Designing and Teaching Business & Society Courses From a Threshold Concept Approach:
This article examines the redesign of an undergraduate course in Business & Society using a threshold concept approach. Business & Society courses may be troublesome for students because they depart from the premise that business is limited to creating value for shareholders. We argue that Business & Society courses contain a web of threshold concepts (i.e., ethics, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability) that need to be understood in unison. The redesigned course should help students understand our threshold conception that business has social, environmental, and economic responsibilities that are interconnected and interdependent. This study shows that multiple, interconnected theoretical concepts can serve as threshold conceptions in certain disciplines. In addition, we also demonstrate that progressive assessments throughout the course as well as empirical methods can help instructors identify student evolution through the liminal space.
The Bible has penetrated the culture of English-speaking countries in many ways. From Robinson Crusoe who enchanted the middle classes at the beginning of the 18th century up to the Methodist hymns, from the struggles of the working-classes in the 19th century to the pop culture and feminist claims at the end of the 20th century, from the Mayflower pilgrims to the political speeches of today's United States, succeeding generations and different social classes borrow from the Bible its messages and images, its style and its vocabulary. Faced with this continuity and this diversity, a question arises: is the biblical text being used as an instrument for ideas which are foreign to it? Faced with cultural convictions and received models of social behaviour, is the text left on the contrary to act as a challenge, a source of unexpected inspiration?.