Republication of “Experiencing Management: A Comprehensive,‘Hands-on’ Model for the Introductory Undergraduate Management Course”

Special Curricular Problems of an Undergraduate Management Course

The academic goals of management courses —at any level—must entail the linking of practice and theory in developing a useful language of management. Students will learn what they “need to know” and will have little difficulty distinguishing “buzzwords” from useful theory. (Many have it even more finely timed, recognizing which buzzwords can be forgotten after the first exam.) More “advanced” theories—theories that become useful to scholars or other specialists—cross the threshold from buzzwords to useful only if the theory provides a meaningful interpretation of real events, as experienced by those who will use it, when it is needed to solve actual problems (Bigelow, 1983; Cohen, 1982; Gardner & Larson, 1988).

The pedagogical challenges arising from these observations have been widely recognized; many introductory management courses—particularly those emphasizing “managerial action skills” (Bigelow, 1983; Mintzberg, 1975; Porter, 1983; Whetten & Cameron, 1984) — incorporate group projects, semester “consulting” assignments, team-based case research tasks, or other experiential learning opportunities designed to link practice and theory. For graduate students or practicing managers, one can take the “relevance” of theory in an introductory course largely for granted, because one can count on the students’ exposure to certain organizational realities, and one can structure experiential exercises or introduce cases and simulations that validly represent aspects of familiar situations.

For undergraduates, however, the distance between experience and cases (Argyris, 1980; Osigweh, 1986-1987), or between real concerns and structured class exercises, is so great that cases become, at best, interesting stories — occasions for demonstrating exegetic, analytic, writing, and presentation skills familiar to those used in literature, composition, and history classes, conveying a sense of fiction and/or backward-looking irrelevance —and structured exercises become, all too often, games to be figured out and played on their own merits (Pollard & Giacalone, 1985-1986), with few transferable lessons. Teachers who are good performers (especially, good storytellers) may be entertaining and effective in getting undergraduate students to speculate about certain realities of particular management worlds, but without any assurance that such exercises will enhance their abilities to act, discuss, decide, and work effectively in task-oriented teams and real bureaucratic organizations. In brief, too many undergraduate students report that then-introductory management courses consisted of fragmented anecdotes and “checklists” of irrelevant terms and concepts—no matter how well presented.

Since the late 1950s, the master of business administration (MBA) degree has become the dominant model for academic education in management (Porter & McKibbin, 1988). As a consequence, undergraduate management education has largely borrowed the MBA model, without seriously questioning the appropriateness of that model. It is one thing to follow the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) curricular guidelines with students who have significant, often full-time, work experience in complex organizations. It is quite another to work with novices. People who have seen the inside workings of corporations, government agencies, or other work organizations will be readily convinced both of the complexity of the pieces and the need to tie them all together. Without such experience, however, the components of a management curriculum may represent little more than a disjointed sequence of abstract exercises (Young & Gilson, 1986-1987).

In the typical MBA-model curriculum, students start with the pieces— economics, statistics, organizational behavior, marketing, finance, accounting, operations—then tie them together in a “capstone integration” strategy/ policy, simulation, or case-method course at the end. In an undergraduate program following the MBA model, students often report that they not only do not see the connections (or even remember) from semester to semester, but also do not see that what they learned in marketing at 9:00 a.m. is related to what they learned in quantitative methods at 10:00. (And there are all too few professors who take time to remind them; we were all trained in the same model.)

MG 101 turns the traditional “pieces-to-capstone” curriculum on its head; second-semester freshmen and sophomores begin the study of management with the “big picture,” providing an integrating context at the outset for what will come later.

MG 101 companies are designed to be comprehensively integrating, real management experiences, to provide a rich data base about the realities of work and life in complex organizations. For those students who do follow a management curriculum, either in an undergraduate program or later in an MBA program, the courses provide both a meaningful conceptual framework— a “practical theory” of how it all fits together — and a compelling argument for paying attention to the important details that follow.

MG 101—A General Education Course in Management

Over 3,000 students, in 87 companies, have participated in MG 101, begun at Bucknell in 1979. (Earlier trial versions were run with upper-division undergraduates at Yale College and with graduate students in Yale’s School of Organization and Management. Two companies of a graduate-level version for international students were run at a French business school.)

MG 101 is offered as a general education course to freshmen and sophomores (although a few upper-division students enroll), prior to the declaration of a major. The majority of students in the course are not prospective business or management majors, although the course is a prerequisite for those majors; MG 101 is one of Bucknell’s two most popular nonmajor electives. Although faculty for the course come primarily from the Management Department, MG 101 sections have also been run by faculty members from other College of Arts and Sciences departments and programs.

