Renewing Management Education with Action Learning

Abstract

The mainstream management education is still based on the MBA concept invented in the USA more than half a century ago. Its recent revamping with IT and IA applied to the traditional management disciplines, presented as the new management panacea, has not really changed the traditional profiles of the graduated managers (even those from the most prestigious business schools) which are too often exhibiting poor human and interpersonal competences as well as weak creativity and real innovative capabilities especially in the area of leadership practices. A new management education model is needed in order to far better answer to present and future managerial and organizational challenges of the corporate world. We advocate an alternative action learning-based model. This approach deals with real and complex business issues and proceeds with a powerful questioning process in small groups or teams of diverse persons. It allows to much better develop the individual competences or soft skills required today to become a great effective manager-leader. Some very positive experiences of this action learning-based management education model already exist, such as the Finnish Team Academy that we mention to illustrate this new model.