Poverty, vulnerability, and the role of responsible management education in a post-COVID world

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to discuss the consequences for responsible management education and learning (RMEL) as an enduring feature of the post-COVID-19 world: increased inequality and increased vulnerable individuals living in poverty. Because of this, responsible management education and learning (RMEL) must integrate poverty as a threshold concept on which students’ cognitive frame is built.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper advocates for poverty to be taught as a multidimensional threshold concept that encompasses a person’s freedoms and capabilities, in addition to their income (Sen, 1999). Further, this paper provides a framework for integration into all curricula grounded in RMEL’s unique domain of inquiry and study: the integration of ethics, responsibility and sustainability.

Findings

Threshold concepts transform student learning in durable, immutable ways. When poverty is taught as such, students develop more elaborate poverty cognitive frames that they can apply across their entire course of study. This paper describes how to: (1) reframe poverty as a threshold concept; (2) apply Biggs’ (2003) framework of constructive alignment to assure the integrity of course learning objectives and the curriculum; (3) create poverty-related assignments that are emotionally engaging and relevant for students (Dart, 2008); and (4) use this proposed framework of including poverty in business classes.

Research limitations/implications

Without an integrated multidimensional understanding of poverty, students will not emerge as managers competent in addressing these critical issues from within a business context (Grimm,2020). It will be imperative in future research to evaluate the outcomes of doing so and to determine whether this solution creates responsible managers more competent in addressing poverty-rooted issues.

Originality/value

This paper brings together two elements of student learning central to understanding poverty: threshold concepts and cognitive frames. This paper also uses Biggs’ (2003) constructive alignment framework to assure that curricular and course changes have both internal coherence and explicit learning outcomes.

Citation

Mason, G. and Rosenbloom, A. (2022), "Poverty, vulnerability, and the role of responsible management education in a post-COVID world", Journal of Global Responsibility, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 72-86. https://doi.org/10.1108/JGR-01-2021-0004

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has precipitated a global recession; it has disrupted global supply chains; it has highlighted the social fault lines between low-income and upper-income individuals, and it has reversed gains in global poverty reduction for the first time since 1990 (Sumner et al., 2020). Sumner et al. (2020) estimate that COVID-19 could result in 80–140 million people falling into poverty ($1.90/day, p. 7). Using a US$3.20/day poverty line, this could expand to 576 million (p. 8). Increased poverty also means increased inequality within countries (Lakner et al., 2020). It is clear that significant progress on poverty has been reversed, and the gap between privilege and want has widened considerably. This serious setback in human development is an opportunity for management educators to reexamine their disciplines (He and Harris, 2020; Ratten, 2020) and to reflect on the broader implications COVID-19 has for responsible management education and learning (RMEL). This paper proposes changes to the RMEL curriculum that can develop graduates with both a more informed, complex understanding of poverty and an expanded view of the actions firms can take to engage the poor through responsible business practices.

Poverty is a multidimensional concept that encompasses a person’s freedoms and capabilities, in addition to their income (Sen, 1999). The poor are both producers and consumers within the economic context (Mason, 2016) and are lacking one or more significant capabilities, such as social, political, legal, physical, mental or spiritual agency/freedom (Sen, 1999). A reductionist view of poverty focuses on the income of the poor but excludes their agency as producers and does not consider such freedoms as political participation. This limited understanding of poverty often leads business professionals to focus solely on the consumption capabilities of the poor which are far from sufficient to alleviate poverty (e.g. base of pyramid). In the absence of thorough preparation during their formal management education, business professionals will be insufficiently prepared to add more value to the lives of the poor through their decision-making and actions (Grimm, 2020).

