Exploring Hidden Curriculum in Responsible Management Education: A Narrative Inquiry of Students' Lived Experience in Management and Leadership Training Programmes

The implicit dimensions of learning environment referred to here as Hidden Curriculum (HC) remains embedded in the governance of a business school/faculty producing future managers and leaders in the Global South, and this is the motivation for this article. We contribute to the HC concept by shedding light on contexts where it has so far not been widely applied. We draw on the tools of narrative analysis of students’ narrative and critical discourse analysis through genre analysis in the MBA and MPA curricula and the Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME). The analysis of PRME genre predicted high frequency of specific lexical items covering ethical, sustainable and responsible management and leadership. While both MBA and MPA have themes such as management, business, responsibility, ethical, value(s) and sustainability, it is the themes such as management, leadership, and business that carry the most weight. However, there are fewer examples of intertextuality involving the concepts of responsibility, ethics, and sustainability. Out study further shows a weak intertextual relationship between the students’ narratives and the PRME. Instead, there is strong intertextual relationship between the PRME and the MBA and MPA curricula.