Moving to More Difficult Concepts in Management Education

Management education focuses on the development of business gurus that seek to run companies for greater expansion and profit. These programs often talk about management skills, people skills, business skills, finance, and many other primary functions of a manager. A paper by Waddock & Lozano (2013) helps us think beyond primary knowledge and into concepts like reflective practices that develop awareness, systems thinking, and ethical values. 

Reflection is a process of understanding oneself in a context of events. Those who are reflective think about the business, its impact, and themselves and can understand events. This understanding leads to better management practices in the future. 

Students that develop reflective thinking are more thoughtful about how business practices impact others around them. Without reflection decisions can be limited and self-interested and such thinking has led to major calamity not only for businesses but also stakeholders. 

A higher order concept called systems thinking should also be developed in students. Systems thinking takes time to develop and master. It is a process of understanding how the pieces create an entire system and how that system operates in the market. 

Systems’ thinking is particularly important in international businesses where supply chains, information networks, social networks, and processes have a larger impact. Each of the pieces fits within the whole of the operation and needs to be well thought out. 

Finally, understanding and implementing ethical values in businesses. The use of unethical practices not only damages commerce but also the reputation of the business and the effective management of people. Students should be aware of ethical considerations when making choices. 

Management students often do well grasping the basic business conceptions offered in any course. They may have more difficulty understand the more complex issues associated with reflection, systems thinking and ethic. The concepts require many connections between the various concepts of business and greater societal responsibility. It may be wise to introduce these concepts in the undergraduate level and try and connect them tighter in the graduate level. 

Waddock, S. & Lozano, J. (2013). Developing more holistic management education: lessons learned from two programs. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 12 (2).

Developing Business Education for Economic Growth

Education has an important role in developing people and nations to higher levels of performance. Business education is a fundamental component of fostering stronger economic performance. A paper by Ugwuog, et. al. (2013) explores how education is beneficial for national development and offers a few tips for colleges to improve upon their teaching activities. 

In general terms, education can be broadly defined as acquiring the physical and social skills needed to function within their birth society. The type of education depends on the society in which one exists. In ancient times this may have occurred informally under a tree while in modern times it could include online classrooms.

Because education improves upon people’s abilities it is considered an investment. The central place of education is to recognize its capital investment in people (Francis & Hezel, 1974). An investment may improve performance but also raise costs which makes strong business curriculum advantageous. 

Business education is even more important in helping individuals find methods of earning income while furthering economic activity. The type of programs can include certificates, skilled trades, and applied management. To continue economic growth developed nations are focusing more heavily on the quality of education. 

The author argues that there are some significant problems in some business colleges. Each college can adjust their methods to raise quality. To encourage the development of skills schools should:

-Avoid hiring unqualified teachers

-Remove obsolete technologies

-Use more computer and technology learning

-Avoid large classes

-Fund programs adequately

 Francis, X. & Hezel, S.(1974). Recent theories of the relationship between education and development. http://micsem.org/articles/education/rectheor.htm

Ugwuogo, C. (2013). Business education and national development: issues and challenges. Journal of Educational and Social Research, suppl. Special Issue, 3 (4).  

Developing the Global Mindset from Understanding Cultural Perspectives

The global mindset is important for managing organizations across a wide spectrum of cultures as well as working effectively within particular cultures. A study by Masakowski, et. al. (2013) discusses the concept of the global mindset and how a sample of military veterans was able to improve upon cultural intelligence, metacognitive/cognitive strategies, and their effective/motivational resources for learning. The study helps to highlight some of the factors in developing global managers.

Business education is beginning to incorporate the global mindset into their curriculum in an effort to create stronger global strategic decision-making. This mindset is fostered through multi-cultural interactions within classrooms (Rhinesmith, 1992). It may also be fostered in companies through cross collaborative projects and service oriented learning.

The global mindset can be used in business organizations, military units, or geographical dispersed projects. Global leadership skills are created by enhancing the global mind-set, cultural intelligence, and intercultural competence (Pless, et. al., 2011).  Development typically comes from tacit and implicit knowledge of other cultures that is built into an appropriate mental framework.

One can think of the global mindset as the development of the “software of the mind” (Hoftstead, 1991). It is a way of processing cultural information across boundaries using a method that makes logical sense to the user. It is a broad perspective that synthesizes information into a usable model that understands the impact of decisions across multiple cultures. It is a type of broad and wide strategic analysis.

According to Rhinesmith (1992, pg. 10) the global mindset is a “a predisposition to see the world in a particular way that sets boundaries and provides explanations for why things are the way they are. A mindset is a filter through which we look at the world.” As a unique perspective it offers the opportunity to understand and synthesize information on a global or universal scale.

Let us try and see this in a more concise perspective. Exposure to various cultures offers an opportunity to see different vantage points and ways of living unique to each culture. When multiple cultural perspectives are understood it is possible to take a wider perspective of life and synthesize that into conclusions that apply across cultures. It is something akin to the commonalities of life.

