Business school graduate profiles: From the declared ideal to discordance between business school executives - An analysis of five Jesuit business schools

Business schools strive for their graduates to achieve a given profile, as generally reflected in their mission statements. The aim of our study is to examine the coherence between these institutions' declared missions and their application within the institutional context. We focus on business schools associated with the Society of Jesus (SJ) in Spain, a decidedly mission-driven institution. Its values and references to Christian faith are at the very heart of its educational purpose. We want to understand how two distinct executive levels at these business schools conceptualize and value their graduates' ideal traits: institutional authorities (presidents and rectors) and academic directors (deans and program directors). We use concept maps and a survey to gather empirical data. Concept mapping allows us to transform the group of experts' ideas into data that we can weigh, group and represent via a concept map. A survey then allows us to gain insights on the opinions of a larger number of people regarding the results of the previous exercise. Our results serve to compare and analyze the opinions of the two executive levels mentioned, enabling us to also contrast these with the Ledesma-Kolvenbach Paradigm, an educational model based on the Society of Jesus' Christian-inspired values.