Reflexive‐Engagement Pedagogy for Responsible Management Education: Bridging Reflexivity and Action Under Planetary Limits

ABSTRACT

Business schools increasingly operate within conditions marked by planetary instability and social tension, yet management education remains shaped by growth‐oriented and anthropocentric assumptions. Although Responsible Management Education (RME) has expanded in response to these challenges, a persistent knowing‐doing gap remains, as ethical reflection is not consistently translated into situated responsible action. This paper introduces Reflexive‐Engagement Pedagogy (REP) as a systemic pedagogical framework designed to address this gap by integrating inward ethical reflexivity with outward societal engagement under planetary constraints. Anchored in Intellectual Solidarity, REP articulates the iterative coupling of Critical Reflexivity and Engaged Scholarship through three interrelated mechanisms: integrative grounding, reflexive dislocation, and verification of will. Empirically, the study draws on a qualitative, iterative analysis of a Master's‐level course implemented across three cohorts in a French business school (2020–2023). Combining instructor auto‐ethnography with the analysis of student reflections and social‐innovation project reports, the paper examines learning processes emerging from sustainability projects situated across Global South and Global North contexts. The findings trace how students' reasoning shifts, sometimes incrementally and unevenly, from predominantly technical or instrumental framings toward more reflexive, context‐sensitive, and politically attuned forms of engagement, while also documenting resistance and partial transformation. The paper contributes by advancing a process‐oriented understanding of RME, offering a pedagogical architecture that links reflection and engagement, and reframing management education as a site of planetary responsibility situated within Earth‐system limits.