The study focused on veterans and others who seek to be entrepreneurs. The participants engaged in 2-3 weeks of online education followed by an intensive 9-day boot camp. They found that the metacognitive learning that leads to a global mindset is difficult to train and is something that is unintentional and unique to the individual. Global knowledge is concise pieces of information while the global perspective is a broader methodology of viewing the world. There were a number of factors that seem to have some influence:

Metacognitive/cognitive: The cognitive strategies that a person uses to understand other cultures and the strategies enacted to understand specific cultures (learning how to learn).

Affective/Motivational: People must be motivated to learn about other cultures to develop cultural intelligence.

Behavioral: The ability of a person to adjust their behavior to fit within a particular culture.

Hofstede, G. 1991. Cultures and organizations. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Mosakowski, E. et. al. (2013). Cultures as learning laboratories: what makes some more effective than others? Academy of Management Learning & Education, 12 (3).

Pless, N. M., Maak, T., & Stahl, G. K. 2011. Developing responsible global leaders through international service-learning programs: The Ulysses experience. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 10: 237–260.

Rhinesmith, S. H. 1992. Global mindsets for global managers. Training & Development, 46(10): 63–69.

Call for Papers: 2014 Fall Global Education Conference

November 14-15, 2014
Las Vegas, United States of America

Abstracts of research papers in 150-200 words are invited from academics, Administrators and Ph.D. scholars/Post Graduate students on contemporary issues in Leadership and Management befitting any of the conference tracks mentioned as under. Topics of interest for submissions include, but are not limited to:

- Academic Advising and Counseling
- Art Education
- Adult Education
- APD/Listening
- Acoustics in Education
- Environment Business
- Education Counselor
- Education Curriculum Research and Development
- Competitive Skills
- Continuing Education
- Distance Education
- Early Childhood
- Education
- Educational Administration
- Educational Foundations
- Educational Psychology
- Educational Technology
- Education Policy and Leadership
- Elementary Education
- E-Learning
- E-Manufacturing
- ESL/TESL
- E-Society
- Geographical Education
- Geographic information Systems
- Health Education
- Higher Education
- History
- Home Education
- Human Computer Interaction
- Human Resource Development
- Indigenous Education
- ICT Education
- Internet technologies
- Imaginative Education
- Kinesiology and Leisure Science
- K12
- Language Education
- Mathematics Education
- Mobile Applications
- Multi-Virtual Environment
- Music Education
- Pedagogy
- Physical Education (PE)
- Reading Education
- Writing Education
- Religion and Education Studies
- Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)
- Rural Education
- Science Education
- Secondary Education
- Second life Educators
- Social Studies Education
- Special Education
- Student Affairs
- Teacher Education Technology in Education Cross-disciplinary areas of Education
- Ubiquitous Computing
- Virtual Reality
- Wireless applications
- Other Areas of Education

Web address:
http://www.uofriverside.com/conferences/global-education-conference/

Building a Sense of Community in Online Courses

Building a sense of community in an online environment is beneficial for students that want to feel connected to other learners. When students feel they are part of a community they interact with each other and feel connected to other participants which helps them form a sense of identity to their work, products, or each other. Research by Maxwell and Shackelford (2012) study which online activities within a classroom builds a sense of community. 

An online sense of community can be defined as, “a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together” (McMillan & Chavis, 1986, p. 9).  Students feel a sense of identity and often share similarities in goals. 

Engaged students have something called cognitive presence. Cognitive presence develops when people have sustained communication and they can collaborate to explore, construct, confirm, understand and resolve content (Garrison, 2007). They are actively engaged in working together to understand a problem, its parts, and solutions. 

Students will also need social presence. Social presence is “the ability of participants in a community of inquiry to project themselves socially and emotionally, as ‘real’ people, through the medium of communication being used” (Garrison, et. al., 2000, p. 94). The tools should allow for them to reflect their identity into the online classroom. 

The researchers obtained 381 surveys through the courses of 110 professors to obtain their data. They found that certain activities offered higher levels of community building. This includes introductions, collaborative group projects, contributing personal experiences, entire class online discussions and exchanging resources. The order starts with the most beneficial. Students appear to need to know each other, work with each other, and share with each other. 

Garrison, et. al. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment. Computer Conference in Higher Education, 2. 

Garrison, D. (2007). Online community of inquiry review: Social, cognitive, and teaching presence issues. Journal of Asynchronous Learning networks, 11 (1). 

Maxwell, M. & Shackelford, J. (2012). Sense of community in graduate online education: contribution of learner to learner interaction. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning,  13 (4). 

McMillian, D. & Chavis, D. (1986). Sense of community: a definition and theory. Journal of Community Psychology, Psychological Sense of Community, I: Theory and Concepts, 14 (1).