Negotiating curriculum co-creation: a conceptual inquiry into authentic learning in business and management education

This study investigates how curriculum co-creation facilitates authentic learning through negotiated curriculum transformations using the context of business and management education. Drawing on the negotiated curriculum lens, it examines 22 scholarly contributions via an abductive, integrative review to identify curriculum transformation mechanisms, their relationships with authentic learning and contingencies therein. A conceptual framework is developed, linking co-creation practices, negotiated curriculum transformations and authenticity dimensions. This work contributes to curriculum studies by theorising co-creation as a negotiation process that, under certain contingencies, reconfigures epistemic legitimacy, relational dynamics and authority to facilitate authentic learning. Critically, the study extends existing perspectives on collaborative and democratic curriculum practices in business and management education. It also provides educators with a typology of negotiated curriculum transformations that can be adopted to streamline co-creation projects and cultivate authenticity.