Historically, neither business firms nor business schools have considered poverty alleviation as relevant to their respective missions (Lodge and Wilson, 2006). For business firms, other societal institutions, such as governments, supranational organizations and international non-profit organizations, had this responsibility (Mason and Rosenbloom, 2020b). The base of the pyramid proposition and subsequent ideas (Porter and Kramer, 2011) have changed that. Corporations have built inclusive supply chains that incorporate the poor as both producers and consumers (UNDP, 2012); they developed different business models for low-income versus mid- and upper-income markets (Reficco and Gutierrez, 2016); and they have conducted ethical training with managers to avoid possible exploitation because of significant power asymmetries (Santos and Laczniak, 2009). Yet these improvements have not created agency and capabilities for the poor. Dual business models have allowed the poor to bear the brunt of the current pandemic.

Management education has advanced even less in both understanding of and responsibility for the poor (Neal, 2017). The pandemic is exacerbating poverty and long-term human development issues everywhere. After a review of key poverty indicators directly impacted by the pandemic, the paper offers the following four steps for improving the RMEL curriculum:

1. reframe poverty as a threshold concept;

2. apply Bigg’s (2003) framework of constructive alignment;

3. create assignments that are emotionally engaging and relevant for students when integrating poverty into the curriculum (Dart, 2008); and

4. use this proposed framework of including poverty in business classes.

COVID-19 exacerbates poverty and vulnerability

From 1990 to 2015, extreme poverty (income-based) decreased about 1% per year (World Bank, 2020c). From 2015 to 2019, extreme poverty declined at a slower rate (0.06% to 0.05% per year) (World Bank, 2020c). The COVID-19 pandemic reversed this.

In efforts to control the virus’s spread, national governments locked down their economies. Global supply chains experienced massive disruptions and global demand sharply decreased (Interos, 2020). National unemployment rates soared and family/personal incomes plummeted, resulting in a global recession (World Bank, 2020b) with 88–115 million individuals newly classified as living in poverty (World Bank, 2020c). No country or geographic region was spared.

In Europe, poverty increased in every country, with Croatia experiencing the greatest increase and Switzerland the smallest (Palomino et al., 2020). In South Asia 49–57 million people fell into poverty (World Bank, 2020c), while in Latin America, poverty rose by at least 4.4% (28.7 million people) (ECLAC, 2020). Global remittance totals may decline by 14% from pre-COVID levels (World Bank, 2020a). Reductions in remittance flows further increase the precariousness of families now living in poverty.

The COVID-19 pandemic heightened social inequality. A 9.1% increase in the number of women and girls living in poverty is anticipated, with 59% living in Sub-Saharan Africa (Lieberman, 2020). Income poverty is more burdensome to groups who also experience decreased freedoms in other facets, such as political participation and education, which are common factors of poverty for women and girls around the world (World Bank, 2020d). For example, in Africa, the virus has intensified pre-existing gender inequalities in personal safety, physical and mental health, domestic responsibilities and labor safety (Brookings Institute, 2021). Additionally, an estimated 1.6 billion children have been displaced from the classroom (UN, 2020), increasing knowledge poverty, crippling human capital for an entire generation of future workers and increasing child labor (ILO and UNICEF, 2020). Relative poverty increased by 56% for informal sector workers in lower-middle and low-income countries (ILO, 2020).

Although the virus has significant economic, health and social consequences for the poor, the biggest concern is hunger. The World Food Programme estimates that food insecurity will double owing to the pandemic (WFP, 2020). Even in upper-income countries, long lines at food banks illustrate this crisis. These levels of poverty may perpetuate for years to come, leaving people vulnerable for decades. It is therefore imperative that business leaders understand the complex facets of poverty and the ways in which business decisions can either exacerbate or alleviate these effects.

Responsible management education and learning and poverty

RMEL integrates ethics, sustainability and responsibility into a comprehensive learning framework, whose overarching goal is to develop morally mature, socially responsive managers who are able “to pursue purposes greater than their own, to incorporate within the management process multiple forms of value creation, measurement and distribution, and to make decisions and achieve results that are not only efficient and effective, but are socially, environmentally and morally favourable” (Mika et al., 2020, p. 262).

