Gig work, management education and changes in working conditions: a qualitative study

This paper aims to identify the changes in management education students in business schools prefer since the spread of gig work.

The empirical data is based on focus groups with 30 management educators working in five public business schools in Egypt. Thematic analysis was subsequently used to determine the main ideas in the transcripts from the interviews.

The author finds that both curricular changes (indifference to traditional management theories, student calls for more practical case studies, student passion for entrepreneurship-related courses) and structural changes (concentration on student-centred teaching, student preference for short flexible lectures and increasing student doubts regarding the competence of their teachers) are the two main forms of change in management education students prefer since the spread of gig work.

This paper is a pioneering study that specifically investigates how the spread of gig work triggers change in management education in response to calls from students. No previous studies (to the author’s knowledge) have theorized and empirically analysed this specific topic, especially in the under-researched settings of developing countries in North Africa.