The shift
in teaching of management education
----From theory based to skills application
Introduction
During
the past decades, business world has witness a relentless change, the change fueled
by technology development and global focus; these changes bring opportunity as
well as enormous pressure for the corporations to strive for its survival and
growth through arming the management with updated knowledge, skills or
concepts. A firm’s competitive advantage
depends more than anything on its knowledge: on what it knows, how it uses what
it knows and how fast it can learn something new（1）. Therefore mastering theoretical and practical business
skills among the real beneficiaries of business education program becomes
indispensible for developing core competencies and giving them competitive edge.
The
history and trend
The
first MBA program began in 1900 at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business,
Most business professors were retired corporate managers who focused primarily
on the sharing of lessons learned in the workplace.(2) Limited physical
libraries and professionals are major source for students. With a massive
reform effort from Ford foundation, took place in 1954, business school become
more like academic programs and by 1958, the reform effort was well underway
and business schools began to shift their strategies to be more research
focused and less vocational
As time goes by, with the development of IT technology
students no longer are restricted within the physical libraries and lessons
from the classroom, they acquire information from electronic databases and
update their information and knowledge from the internet, they can readily
clarify theory or concept from cases obtained via multi-channels. In this
situation, business schools began to modify their class offering and become
more focused on knowledge sharing and application rather than creation.
The most representative change echoing the shift of
the teaching method is about layout of classroom, which used to be a lecturing
platform surrounded several fixed row seats from classroom where teachers were
the lonely “actor/actress” performs in the centre. The solo normally soaked in
2 hours theory or concepts explanation. However, the classroom in today’s business
college is far more different, where seats are totally flexible and convenient for
the intercommunication and group discussion. Students can see any classmate
they want to interact with. The movable chairs and desks not only remove the
physical obstacles but also narrow the mental distance.
In my perspective, the physical shift in the layout
of the classroom demonstrates the changing roles of the teachers: from a
lecturer providing knowledge and concepts to students to a coach or coordinator
stimulating the students into discussion and reflect their own experience.
Nevertheless, not only schools have modified their
method in delivering knowledge, corporate also reacts accordingly.
Some proactive corporation also gradually position
themselves as partners in building management education program by supplying ideas,
knowledge and experience for students, which enables them to learn in real
situation. A study by The Conference Board of 200 senior executives found that
1) 80% of companies are taking actions around KM, 2) 25% have a chief knowledge
officer or chief learning officer, and 3) 21% have a communicated KM strategy. Some
organization even starts their own schools and invites the consultant or
university professor to craft tailored training or meeting for their employee.
Like HuaWei the Chinese born international telecom joint has started the
corporation university since ……
The
fact is business management changes. Theory sharing or concept articulating is
no longer the mainstream in ivory tower, skills or ability development weight
more in professors teaching instruction. But what are the forces to facilitate
the change, here is my opinions:
The
driving forces for this change
Force 1:
The students’ demand
The
average work experience of MBA students is from 7 to 9 years in China, most of
them have already stepped into middle management in corporation. Through nearly
10 years practice, they have already gained career related knowledge and
ability. They are either good performers afforded by their employer or aspirant
to be equipped with their own money. It’s not a big problem for them to obtain
explicit knowledge since it’s very easy to acquire through documents. However, explicit
knowledge is only on the tip of the iceberg. Most of what we know is tacit knowledge
which is not documented, rather it’s required through observation and direct
experience.
For
those who return to campus, in my opinion is aimed to learn tacit knowledge to
refresh themselves through their or peer’s experience and thus initiate changes
in their behavior or performances.
But
abstract theory or concept can help them achieve? Probably not. Because
abstract models and concepts are normally the refined or crystallized Knowledge
based on the research of accumulative experience or experiments. For these management
students they may have already practiced the theory but without awareness, theory
only offers an explanation of their behavior but it’s still reluctant to
enlighten them to change in the future. If the class full of isolated concept
or theory, the students may lack of the chances to discuss, assess and review
the plight they have come across before and end in few modification in their
behavior.
Famous
educator and psychologist David Kolb published his book Experiential Learning: Experience
as the source of learning and development in 1984, and in which he advocate Effective
learning is seen when a person progresses through a cycle of four stages: of
(1) having a concrete experience followed by (2) observation of and reflection
on that experience which leads to (3) the formation of abstract concepts
(analysis) and generalizations (conclusions) which are then (4) used to test
hypothesis in future situations, resulting in new experiences.
This
model just impels the school or faculty to rethink their teaching model given
the needs of their experienced students and professor’s role is changing toward
a coach or coordinator who encourages the students to share individual
experience and reflect based on their observation. Particularly, in the first 2
stages, professor is more like a coordinator who are devoted to urge reflection
and discussions, when move to conceptualization he or she become a coach and
help trainee/student to conclude and help them to learn from the past and
ultimately drive the new experience. They
are geared toward defining real-world challenges and finding incremental action
steps that address issues raised by members.
Force2:
Technology
Technology
pave the way to impair the concepts or theory dominating teaching approach even
if Julie Thomas said having lots of
electronic information that is only accessible when you are connected may not
always work for [your constituent]. You need to think about what the typical
day is [like] for them.”(3) .She did admit that technology
provides the convenience and effectiveness for everybody to acquire information
and knowledge.