The disruptive nature of the COVID-19 pandemic provides a “malleable moment” (McKinsey, 2020) for management educators. Issues rooted in poverty, such as modern slavery (Caruana et al., 2021), exploitative supply chains (Aronowitz, 2019) and large-scale economic migration (Hajro, et al., 2021), require faculty members and students to “consider the broader social context and…debates regarding the role of business in contemporary society” (Burchell and Thiery, 2020, p. 127). Additionally, each topic challenges students to think “beyond the boundaries of their spreadsheets” (Mason and Rosenbloom, 2020a, p. 143) and to make ethically sound decisions in light of complex and sometimes contradictory stakeholder claims (Moratis and Melissen, 2021).

The poor are stakeholders in business, but because they have less agency and voice than other stakeholders, they frequently are overlooked (Hart et al., 2016). By acknowledging the poor as legitimate and not “fringe” stakeholders (Hart and Sharma, 2004), management not only enhances the sustainability of both firm operations/supply chains and the physical environment but also demonstrates the firm’s willingness to hear, understand and empathize with voices that are very different from their own and often unheeded. Such actions express what Gosling and Grodecki (2020) assert is the “foundational competence of responsible management and leadership” (p. 245): The concern for others. In the context of pandemic-induced poverty and inequality, “others” are the poor and vulnerable who are largely invisible in business class discussions.

It is this very invisibility within the curriculum that keeps the poor on the fringes of society and that must be eradicated from RMEL curricula. One approach to integrating poverty more fully into RMEL is to teach poverty as a threshold concept. The following section establishes poverty as a threshold concept for RMEL.

Poverty as a threshold concept

The foundation for integrating the multifaceted nature of poverty into management curricula is to consider poverty as a threshold concept (Mason and Rosenbloom, 2020a). Threshold concepts facilitate student learning by establishing a cognitive frame through which students may approach all subjects within their scope of study and pursue a deeper, more nuanced understanding of their discipline and their future role in society. Conversely, the absence of a threshold concept early in the curriculum may result in students having myopic viewpoints and stunted critical-thinking and decision-making capabilities, as Grimm (2020) indicates.

Meyer and Land (2003) state that a threshold concept is “akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something” (p. 412). Threshold concepts, they argue, are transformative, irreversible, integrative, bounded and potentially troublesome (Meyer and Land, 2003).

An income-based definition of poverty is insufficient to capture poverty’s complexity (Bradshaw, 2007; Grimm, 2020). Students need a more nuanced understanding of poverty if the human dimensions of vulnerability and inequality are to move beyond a disembodied summary statistic based solely on income. As Banerjee et al. (2011) state, “[W]e have to abandon the habit of reducing the poor to cartoon characters and take the time to really understand their lives, in all their complexity and richness” (p. 9).

Sen’s (1999) primary focus is on developing human potential, the capabilities approach. The poor do not have the freedom “to choose between different ways of living that they can have reason to value” (Sen, 1990, p. 114). Sen argues that individual access to income provides a pathway to enhancing capabilities, thus the income-based measure of poverty is important. However, increased income is not an end but rather the means to a more self-determined life.

Sen’s more holistic understanding of poverty is an excellent model of the threshold concept. This model of poverty is transformative because it opens students’ minds to poverty and its multifaceted nature. Through this broadened perspective, students learn that poverty is more than a lack of income: poverty is the absence of capabilities, resources, and agency. Students will understand that the poor experience markets, institutions and society differently than those with more resources and agency. Once poverty is established as a threshold concept, it is irreversible. This will fundamentally augment students’ critical thinking, worldview and decision-making, and is so tightly bound with all management topics through the current issues stemming from poverty that it becomes irreversible. This holistic understanding of poverty is integrative into RMEL because it also underpins comprehensive approaches to ethics, sustainability and responsibility.

