is to examine pragmatic teaching; in which stakeholders including instructors, academics, students and the wider society can participate in co-create knowledge useful to the development of the respective individual. Pragmatism as a school of thought has moved from the transactional realism of John Dewey into experiential learning, by which the various stakeholders can measure and manage the changing context of the real business world. We propose that IB practitioners need to embed pragmatism as a mechanism to understand the relationship between academic theory and the context in which this theory underpins strategic choices made by firms and the managers of these firms. Drawing on a review of literature that recognizes the need for IB pedagogy to transform the learning experience, we introduce how an online software tool, the Global Marketing Management System online (GMMSO4) can help practitioners in creating a practical and pragmatic awareness of the global business environment. The GMMSO4 pedagogical approach can provide instructors with the ability to include realism in their core teaching experience. our experience has demonstrated that IB courses can integrate theory and practice based on ethical, realistic and evidence-based management concepts within a pragmatic global business environment. The use of the GMMSO4 teaching software can help in embedding pragmatic legitimacy and critical decision-making skills for students and also help the institution seamlessly embed vocational education in a theoretical framework (Zagrebina et al. 2015). It can also support the management of the challenges of the profession in adopting innovative online exponential tools (Mateo et al. 2015) by demonstrating its simplified learning experience which leads to maintaining a legitimacy for the institution in an increasingly crowded market environment. Some of the key topics to be addressed will include: • A review of contemporary literature around the role of pragmatism in teaching international business. • Embedding pragmatism and its associated ideological strands in a tool for developing and maintaining a legitimate IB curriculum. • Linkages between building managerial competencies and practical business strategies. • Using the online tool as a mean of engaging a multicultural student population. • Showcasing how the use of this online tool has increased student satisfaction and decision-making skills across several experiential IB teaching courses in some of the most innovative universities. We hope that this presentation can provide an impetus for the use and defence of allied technological tools