Keijo, when does Spring begin in Finland?
You ask should we teach what the students want (management fads?). To the
extent that the "fads" you mention like BPR and TQM resonate with the people
the students will be working with, I actually think that it is important
that they too be conversant in them. (Whether BPR and/or TQM are fads or
not I know is something that many would take issue with itself).
That the students like the action learning etc. is great.
Cybercollegially,
Charlie Wankel
listmaster mg-ed-dv
St. John's University--New York City
wankelc@stjohns.edu
Keijo R�s�nen of Helsinki wrote:
an example of our current problems, I would like to take up one recent
experience. In a course on Organizational renewal, I am working with the
'new methods' and students like it a lot. But when I try to combine the
methods with the expectation that the students would also learn to read and
use more critical text on management fads (e.g. BPR, TQM), they motivation
fades away. They seem to be happy to experiment with new activities but they
are not willing the go into a more fundamental questioning of what is
happening in the working life. Have you experienced similar things? How are
you working with this dilemma? Do we have to abandon some of the best values
in critical academic work in favour of entertaining the students with new
classroom practices?