Because threshold concepts are foundational for higher order learning later in students’ courses of study, threshold concepts are fundamentally linked with cognitive frame development. A cognitive frame is a “mental template that individuals impose on an information environment to give it form and meaning” (Walsh, 1995, p. 281). As such, cognitive frames guide decision making because cognitive frames are the “underlying structures of beliefs, perceptions, and appreciations” (Grimm, 2020, p. 2) through which individuals filter information and make sense of their world. Thus, cognitive frames grow out of threshold concepts because threshold concepts must be taught in such a way that they become irreversible, and cognitive frames “[render] what would otherwise be a meaningless aspect of [a] scene into something that is meaningful” (Goffman, 1974, p. 21).

When poverty is taught as a multidimensional threshold concept, not only will students’ cognitive frames become more complex but also faculty can “design a carefully scaffolded curriculum foregrounding increasingly complex and uncertain situations. In so doing, students can be progressively exposed to how judgements are scrutinized in demanding and often conflicting standards” (Bajada et al., 2020, p. 3). This reintegration of sustainability, ethics and responsibility into a unified, transdisciplinary whole, is what RMEL requires (Laasch et al., 2020), while simultaneously requiring faculty members perhaps to “unlearn” or discard obsolete knowledge, habits and practices in light of new circumstances (Padan and Nguyen, 2020).

Maloni et al. (2021) summarize RMEL’s legitimacy challenges as resources to change the curriculum, resistance to change, the lack of leadership supporting change and the deflection of responsibility. Often entangled in such discussions are debates about whether a dedicated RMEL course or concentration should be created (Sharma and Hart, 2014). Additionally, students may resist discussions (Collins and Kearins, 2010) of poverty, the poor and the vulnerable. Such student resistance may stem from the personal discomfort some students may feel with the topics themselves (Rosenbloom and Cortes, 2008) as well from the instrumental view some business students have that “[l]earning about poverty does not get [them] postgraduation careers, and it does not connect with their goals of learning how businesses create wealth” (Dart, 2008, p. 732).

Biggs’ (2003) constructive alignment framework ensures that a curriculum is internally consistent and coordinated so that what is taught and what is assessed yield stated outcomes. Assessment, or assurance of learning, is the lynch pin of Biggs’ constructive alignment framework because assessment is the best way to assure that intended learning outcomes have been achieved. The following four steps are suggested as pathways forward: (1) reframe poverty to be a threshold concept; (2) apply Biggs’ (2003) framework of constructive alignment to assure the integrity of course learning objectives and the curriculum; (3) create assignments that are emotionally engaging and relevant for students (Dart, 2008); and (4) apply this approach to most/all business courses.

Reframing poverty as a threshold concept: introduction into a foundation economics course

Most business/management curricula require students to complete a minimum of one economics course. The curricular rationale for requiring economics early in students’ course of study is that it not only complements introductory accounting courses but also provides pre-requisite knowledge for marketing, international business and various strategy courses. Thus, the position and standard learning objectives of an introductory economics course are opportune for developing poverty as a threshold concept.

The roles held by the poor in an economy are no different in scope than those held by any other participant: producers, consumers and external stakeholders (Mason, 2016). However, the outcomes of the market and the economy for the poor vary drastically from their more well-resourced counterparts. This difference opens up opportunity for the introduction of poverty and the varying ways that resource constraints affect the poor and their capabilities – specifically their capability to fully participate in markets and to achieve the full benefits of that participation, as Sen has argued (Sen, 1999).

For example, teaching opportunity cost and gains from trade, a learning objective common across many introductory economics courses, presents the opportunity to further discuss the limited capabilities of the poor by introducing bargaining power and initial endowments. This is by no means standard in the introductory curriculum, yet doing so allows the instructor to illuminate the realities of poverty within this foundational economic theory. Namely, that the gains from trade may be unequally distributed between those trading, and this is much more likely the case if one party in the trade lacks bargaining power, political voice, access to health care and/or basic nutritional needs. It is further limited by human capital inequalities (such as education) and unequal access to a variety of labor and production opportunities.

