Aristotle’s notion of phronesis has garnered increased attention in recent years because of its potential to improve the quality of managers’ judgement, reasoning, and decision-making. These skills are even more relevant considering heightened expectations of managers and businesses to tackle pressing social and environmental issues. However, efforts to cultivate phronesis in business schools are relatively rare and face a host of theoretical and practical challenges. In this paper, we draw on the growing body of research on deliberative pedagogy, which has yet to be explored by scholars of management learning and education, to develop theory about how it could help cultivate phronesis. We argue that deliberative pedagogy has absorbed three important elements from its two main intellectual foundations—deliberative democracy and engaged pedagogy—that are especially relevant for the cultivation of phronesis: recognition of the transformative benefits of group deliberation; an emphasis on choice and action; and careful attention to power dynamics in social relations. Our arguments offer novel insights into research on individual and collective phronesis, civic skill and capacity development, and boundary spanning in the context of business schools.
