ABSTRACT
At the University of St Gallen in Switzerland, rethinking business education and integrating the humanities, social sciences and liberal learning was being implemented and practised long before the Carnegie Report was published (Colby et al. 2011; and Sullivan, Ehrlich and Colby, this volume). When the so-called Bologna standardization reform was agreed upon by the European nations, the University of St Gallen moved fast and initiated a fundamental reform of the whole architecture of its study programmes. It aimed at a strategic repositioning in the international field and at being a forerunner amongst European universities. One of the key innovations was the so-called ‘contextual studies’ programme, which makes up 25 per cent of the study time and is mandatory for every student at our university, at first year and Bachelor level as well as at the Master level. The basic idea is that students of business administration and economics must be aware of the complex sociological, cultural and historical contexts in which economic and managerial processes take place. Therefore, the study of humanities and social sciences now constitutes an integral part of their study programme.