Discussing inequality in bargaining power can quickly be expanded to illuminate how the poor lack agency because they lack the same range of choices that their wealthier counterparts enjoy. A person desperate to eat is much less likely to bargain for higher wages, or to refuse to come in to work during a pandemic; a person with an urgent need to feed their family is much less likely to say no to a decrease in the sale price of their goods, or to wait for another day to see if they can get a higher price; a country with a lower overall economic output (gross domestic product [GDP]) is more likely to sign a lopsided trade agreement with an economic powerhouse, such as the USA, in hopes of generating some increase in economic activity, however small in comparison to the benefits of their trading partner. As noted, COVID-19 is worsening inequality globally and putting many into situations with little to no agency (e.g. essential workers and marginalized groups). With the pace of life slowed by pandemic restrictions, attention has been turned to these inequalities and the lack of capabilities of the poor.

Existing inequality begets further inequality if not intentionally addressed during the exchange. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this process, leaving the wealthy protected behind digital and physical barriers with their financial assets continuing to increase while simultaneously exposing the poor to increased risk and vulnerability at the expense of their mental and physical well-being. Drawing attention to the fact that the partners in an exchange are almost never on equal standing, that one participant most likely has more economic power in the form of resources/wealth, more political power, even more physical power in the context of nations or forced labor situations, reinforces this key facet of poverty: the lack of bargaining power or agency. By doing so, students’ awareness is drawn to a less visible aspect of poverty. This single opportunity for integrating the concept of poverty into a common learning objective, such as trade in introductory economics, not only transforms students’ thinking about both the role of poverty in market outcomes and the responsibility of market actors to take their advantage into account when trading but also begins the irreversible development of a more complex poverty cognitive frame.

As another opening for the integration of poverty, principles of macroeconomics includes measuring the macroeconomy through GDP, unemployment and inflation. It is considered sufficient to teach students what these indicators measure, how to calculate them and how to use them to make policy decisions for an economy (i.e. expand the economy or contract it using policy). However, there is ample opportunity among this set of indicators for the integration of poverty into this discussion. GDP as a measure of economic progress has many oversights, including inequality, health and health care access, emotional well-being, informal market activity and home production. An assignment asking students to identify the shortcomings of an economic measure sharpens their critical thinking skills and provides another ready opening for discussing multidimensional poverty. Attention can be drawn to the need for policy to consider more than GDP/income, but to look at the groups of people that are most vulnerable and under-resourced: the poor.

Additional measures can be introduced into discussions simply by using World Bank Indicators (World Bank Indicators, 2020) to highlight other aspects of the economy that give a more robust picture of how people live. There are many indicators representing the facets of poverty and vulnerability that COVID-19 is currently exacerbating (Appendix). An assignment asking students to investigate one or more of these indicators creates awareness of other dimensions for measuring an economy and introduces methods for examining the progress of the poor, transforming the students’ awareness and understanding of the poor and their integration into the whole economy. By engaging in such assignments and discussion, in which multidimensional poverty is taught as a threshold concept, students develop a poverty cognitive frame that enables them to embrace the responsibility that policy decision-makers must have and, in turn, they themselves must have as emerging business leaders and global citizens for fostering prosperity for all.

A framework for integration

Having anchored poverty as a threshold concept within an introductory economics course, the next step is to explore other lower division courses in the management curriculum as opportunities to ask questions about latent assumptions and contexts that exclude discussions of poverty, the poor and the vulnerable. This requires reflexive thinking that Cunliffe et al. (2020) assert goes to the heart of what is transformational about RMEL: “to challenge and unsettle conventional taken-for-granted ways of understanding and acting” (p. 299).

Many standard learning objectives across management education implicitly assume a middle income or higher perspective. Curricula may make assumptions about an individual’s knowledge of the legal system, full mobility of body, ease of transit, access to legal counsel, a high school diploma or higher, legal documentation and more. These assumptions privilege some groups over others, often to the exclusion of the poor and the vulnerable. Engaging in critical reflexivity, which questions “the assumptions, underlying theoretical, ideological, rational and normalized texts and practices to understand their impact” (Cunliffe et al., 2020, p. 300), is the first step toward a full curricular integration of poverty.