The course’s mission is explicitly derived from the university’s mission: to provide educational experiences that serve to integrate liberal and professional curricula. Whatever function it may serve as a foundation for further study or practice in management, it responds to a pressing need for otherwise well-educated college graduates to understand and learn how to deal effectively with the key institutions of their societies. It accepts the challenge for management educators, particularly in introductory undergraduate courses, to assume some responsibility to combat widespread ignorance about the activities and roles of managers, and about the structure and functioning of complex organizations in modem society.

MG 101 rests on three convictions about the place of management in a liberal education: (a) that knowledge of the activities and skills of managers and of how society’s key institutions are structured and governed is an essential component of a liberal education; (b) that too many otherwise well-educated people are woefully ignorant of what it takes to coordinate and control cooperative efforts to solve complex problems; and (c) that those who do bear managerial responsibility and exercise formal authority do so less efficiently, effectively, and responsibly than they should, in part because they have been too narrowly educated about their roles in this society.

AACSB curricular guidelines require that a management program be built on firm educational foundations in the liberal arts. The best graduate programs place special emphasis on liberal educations, often to the point of actively discouraging applications from undergraduate business majors (Porter & McKibbin, 1988). Most MBA-model undergraduate programs require students to complete at least 2 years of general education courses before they declare a major in business. Along with the purported benefits, however, comes a perverse message, learned well by many business students; namely, that liberal education consists mainly of some hoops to jump through before “putting away childish things” in favor of the really serious stuff.

MG 101 is offered for freshmen and sophomores both to emphasize its place in a general education and to capitalize on evidence about how people develop managerial effectiveness. (Indeed, evidence from virtually all skill-based professions suggests a “magic decade” before mature performance can be expected.) To become good at it, people need to identify their strengths and weaknesses as early as possible and practice, practice, practice. If they wait to be introduced to management as upper division or graduate students — or worse, on the job—they may discover that they have made managerial career choices without any inkling of either their talents and interests or their development needs. As a result, some are outright misfits, many are burned in high-stakes games, and most struggle harder than is necessary to attain mastery. Worse, a few drag organizations down with them. MG 101 assumes that management education, like all other components of a liberal education, is a life-long enterprise, the earlier started the better.

Course Content

Most of the lectures, the text, and supplementary reading assignments parallel those found in traditional introductory management courses. They provide necessary definitions, summaries of research results and relevant theories, and an historical overview of systematic ways to think about management and organization. Some of the lecture sessions provide reinforcements for certain ideas and supplementary materials, especially for specialized functional area topics, through films and guest lecturers from other departments and programs.

MG 101 uses a standard introduction to management text, based on the management process (planning—organizing—directing—controlling) topic organization, as a primary reference source. Students are required to learn the common language of organization and management used in that text. All the traditional features of a course are designed to give students the chance to demonstrate familiarity with key terms and concepts used by scholars and practitioners in management, and to think systematically about them. Students are expected to participate actively in discussion and question sessions, to perform reliably on quizzes and exams, and to write clear and cogent term papers. About half of a student’s grade in MG 101 is based on these traditional academic performance measures. In that exams are based on lectures about and readings from these texts, the course’s academic learning goals are consistent with AACSB curricular guidelines for an introductory management course.

MG 101 students meet two or three times a week in 50-minute lecture-discussion sessions, and twice each week in 90-minute company lab sessions (see Figure 1). The Monday-Wednesday (and occasional Friday) sessions are essentially those that would be found in any introductory lecture-discussion course, with some notable exceptions. Because project management (in Tuesday-Thursday lab sessions) requires different topics, sequencing, and emphases from those found in standard texts, MG 101 contains supplementary lectures and reading assignments in a number of areas. In particular, strategic planning and policy-making activities require a special series of lectures on organizational politics, and the dynamics of cooperation require attention to team-building from the outset. MG 101 students also use an “operating manual” supplement (Miller, 1980-1983; Miller with Benham, 1984; Miller, 1985-1986; 1987; 1988-1990) containing activity and assignment guidelines, examples from past project reports and term papers, and technical materials necessary for performing certain functions not ordinarily addressed in introductory management texts (e.g., accounting, finance, marketing, operations, personnel). These topics are also covered in a special set of guest lectures scheduled during the operations planning phase of project activities. (An important objective of the course is to introduce faculty representing functional area specialties who make themselves available as consultants to MG 101 companies and members of the MG 101 board.)

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Figure 1.

MG 101 Master Schedule—Spring 1990.

