Subject Group Coordinator
Frédéric KUPPER
Subject Group Members
Nathalie DEGROOTE
Roxane DE HOE
Frédéric KUPPER
Samia SAADANI
Jacques SPELKENS
Mission of the Subject Group
ICHEC’s mission is to train its students to become responsible and globally minded managers and entrepreneurs, both in the for-profit and non-profit sectors. The humanities play a fundamental role in fulfilling this mission. In their diversity, the humanities share a common goal: fostering the development of complex, situated, critical, and inquisitive thinking.
First, the concepts and theories taught in the humanities — with their theoretical and methodological multiplicity — enable students to learn how to understand, analyze, and problematize complex realities, in a systemic and holistic perspective. Before seeking solutions or focusing on “means,” it is essential to question the meaning and purpose of action (particularly through courses in sociology, philosophy, and psychology). Unlike siloed thinking, this approach does not seek to separate and simplify but to connect and contextualize — paying attention to diversity and complementarity of perspectives as well as paradoxes and tensions.
Next, exposure to other cultures and social realities (through sociology and psychology) and to different temporalities (via historical or transhistorical approaches) fosters openness to others, acceptance of differences, and the ability to step back from one’s own perspective. Moreover, by questioning stereotypes, biases, and common sense — especially those at the heart of the managerial or entrepreneurial profession and the role of business in society — the humanities cultivate critical thinking, thus opening up new possibilities for alternative ways of seeing and acting. By “critical thinking” we mean not a vague, general attitude, but a true skill and art — something that must be learned and relearned continually, through engagement with authors, frameworks, and informed perspectives.
Finally, the humanities place a strong emphasis on curiosity. By nature, they focus on the human being — on a specific sensitivity and way of being: curious, questioning, open to the outside world. In line with its DNA, the spirit of the humanities encourages creative wandering, learning, and becoming. It is open not only to other humans but also to animals, plants, and all forms of life, seeking enrichment, inspiration, and nourishment through respect. Transdisciplinarity — and the multiple forms it can take — is an integral part of the humanities project.
All these contributions of the humanities are especially crucial in today’s context of socio-ecological upheaval and radical uncertainty — the environment in which students will have to practice their profession. The competencies developed in the courses offered by the Humanities Subject Group are therefore at the very heart of ICHEC’s vision: fostering the capacity to imagine, design, and manage resilient organizations that serve social cohesion, justice, and ecological regeneration — here and elsewhere — and contribute to the invention of new narratives that honor life.
From the perspective of the humanities, to positively change the world, it is imperative first to know it well and to be well-informed. We cannot see how to transform the world without first understanding it — an understanding that is nourished deeply by history, geopolitics, investigative journalism, sociology and anthropology, philosophy, the fundamentals of law and economics, psychology, and education sciences. Without this intellectual toolkit, any proposed change risks being empty or even dangerous.