Engaging in critical reflexivity at the course level is to ask where in the course access to a standard level of resources is assumed? In a marketing class, are middle-class consumers unconsciously privileged when making segmentation, targeting and positioning decisions? Is access to the internet taken as a given? In a finance class, is the ability to invest a certain amount of money assumed? What are the options for those with little or no savings? Note that critical reflexivity made lead to faculty unlearning, as posited by Padan and Nguyen (2020).

Next, apply Biggs’ (2003) framework of constructive alignment to the course. Reevaluate and reshape learning objectives and design assessments that align with them, such as discussion prompts, case studies, role plays, team projects, in-class active learning exercises, service-learning projects, etc. Linking course content with a pressing social issue generally creates a high level of student engagement, which is linked to greater learning (Kuh, 2008). Further, social issues create powerful learning opportunities precisely because they “pull” rather than “push” students to integrate their learning about poverty (Dart, 2008) and further develop students’ poverty cognitive frame. The pandemic created/worsened a wide range of social issues, from access to COVID-19 vaccines or voting stations to modern slavery and child labor.

Because poverty has been taught as a threshold concept, faculty can engage in more complex class discussions and expect increased critical thinking on social issues rooted in multidimensional poverty. For example, child labor is often the result of knowledge poverty (lack of education/opportunity) combined with a lack of opportunity for parents to fully engage in the economy as producers. Child labor and modern slavery both stem from a lack of political voice and legal protections for those in bondage, a lack of access to economic opportunity and markets and a power differential between those working and those earning profits. Addressing this issue calls for a multidimensional understanding of poverty that allows the student-as-emerging-manager to engage in the context politically, legally and economically (Stubbs and Cocklin, 2008). A one-dimensional solution, such as a higher wage or outlawing this type of labor, will not suffice for those who have become trapped in the situation by their lack of capabilities and freedoms.

Additionally, the indicators in the Appendix can be readily used to create assignments across courses. A quantitative reasoning course, for example, could select any of the indicators and turn them into an applied example. Furthermore, an accounting course, traditionally thought to be “distant” from poverty discussions, could integrate the poor as a targeted applied example. These assessments flow naturally from the goal of having students explore the facets and implications of poverty within the class’s context and strengthen students’ poverty cognitive frame. The poor are no longer invisible. As Garcia (2020) observes, “These small-scale changes enhance the inclusiveness of the classroom by representing a range of individual situations reflective of society.”

Assessment is a crucial step for communicating that poverty is an important concept for student learning. Even a small appearance on an assignment/assessment for credit will communicate to students the importance of learning to use the lens of poverty to make decisions responsibly in management.

Once poverty is established as a threshold concept in a foundational course, any/all following courses in the management curriculum can then continue building the students’ poverty cognitive frame by intentionally using the RMEL framework of ethics, sustainability and responsibility.

Example: principles of marketing

Many introductory marketing courses overlook the poor and the vulnerable as a market. This could be attributed to the advanced economy perspective of most marketing textbooks and the use of well-known corporate examples that resonate with students. Because increased poverty is likely to be an enduring aspect in any economic recovery, the poor and the vulnerable are more salient for the marketing principles course than ever. The transformation needed within marketing is fundamentally to develop students’ moral imagination. If, as Werhane (2008) argues, moral imagination allows one to break free of old mental models and to imagine new opportunities, then moral imagination supports marketing’s most basic principle: Find needs (either overt or latent) and fill them. The pandemic has identified some inaccurate beliefs that shaped some old mental models in advanced economies. For example: everyone has access to the internet and middle- and upper-income families do not face food insecurity.

Food insecurity or “food poverty” fits well within the RMEL framework and the need to develop students’ moral imagination. The “ugly food” movement, for example, can be reframed as a market opportunity. Marketing educators can ask the following:

• Would food insecurity be reduced if consumers were willing to buy “imperfect” food? What can marketers do to accelerate that shift?

