HACKING THE HACKATHON: A TOOL FIT FOR MANAGEMENT EDUCATION IN THE ERA OF GRAND CHALLENGES?

Originally conceived a decade ago to stimulate prototyping in the technology sector, hackathons have proliferated in management education.While bringing a practical tool into the classroom would seem to respond to calls for closer links between education and practice, we explore whether the hackathon is fit for purpose in management education and for addressing grand challenges.We define grand challenges as large-scale, complex problems such as climate change, poverty, inequality and environmental sustainability.This exploratory study focuses on hackathons on sustainable development that have taken place in a business school since 2016.We adopt a multi-stakeholder approach to analyse one of these hackathons, collecting data through questionnaires and interviews to explore the perspectives of the different stakeholders involved: students, professors, programme management and external stakeholders.Our empirical study identifies different types of value attributed to the hackathon by the participating stakeholders.We identify several tensions that lead us to caution the adoption of hackathons as a teaching tool for grand challenges and make recommendations for adapting the hackathon in context to ensure its pedagogical integrity.Hackathons do not seem to satisfy all stakeholders at the same time and for the same thing.These findings are particularly relevant given the current push for multi-stakeholder approaches to teaching sustainable development and the increasing popularity of hackathons in higher education.