Too much education looks down from the ivory tower. Management education, in particular, must reach out to managers’ experience. [Adapted from sections of “Higher education research beyond the ivory Tower,” Henry Mintzberg and Susan Mintzberg, University World News (16 December 2023)
Mainstream university activities are about looking-on the world objectively, with a preference for the rigour of confirming evidence; the alternative model, which we call reaching-out, connects to experience on the ground, for the sake of relevance, whether in educating, researching, or publishing. While the looking-on model maintains rather strict boundaries between the university and the so-called ‘real world’, the reaching-out model crosses these boundaries, to see the world as real.
In educating, conventionally, the professor enters the classroom, closes the door, and imparts their knowledge to the assembled students, who sit in neat rows, facing forward. Seldom can a colleague, let alone an administrator, be found in such a classroom. Autonomous teaching is the prevalent mode of educating in today’s academic world.
In the typical MBA classroom, for example, students with little or no managerial experience sit in tiered rows, as if vessels to be filled with the theories and techniques of management practice. Case study discussions may seem to reach out—to experiences in business—except that these classrooms, and their students, are a long way from the experience in question. In contrast, pedagogies of social learning reach out. Their possibilities are endless. Universities need to bring their use commensurate with those of looking-on.