• Should marketers be held responsible for promoting only “perfect” food, despite the fact that the nutrition is the same from perfect as well as imperfect food?

• If imperfect food was more widely accepted, would global food supplies become more sustainable because food waste would decline?

• In this pandemic, when the poor perceive hunger as their greatest concern, do marketers have a moral imperative to address this issue?

Learning activities could include: asking students to write an essay addressing these questions; having teams present their responses; or debating the questions in class. Similar marketing assignment opportunities can be found in the indicators of the Appendix.

Finally, a critical marketing question is this: Why has marketing often overlooked the poor and the vulnerable? Students’ poverty cognitive frame developed when poverty is taught as a threshold topic in economics would say that the poor and the vulnerable lack agency and voice. Hence, they have been invisible and certainly less attractive as target markets for marketers. The pandemic has changed that, and herein lie opportunities for marketing faculty not only to broaden students’ poverty cognitive frame by challenging them to think of the poor and the vulnerable as legitimate, active target markets worthy of responsible marketing actions (He and Harris, 2020), but also to consider the deeper issue of whether marketing has an obligation to improve the common good when large numbers of consumers are experiencing poverty.

Conclusion

There is no vaccination for poverty, and the effects of COVID-19 on the poor and the vulnerable will be long lasting (World Bank, 2020d). This makes the integration of the poor and the vulnerable into management curricula imperative. The RMEL framework is ideal for critical reflexivity (Cunliffe, et al., 2020) that up-ends traditional thinking and assumptions across disciplines, requiring a more integrated consideration of poverty across an entire curriculum. Reframing poverty as a threshold concept achieves that goal. But to serve as “a threshold” for more advanced, complex student learning, the concept must be introduced early in the curriculum.

This paper proposes that an introductory economics course is a logical place to anchor poverty as a threshold concept. In so doing, the economics course must innovate to include discussions of poverty beyond its more common focus on income level. Because this perspective is by no means standard in introductory economics curricula, this paper has an extended description of how to accomplish the requisite change. Yet, as also discussed, the integration into the curriculum must be thorough to build students’ poverty cognitive frame, enabling them to engage with current issues and the vastly unequal global context the pandemic has laid before them as future managers. The paper uses an introductory marketing course to illustrate how another required, foundational business course can extend students’ poverty cognitive frame once students have crossed the concept threshold.

Because poverty is at the heart of ethical and sustainable decision-making, and as such, integral to RMEL, the goal of curricular and course change is to develop a poverty cognitive frame within students through which the poor and the vulnerable are fully integrated as stakeholders in all firm decision-making. The paper presented the following four steps for infusing poverty into the RMEL curriculum:

1. reframe poverty as a threshold concept;

2. apply Biggs’ (2003) framework of constructive alignment to assure the integrity of course learning objectives and the curriculum;

3. create emotionally engaging and relevant student assignments (Dart, 2008); and

4. use this proposed framework for including poverty in business classes.

As Biggs’ (2003) affirms, assessment is key to aligning course assignments with learning outcomes. As such, research is needed to determine whether students’ cognitive poverty frames have changed from program entry to graduation. This suggests a pre-/post-longitudinal study that measures students’ understanding and conceptualization of poverty at the start and at the end of their business studies. Assessing whether students’ have a more elaborate, complex poverty cognitive frame not only models sound assessment practice but also is the essence of RMEL. As Biggs (2003) observes, after graduation, “students, whatever their degree program, should see a section of their world differently, and to behave differently, expertly and wisely” (p. 3).

The reversal of decades of progress on poverty alleviation triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic urgently calls for change. A post-COVID-19 world will be characterized by economic recoveries that advance some individuals, families and communities, while continuing to leave behind others in significant numbers (World Bank, 2020d). The legacy of COVID-19 mandates embedding poverty as a threshold concept in RMEL to develop students’ poverty cognitive frame and enable future business professionals to engage in the responsibilities that businesses have for either accentuating or reducing inequality. RMEL is key to the future of firms as well as to the future of those on the margins of all market activities.

