Reimagining Management Education in Sri Lanka: A Colloquy

   Management—as a discipline—is omnipresent in Sri Lanka’s higher education landscape. Blending global and local ethos and elements, it arguably exerts one of the most influential ‘disciplinary effects’—both in managing everyday organisational chores and in shaping the future of work organisations in Sri Lanka, just as it does globally.

Yet, this far-reaching influence neither renders Management a fixed—or fixable—phenomenon, nor conceals its clichéd nature, permitting us to raise a provocative question: Is Management (education) a cliché?

Despite its apparent banality and the Anglo-American dominance in the field, the (re-)presence of Management in any geopolitical and cultural context—including Sri Lanka—is far from a free-floating artifice. Rather, it reflects a form of embeddedness with specific historical roots, even though these remain largely overshadowed by Western—if not specifically Anglo-American—ethos and doctrines.

Against this backdrop, this Colloquy seeks to unearth the often-erased history

of management education in Sri Lanka, which dates back to the 1960s. It engages with contemporary developments and emerging trends, situating them within the broader context of the Global South—particularly in relation to the higher education landscape in crisis-ridden, neoliberal Sri Lanka.

The Colloquy is centred around the following themes, though not limited to them:

• Decolonising management education in the Global South
• Ethics, management education, and corporate social responsibility
• Gender dynamics in Sri Lanka’s higher education landscape and management education
• Generative AIs and the evolving role of management education
• Management education and (im)possibilities of entrepreneurial innovation in Sri Lanka
• Management education and sustainable economic development
• Neoliberalism, marketisation of education, and public universities in Sri Lanka

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Professor Dhammika Jayawardena

Colloquy Chair
Email: dhammika@sjp.ac.lk

Mr. Romesh De Silva

Colloquy Secretary

Tel: +94 (0)77 5478808
Email: colloquy45@sjp.ac.lk