Shaping Managerial Values: Incorporating Experiential Learning in Management Education

Abstract

This chapter argues that a major concern for management education has long been to shape managerial values in students—values that are intrinsically driven, self-motivating and ethically appropriate. Acknowledgement of the relevance of social and environmental pressures on managerial behaviour should begin at an individual level and then spread through the entire organisation or institution.

By this argument, the role of management education is to motivate future leaders and organisational members with an innate will to support societal and environmental concerns and to contribute to society, and experiential learning methods as a central component of management education programmes are claimed to deliver extraordinary results along these lines. This chapter describes how implementation of Kolb’s (Experiential learning: Experience as a source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984) learning style theory can assist in creating a holistic approach to management education whereby educators, curricula and students combine to establish connections between individual value systems and contemporary realities. The task is to train the educators, management students and others at the grassroots level to nurture self-dedicated managers who will help to build societies that exist in harmony with natural and created ecosystems.