Table A1.

Indicators of poverty

Indicator Data available from the World Bank Group unless otherwise indicated (*)	Connection between poverty and management education
Income indicators: Living on $1.90/day PPP; GDP per capita; national poverty lines	Indicator of extreme poverty; calculated as a per person income average within a country; individual poverty levels limit capacity of humans to act as both consumers and producers
GINI coefficient, income deciles	Shows distribution of income; extreme concentrations of wealth exacerbate poverty issues and limit resource access/mobility; can also be precursor to fragility and conflict-affected situations
Education indicators: literacy rates, primary completion rates, children out of school	There are many useful indicators of education levels – most are available by gender, age, etc.; education levels affect ability of the poor to act as both consumers and producers (low human capital, low capability)
Health indicators*: food insecurity, life expectancy, adolescent fertility, nutrition, hunger	There are many useful indicators of health levels – most are available by gender, age, etc.; health levels affect ability of the poor to act as both consumers and producers (low human capital, low capability)
Gender disparities: education, health, equal pay for equal work, sectors of employment by gender %; also look at indicators for child groups	Most existing indicators can be parsed by gender; equal pay for equal work shows whether there is legislation to protect women’s pay; gender disparities can inform marketing campaigns, as well producer management of employee compensation and other aspects of employment; women are often harder hit by poverty and sensitivity is required in RM
Consensus forecasts of global GDP (also per country)	Forecasts of upcoming national growth per country; This projection will shed light on the likelihood of individuals and groups emerging from poverty quickly; a weak global forecast indicates more must be done proactively by firms and nations to alleviate poverty and stimulate economic activity (such as addressing existing inequality)
Debt service to official bilateral creditors	Limits a country’s ability to spend public funds on infrastructure, health, etc.; a country overburdened by debt cannot address systemic and national poverty issues; this will hamper firm operation within the country
Financial Development Index**	The FDI includes sub-indicators such as access to bank accounts, ATMs, etc. for consumers; it also includes macro level indicators such as the ability to finance new enterprises; addressing financial access is shown as a key driver of poverty alleviation
Strength of legal rights index; time required to start a business	Index describing legal rights; Entrepreneurship is a key avenue of mobility for the poor; being able to protect assets and personal rights without excessive cost/bribery is also key maintaining/increasing wealth and productive capacity of the poor
Remittance flows	Remittance sources indicate strong draws for labor; remittance receipts indicate increases in purchasing power, especially among low-income markets
Individuals using the internet; mobile internet penetration rate	% of population with internet access; broadband capable SIM connections and SIMS per subscriber; Indicates information poverty, impairing consumers’ ability to make informed choices, compare prices, access essential information; also impairs modern marketing techniques and management techniques; access to education platforms
Fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS)	Number of poor located in FCS; Fragility of the poor makes economic activity unpredictable; multiplies existing threats to well-being and business activity
Access to electricity (% of population)	This affects the after-dark productivity of households; ability to complete tasks at home, such as schoolwork or work-related activities; ability to generate (supplemental) income
Inflation	% change in national price levels; affects the value of income for the poor – particularly sensitive to loss in purchasing power
Unemployment – can be broken down by income groups, gender, etc.; types of industries; job creation	% of the national labor force both available and looking for work; shows imbalance between job seeking and jobs available; earning potential for the poor affected
Size of the informal market	The estimation of informal market activity; a large informal market is an indicator of many barriers for the poor, including lack of work protections and legal/formal work opportunities; many poor and underprivileged groups (such as women) are confined to work in the informal sector – a large informal sector may signal a ready labor force to create opportunities for entry
Urban/rural	Challenges to poverty vary between urban and rural settings

Notes:

*

Health indicators – see also World Health Organization;

**

Food and Agriculture Organization; financial Development Index managed by International Monetary Fund

Source: (World Bank Indicators, 2020)