Leadership, Work and Organisation Research Seminar – Dr Cristina Neesham
Title: Impacts of GenAI on Management Education: Organized Immaturity
Date: Wednesday 7 October 2026
Time: 15:15 to 16:30
Venue: FDC.1.18 (in person)
If you would like to attend, please register using the following link
Impacts of GenAI on Management Education: Organized Immaturity
Speaker:
Dr Cristina Neesham (BABuch PhDMelb) is an Adjunct Professor at Swinburne University School of Business, Law & Entrepreneurship (Australia), and a Visiting Professor at Newcastle University Business School (UK). She has a PhD from the University of Melbourne (Australia), and has had multiple leadership roles in the Academy of Management (US). Cristina is also an Affiliate Professor at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies (Romania) and a Distinguished Fellow of The Schumacher Institute (UK).
Cristina’s research in the ethics and governance of technology-society interactions, responsible innovation, sustainable organisations, and philosophy of management has been published in a variety of top tier peer reviewed academic publications, including Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics, Business & Society, Accounting Auditing & Accountability Journal, International Journal of Project Management and International Journal of Human Resource Management, among others.
Cristina is a Founder and Senior Consultant at Mind World Consulting, a niche Digital Transformations higher education consulting firm in Melbourne, Australia. She is also co-Editor-in-Chief of the Philosophy of Management journal, co-Editor-in-Chief of Springer’s Handbook of Philosophy of Management, and Associate Editor for Business & Society. She is a proud recipient of the SIM (Academy of Management) Leadership Award 2024 and the Swinburne (Faculty of Business and Law) Teaching Excellence Award 2018.
Abstract:
Organized immaturity describes the loss of independent critical thinking under pressure from socio-technological systems, which has been identified to occur through three mechanisms: reductionism, totalization, and infantilization (Scherer et al., 2023; Scherer & Neesham, 2023). In this study, organized immaturity theory is extended to the domain of management education, to explain why and how the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technologies can undermine the cognitive, moral, and social development of human learners – as defined by Jean Piaget (1952), Lawrence Kohlberg (1984) and, respectively, Jürgen Habermas (1987, 1990, 2003). In this context, key approaches to management education (single/double/triple loop learning; the knowledge spiral; and the hidden curriculum) are reconsidered, and three counter-mechanisms (lifeworldization, pluralization, and autonomization) are recommended, to prevent the further spread of organized immaturity. These counter-mechanisms are integrated into a normative framework of Management Education for Organized Maturity.