Sevilla asked something of all of us this year: not what management education does, but what it should stand for.

That was the question at the heart of the EFMD Annual Conference 2026, hosted by San Telmo Business School in Sevilla, drawing several hundred members of our community to explore it together. It felt like the right question for the moment. Artificial intelligence is reshaping how we teach and learn, climate challenges are becoming more urgent, and trust in institutions continues to be tested. The question is difficult precisely because there is no simple answer.

Looking back, three reflections stay with me.

Question certainty

In the opening plenary, Ana Callol of Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and Carl Rhodes of the University of Technology Sydney engaged directly with the conference’s central theme, bringing corporate and academic perspectives to bear on what management education should ultimately be for.

One came from inside a global business, the other from a career spent examining the role of business in society, and neither offered a tidy answer. What emerged instead was a shared recognition that the confidence traditionally associated with expertise, frameworks and established models is no longer enough on its own. Carl challenged us to reflect on what a genuinely democratic business school would look like.

That shouldn’t concern us. If anything, it should be liberating. Certainty was never really our product. Judgement is, and judgement is built by sitting with difficult questions, not by rushing to resolve them.

Our students are entering a world of ambiguity, competing priorities and difficult trade-offs, and management education has to prepare them to navigate it, not just search for certainty within it. Ana put it directly: “Management education should not stand for producing people who know more, but people who can decide better.” The leaders we form, she said, need to be able to deliver performance, navigate complexity and remain deeply human while doing it.

Protect what makes us human

Artificial intelligence was the conference’s strongest undercurrent, running through discussions on leadership, learning, research and institutional strategy.

The afternoon plenary on day one, Artificial Intelligence: Strategic Tool or Existential Threat?, took the form of a debate rather than a traditional presentation. Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou and Renata Schoeman, moderated by Mark Smith, argued opposing sides on what AI means for students, educators and institutions. The discussion resisted easy conclusions, which felt entirely appropriate given how rapidly the landscape continues to evolve.

The following morning, Cristina Fernández Tesoro, Andrew Jack and Maarten Renkema, moderated by Wilfred Mijnhardt, turned the conversation towards scholarship itself, examining how AI may reshape research, teaching, engagement and academic careers over the coming decade.

Across both discussions, one question kept resurfacing: as technology becomes more capable, what becomes more valuable in human beings? My answer is the qualities that have always defined good leadership, empathy, judgement, moral courage, and the willingness to take responsibility when the data runs out. The more intelligent our technologies become, the more these qualities matter, not less.

Management education at its best was never simply about transferring knowledge. It is about developing the capacity to interpret, to discern, and to decide when the answers are not obvious.

Stand for something

Andrew (Andy) Hoffman closed the conference with a direct question: What should management education do next, now that shareholder value alone is no longer enough to build a vision for business schools around? It is easy for a closing plenary to feel like a footnote, something added on at the end. This one felt like the point the whole conference had been building toward, a conviction that kept resurfacing whether the conversation was happening in a plenary hall, a breakout room, or over coffee in between. Andy was direct about the shortcomings of existing business school curricula and called on us to rejuvenate business education. Business schools do not simply respond to society. Through what we teach and who we develop, we help shape it.

Employability and career outcomes will always matter to our students and to us. But Sevilla was a reminder that they were never meant to be the ceiling. The deeper aim, the one running under every plenary that week, is graduates who can exercise judgement and act with integrity when the answers aren’t obvious.

Closing reflection

If I had to leave you with one line from our time in Sevilla, it would be this:

The future of management education will be decided by the judgment we teach, the people we protect, and the purpose we are willing to defend, not by the technology we adopt or the rankings we chase.

Sankar Sivarajah is Head of Kingston Business School and Professor of Technology Management and Circular Economy at Kingston University London.

A throwback of the live reactions from the 2026 EFMD Annual Conference is available on our X feed. Discover photos and an additional summary of highlights from the event.

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