MG 101 Project Activities, Schedules, and Requirements

The project activity timeline (Figure 2) provides an overview of project requirements, deadlines, and performance expectations; but many other requirements become clear only in the course of projects. Over the last decade, MG 101 project companies have rapidly evolved in challenge and sophistication. Much of what happens depends on the unique sets of students within, and forces that surround, a particular company in a particular semester, and on a particular combination of historical events that will be unmanageable; Murphy’s law prevails. Most of what happens depends on how well students come to manage themselves. In current versions, each company completes three interdependent projects.

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Figure 2.

MG 101 Project Activity Timeline.

Course Administration: Efficiency and Effectiveness

MG 101, like other extended simulations (Paul & Barbato, 1985), is an “expensive” course. It requires very high levels of commitment from faculty, teaching assistants, and students, both during regularly scheduled class hours (see Figure 1) and in frequent executive, production, sales, service operations, and report rehearsal meetings outside of class. Bucknell’s academic bookkeeping system does not distinguish among courses by program or contact hours—a course is a course, whether it meets for 3 hours a week, as in many humanities and social science courses, or 6, as in engineering, science, or management lab courses. In a standard credit-hour system, MG 101 would probably count as a 5-hour course; students report that it is equivalent in class-time demands to laboratory science courses. Although many company management activities can be accomplished within scheduled lab sessions, most companies schedule extensive out-of-class activities. Student evaluations consistently stress the time-consuming nature of the course, and students entering the course are well-informed about MG 101’s work load.

Although MG 101’s start-up costs were probably less than those entailed in the development of any new curricular requirement—we began by experimenting with simple, single-project companies, converting discussion sections of the existing lecture course to company project labs—the students quickly taught us that the objectives of a realistic and comprehensive company project course implied time demands, supervision requirements, and administrative infrastructures well beyond those of the existing lecture-discussion course. Having a small group of “entrepreneurial” faculty experienced in and committed to experiential learning was a prerequisite, and having supportive university administrators has been especially helpful. (Company cash management and accounting services are run through the Student Organizations Accounting Office; electronic mail and other computer services are supported by the Computer Center; residential life deans review and approve company sales and solicitation policies).

Above all, the course’s administrative efficiency has come to depend on teaching assistants (TAs) who serve with the course instructors (and other business faculty) on MG 101’s “board of directors.” The TA system has evolved as follows: Typically, junior MG 101 alumni submit applications to the board, in response to recruiting announcements published in the fall semester. (Selection ratios are always extremely favorable; being an MG 101 TAis among the campus’ most desirable “resume-builders,” both for business and nonbusiness majors.) Current TAs administer the selection process, and consensus selection decisions are made by the entire board. We select four TAs in each cycle, one for each company. They serve for three semesters, working first (as second-semester junior “trainees”) with current senior TAs, then “solo” (as first-semester seniors) with their own company sections, then as senior trainers for the new team.

Although TAs negotiate certain specialized roles that serve all companies in a given semester (e.g., maintaining the computerized grading system, acting as the “software consultant,” organizing new TA selection), their primary roles are those of coaches for, and advocates of, their companies. TAs run about one third of the scheduled company project lab sessions, and are (usually) available to meet with executive committees and other company team meetings outside class. The MG 101 board meets weekly, to assure that all members are aware of each company’s activities and problems, and in two “marathons” each semester, to review and approve business plans and loan requests (at the end of the planning phase), and to assign final project grades.

Limitations and Challenges

MG 101 requires the easy accessibility of company members and potential student markets for products and services afforded by a residential university setting, a supportive university administration, and well-established norms for open student-faculty interaction. It could probably not be run with part-time or commuting students.

Course administration for more than about 220 students per semester becomes quite burdensome. Apart from staff and space limitations, coordination and supervisory responsibilities performed by the board of directors (instructors and TAs)—particularly, providing timely feedback from evaluations of plans and loan requests, formal presentations, and written reports— have made it virtually impossible for us to run more than six companies simultaneously; we currently schedule four companies each semester. (We have discussed a multiple-board model, with several independent four-company sets of sections, with colleagues from a university serving more than 800 introductory management students each semester; it seems feasible, but it has not been tested.)

All companies are now required to define “secondary jobs,” formally written into job descriptions—in which all organization members rotate to sales, production, service operations, market research jobs, and so forth as needed—to help overcome the sort of alienation that lower-level participants may experience in CAO simulations (Cotton, 1975). In addition, several mechanisms (newsletters, management information systems, task forces, temporary assignments, fishbowl sessions, role shadowing) have evolved to help assure that lower-level participants remain engaged and aware of activities throughout the company. Nevertheless, the scale of project activities that has evolved is such that companies begin to experience underemployment and “make-work” problems, with attendant alienation and motivation problems, with more than 40 students. We have experimented with various class sizes, and have settled on 36 as the ideal. At that class size, students readily acknowledge the need to establish formal procedures and operating systems, and understand the utility of designing complex organization structures. With fewer than about 30, the need for formal structure is less apparent. In two such companies, class leaders tended to run things informally until others finally balked at yet another “pickup ball game.”

