Adapting Mussar to Develop Management Students' Character. (April 2020) - Comer, Debra R.
Management educators have been advised to cultivate their students' character. Yet they lack the instructional resources they need to do so. We were inspired by the principles and techniques of the Jewish spiritual practice of Mussar to put students on a personalized path of continuous character improvement. According to Mussar, everyone has some measure of a given character trait and needs to calibrate it to fill in a deficiency or tone down an excess. Although correcting character deficiencies and excesses requires a commitment of effort, we can, and should, become better versions of ourselves by applying that effort—that is, engaging in reflection, setting goals, monitoring our progress, and making adjustments—to move each of our character traits ever closer to its respective virtuous mean. We have designed materials to increase students' awareness of character and its importance in organizations, give them a vocabulary of character traits, help them identify the character traits they would like to address, and provide them with a sustainable process for self-enhancement. In this article, we introduce these materials and provide evidence of their effectiveness.