In
the pre-50s, the main sources for students to obtain management knowledge are
physical libraries or journals. Books are the only sources broke the geographical
limitation. In 1950–1999 media rose as a new vehicle to spread information, for
schools, electronic data base help students or professors sharing from local to
regional or national. Today Internet proliferation just successfully broke all the
gaps and bridge communication. If the students want to obtain knowledge about
theory or concept, they can easily access to e-library, professional website or
online study group. There is little limitation on knowledge acquiring and
sharing, interaction and intercommunication become less difficult.
In
this situation, for school, IT technology indeed enhances the teaching and
learning effectiveness but in another angle, it also rose abruptly as a
substitute of those concept or theory sharing teaching model. Schools and
faculty have to reconsider its value and how to offer students with information
or knowledge difficult to be obtained through other channels. Otherwise, how
would they differentiate themselves from the online resources knowledge sharing
resources?
On the other said, skills and application based
teaching approach just sharpen school’s edge and leverage online resources weakness’s
into its strength. Even if technology brings ideas and concepts easily, it’s
still reluctant to provide effective interaction and practice. For example, in
order to learn persuasion, maybe you have already learnt that persuasion is not
convincing and selling but learning and negotiating. You may easily got
principles or tips from report about we should or how can we persuade others
thorough the triangle including logos,
pathos and ethos. But the truth is it
must require commitment and practice.(4)
Only through practice, can students apply these skills, can peers or teachers
provide feedback, ultimately through the interaction, the students can really
build their awareness and behave more consciously in the future on how to
persuade others.
Force
3: The corporate demand
Admittedly,
corporate were the indirect customers of colleges. There is an old saying in
strategic management which is to help your customer better serve your customer.
Therefore, we would believe that corporate actually is the end customer of
schools who ultimately consume management education. But each company differs
from one another, there is no one-fit-all class, university cannot work as an
assembly line to manufacturing the same product to diversified organizations. But
how to craft tailored training for each respectively becomes the heat topic for
universities. The answer is to co-creating the class with your customers. Inviting customers to co-create with you
allows them to become what we call “prosumers” (producers + consumers). Co-creating not
only improves your customer’s satisfaction and sense of value from the quality
of your products and services, but also enhances their experience of purchasing
and consuming them. (5)
Co-creating
the class is like a synergy between both two sides. But in this synergy, no
doubt customer (the company) pays the supplier (university) to customize the
class for the employee. If university’s offering is very identical with other
channels or inapplicable for the trainees, the cost of customer (company) to
switch to other knowledge suppliers will decline for sure. In this case, definitely
theory based teaching has to give away to skills or application based teaching,
since the former is easy to imitate and the explicit knowledge is less customized
and readily to be gained through other resources.
Case
of Amway
Amway
is a direct sales leader from USA, it came to China in 1992 through decades of efforts,
its superstar nutrition products called Nutrilite
takes 40% of the market share in the same category and the company achieved 20
billion last year and the workforce reached to 7000 nationwide.
The
company spends lots of efforts to employee training and management development
for employee from different levels. Every year Amway selects excellent
graduates from university, they called them management trainee. Trainee will receive
one month orientation to learn the organization culture, on the first day of
orientation, HR VP or director will address on the opening ceremony to encourage
the learning climate and clarify the purpose of the organization’s concerted effort
in learning. Leaders’ commitment to organizational
learning and role model just close the goal gap (6). During the first
month, trainee will received courses like time management, communication and
team work. All the classes will be lectured by certified company lecturers who
are veteran in Amway or guest teachers from university. The class is more like
a workshop, meeting. Lecturers barely present concept or ideas but normally designed
training games or experience for these fresh students to practice the above
management skills in class. The games may be scenario and helpful for self-reflective
sharing, even if the young trainee lack of work experience, they can learn from
their rethinking from their behavior in a certain situation and peer’s stories.
For
these young who finished the orientation, they can choose E-learning platform
to further study. Comparing with classroom training, it’s less effective but
more cost efficiency for the company. In order to make up one way communication
deficiency, organization builds discuss board for employee to discuss the course
in E-learning.
Every
year, after the performance appraisal, training department will collect the
information from the supervisor regarding the training needs of their employee
and it will work as a reference to tailor course and development plan for them.
In order to provide high professional training, collaboration with university
is a must. For example, the company sent 40 senior managers to Peking University
to learn leadership. The whole program will contain leadership test,
personality MBTI test and behavior or experience reflection. Each senior leader
did not only get a profile of their leadership but also receive coach from
lecturer for as long as 6 month. Under the interaction with peers and professors,
they will gradually grow through their repeatedly reflection and practice.
The
Future
Management
is half science and half art. Although skills application teaching weights more
than before, theory teaching model still counts a lot as long as it’s one to
several teaching not one to one mentoring. Since in one to several teaching, it’s
impossible for the teacher to tailor the whole class for individual, he or she
still needs some standardized or systemic knowledge to largely cover whole
class’s needs. Besides, management theory application does not like chemistry
or physics application, the latter can be defined as truth, when you know it,
you can easily apply it. While the former, under different circumstances, we
may regard as myth which drives the application a moveable target, meaning
maybe I know it today, but tomorrow maybe I see it differently. In this cases, application
based teaching seems difficult for both teachers and students.
In a word, education institutes nowadays has already
come out of the traditional grooves and reconsidered how the faculty could
combine management knowledge to students. It’s also time for the corporation to
partner with university to achieve synergy to deliver the essence of good management
education and train people for managerial positions.
Reference
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Davenport (2005) why does knowledge management still matters, American society
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A.CONGER(1998) the necessary art of persuasion Harvard bussiness review
may-june
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6. Katie
Smith Milway & Amy Saxton(2011) Challenges of organizational learning,
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