MG 101 companies rarely experience leadership legitimacy crises to an extent that undermines company efficiency and effectiveness. Election of key officers—the chief executive officer (CEO) and vice presidents, who operate as an executive committee—takes place only after the extensive team-building, strategy-making, and group decision-making activities of the first phase of the project, during which students have abundant opportunities to assess each others’ leadership skills. Still, several companies have formally demoted middle-level managers and, in one case, “impeached” an officer. Company members regularly find it necessary to “jump the hierarchy,” confront nonperforming managers, or otherwise work to compensate for a leader’s weaknesses or decision errors, but these leadership issues are regarded as learning opportunities, reflecting organizational realities like those described in text cases and the press.

Because MG 101 is the first, if not only, management course taken by most of its students, preparation in certain technical areas is less than would be desirable, given the ambitious goals set by MG 101 companies. This creates consistent problems for particular subfunctions, including marketing research, accounting information systems, and the human resources subfunctions of performance evaluation and quality-of-work life-survey feedback. In these areas, faculty consultation, direction, and supervision tend to be significantly more intrusive than in most company activities.

The roles of instructors in project activities are particularly complicated, both by the scheduled alternation between lecture and project lab sessions, and by the radical shift in responsibility for determining project lab agendas that occurs once key company officers are elected. In introductory teambuilding sessions, instructors play highly process-directive roles. In the first (strategic planning) phase and during officer elections, the instructors’ roles cycle between process-direction and neutral parliamentary leadership. Beginning with the election of key officers, however, and for the remainder of project activities, the primary role of the instructor can best be described as that of a coach (Boyer & Weiner, 1987-1988). Finally, as members of the board responsible for both company and individual evaluation, instructors revert to traditional academic roles. At every stage in the process, shifts in the nature of authority relationships between instructors and students, and among students, are explicitly noted, discussed, and subjected to analysis in student project journals and term papers. There is no doubt both among instructors and students that the greatest challenges to an instructor in running MG 101 —an organization in the classroom—is the management of the inherent conflicts among these roles.

Results and Summary

MG 101 is designed to accomplish a number of objectives, consistent with its general mission, beyond those typically pursued in an introductory management course. It provides a foundation for both the study and the practice of management. It presents a survey of theory and research and historical perspective on origins of current management practice. It entails a test of that body of knowledge in practice and requires critical integration of theory and practice. It adopts a realistic, practical, “hands-on” approach, emphasizing the realities of work and life in complex organizations. Above all, it responds to the needs of undergraduates, whose lack of full-time organizational experience and expectations regarding classroom processes render traditional approaches to introductory management courses relatively ineffective.

Evidence regarding course outcomes is impressionistic, anecdotal, and overwhelming. Summary item scores on student course evaluations are consistently among the university’s top 5%, despite the course’s reputation as exceedingly challenging and time consuming. MG 101 leads the university in elective (nonmajor, nondistribution requirement, and nonprerequisite) enrollments. Semester after semester, variations on the following themes dominate student evaluations:

Student performance on standard “test-bank” quizzes is comparable with the performance of upper-division and first-year MBA students in introductory management courses, although students frequently note that much of the textbook terminology seemed irrelevant to project activity. Term papers— case descriptions (in which students must see themselves as the “stars” of their stories) and analyses of project company activities—are much better indicators of conceptual mastery. They are of very high quality; it is not unusual to find freshmen and sophomore analyses of relations among structural, leadership, strategic, and intergroup determinants of company performance that reflect highly sophisticated (and powerfully felt) insights into very subtle and complicated organizational processes.

Over the years, MG 101 alumni, faculty colleagues, and corporate recruiters (among others) have reported longer-term effects of the course that serve as powerfully reinforcing and energizing feedback for us and for students. For example:

MG 101 is designed to be a liberating experience in management by insisting on the integration of theory and practice. It requires students to think critically about what it means to conduct the cooperative affairs of others and to experience what it takes (beyond “common sense”) to organize and manage. It forces students to grapple with questions about what’s worth managing and to develop skills that enable them to set and to achieve worthy goals.

And for a dozen or so management educators, MG 101 represents one of the most challenging and rewarding teaching —and learning—experiences of their careers.