Journal of Management Education

The type of information that students desire to know about prospective team members and the degree to which the behaviors covered by that information had affected satisfaction in previous classroom team experiences were examined. Communication skills, achievement orientation, and dependability explained a large proportion of the variance in overall satisfaction with a team member. Surprisingly, a number of items that could be considered both task relevant and relatively public knowledge were seen as invasive. The results provide a framework for allowing students to choose team members that will result in more cohesive teams and more satisfying classroom experiences.

Some contemporary leaders are learning about organizational complexity through study of battlefield decision making, where decisions literally have life-and-death consequences. This article chronicles one such leadership development exercise, a battlefield staff ride at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of the crucial U.S. Civil War battle. The author rode along with a team of executive development professionals, traveling to Gettysburg and walking the battlefield to learn about decisions made in 1863 as an innovative framework to think more clearly about management education in organizations. This is the story of how leadership lessons from history can be carried into present-day corporate life.

This article describes the student-generated case as a form of active and reflective learning that overcomes some limitations of traditional analysis and group discussion of written cases. The student-generated case is a learning method that involves a description of an experience-based situation, analysis of the situation and the self, theoretical connections to experience, generation of alternatives, development of an action plan, and individual reflection. The method has various benefits, including moving the focus of learning onto the student, bridging the gap between theory and practice, improving writing and analytical skills, promoting lifelong learning, addressing the weaknesses of the traditional case analysis in the implementation of alternatives and reflection on one’s perceptions and behaviors, and enhancing teacher-student partnership in the learning process.

An activity description, debriefing guide, and instructional appendices are presented through which students may learn about the optimal use of work groups in addressing organizational tasks of varying functional complexity. Student groups assigned to four conditions design and build Lego® products, learning how fit or mismatch between task and group composition can improve quality, learning, and affective outcomes. Discussion centers on the student’s development both as a member and as a manager of such work groups. Favorable reactions to the utility of the activity were obtained from student participants and outside business facilitators.

In today’s dynamic and intricate environment, how do educators make a difference in teaching future managers to explore complex, interdependent problems in a way that helps them think together to arrive at new insights? Organizational learning using the tools of advocacy and inquiry can help. When balancing advocacy and inquiry, one lays out one’s reasoning and thinking and then encourages others to challenge them. Case method and lecture/discussion are used to explore these concepts. A coding scheme was developed to evaluate low and high advocacy and inquiry.

Communicating about issues or crises has become one of the most important tasks for managers who must address various stakeholders that have become more influential in the decisions, values, policies, and practices of the organization. This article describes an issue communication exercise for upper-level undergraduate and graduate business students. The students learn to examine public issues that companies face and to use traditional communication formats to address internal audiences (via memos, flyers, and reports) and external audiences (via personal letters, public letters, and reports) by using discourse appropriate to the rhetorical contexts of the issues.

In this article, an undergraduate introductory management course that combines an innovative and effective process that blends an Internet real-world workplace simulation with a team-based seminar approach is presented and discussed. The objectives included learning introductory management principles by setting clear and attainable goals, formulating work plans, giving and receiving useful feedback, using technology for research and communication, sharing the burden and rewards of collaborative effort, and evaluating the field of management as a career. Comparison to traditional teaching approaches revealed equivalent grade distributions, with student interest much higher in the new approach.

Without sufficient instructor attention to process, student project teams can reinforce poor leadership, learning, and human relations skills. Students learn to confuse mediocre with excellent performance and to accept dysfunctional behavior as appropriate and necessary. This article presents strategies for helping student teams combat defensive routines and foster high standards of team performance. These include emphasizing the importance and challenge of process learning, reviewing team development concepts, reviewing and practicing communication skills, providing coaching for individual students, and giving graded feedback on process quality.

My Friend Morgan is an exercise to stimulate classroom discussions on ethical reasoning and decision making and to make students aware of their judgments of ethical behavior. The exercise includes a survey of students’ ethical behavior, a case scenario developed from the survey, and discussion questions. The exercise is adaptable to many classroom situations and can be modified to reflect course content. Use of this exercise is reviewed, and current theories of ethical reasoning that can be used with the exercise are covered. The distinguishing feature of the exercise is its ability to be personalized to students.

Initial meetings with new colleagues or teammates frequently give rise to behaviors such as nervousness, shyness, sarcasm, or false joviality. These behaviors can make the formation of a strong working relationship very slow and even difficult. This article presents an exercise for helping one interact more comfortably and effectively during a first encounter. The exercise provides a basis for improved interpersonal interaction and teamwork throughout the relationship or class. The exercise also leads to an exploration of individual entry behaviors and an examination of the effectiveness of those behaviors in developing a collaborative learning environment. The exercise can be used to introduce important management course topics (i.e., decision making, leadership, attitudes and perceptions, communication processes, interpersonal style, group dynamics, issues of trust, and organizing processes) via experiential methods. The success of this exercise is discussed along with a pedagogical framework for class discussion guided by Kolb’s experiential learning model.