EXCHANGE: The Organizational Behavior Teaching Journal 1983, Volume VIII(2) Copyright The OBTS

MANAGEMENT SKILL TRAINING: A NEEDED ADDITION TO THE MANAGEMENT CURRICULUM

David A. Whetten, University of Illinois and Kim S. Cameron, National Center for Higher Education Management Systems

Some rather distressing research has been published during the past two decades regarding the relationship between students' achievement in business school course work and success after graduation. In their study of a sample of Stanford MBA graduates Williams and Harrell (1964) found there was no correlation between undergraduate grades or grades in required MBA courses and salary level of graduates. They did, however, find a positive correlation between elective course grades and subsequent salary figures. Ten years later, Weinstein and Srinivasan (1974) reported similar results. They found no significant effect of grades on the salaries of staff managers and only a modest positive relationship for line managers. A more recent study of this type conducted by Pfeffer (1977) also showed no correlation between entering admission test scores or grade point average and the salary level of business school graduates.

If we assume that grade point average is a reasonably accurate reflection of a student's mastery of the concepts taught in school, and salary level is a reasonable indicator of career success, one wonders why achievement in contemporary professional management education programs has so little effect on the success of its graduates. While there are a wide range of factors that may help account for this outcome (including imperfections in the evaluation procedures used for grading students and promoting managers), there is growing sentiment that these data represent a strong indictment of the prevailing educational philosophy in American business administration and management schools.

In his insightful treatise on this problem, Pfeffer examines the business school curriculum looking for root causes. "Business education in this country was once more applied and more case oriented than it currently is. Since the late 1950's the trend has been toward increasing analytical sophistication in the skills imparted in business schools. Future managers learn how to do sophisticated quantitative and statistical analysis, financial analysis, and optimization methods. Training has become more disciplinary in its orientation and business school faculties are more likely to be comprised primarily of people with doctoral degrees from basic disciplines," (1981, pp. 346-347). Pfeffer expresses concern that this heavy emphasis on a "maximizing ideology," encourages students to believe that there is an optimal answer to all management problems discoverable through quantitative analysis.

In many instances this orientation is not only inconsistent with the indeterminate nature of real-world problems, but it also encourages a set of attitudes that experienced managers find offensive. These feelings were aptly summarized in an article on business school education which concluded that a growing number of executives view MBAs as arrogant amateurs who are insensitive to their lack of interpersonal skills and understanding of how to make things happen in business organizations. Supervisors of recent graduates frequently complain bitterly about the "paralysis by analysis" experienced by MBAs (Time, 1981).

Overall, one conclusion to be drawn from this evidence is that the management curriculum, as presently constituted, is not doing an adequate job of preparing graduates for the challenges they experience as professional managers. The key problem seems to be an overemphasis on analytical techniques and theory devoid of application. In essence, it appears that management education needs to become more relevant.

It would be too easy for those in the behavioral sciences to lay the blame for this trend towards greater analytic abstraction at the feet of those teaching analytic and quantitative courses. Unfortunately, the trend is equally evident in the organizational behavior curriculum. An evaluation of the organizational behavior (including introductory management) courses taught at eighteen major universities concluded that students' responses, " . . . often vary from indifference to overt hostility. They object that the basic courses are too theoretical, are confusing because of different terms or different models for the same concept, and have little practical value" (Filley, Foster, and Herbert, 1979, pp. 15-16).

There are two main reasons why success in traditional management courses has not produced success in management careers. One reason has to do with the content of what is covered in these courses (i.e., the topics), and the other reason deals with the process by which that content is taught (i.e., the pedagogical methods). To understand why the content and process of the traditional management courses are failing to adequately prepare students for a successful management career we need to explore the history of the managment curriculum over the past three decades.

The Evolution of the Management Curriculum

A course of study can be described in terms of the concreteness of the content and the style or process used in teaching the material. Content varies from applied to theoretical and teaching style can vary from reflective to active participation by students (Posner and Randolph, 1978). In an application-oriented course, the intent is to prepare students for the real world. Less attention is given to the elegance of the models and the scientific validity of the principles taught than to their utility as action guidelines. In contrast, theoretically oriented courses emphasize the validity of the course material by measuring it against accepted theories and published research data. The contrast between the active and reflective approaches to teaching stems from conflicting assumptions about how education can best change student behavior. Management professors using a reflective approach assume that students will change their attitudes and behaviors if they can be convinced by

Table 1 Evolution of the Management Curriculum Applied Orientation Reflective Approach (1950s) Learning objective Learn accumulated 46rules of thumb" Teaching activities Lecturing, primarily cases and testimonials used as evidence and illustrations Topics emphasized Cieneral management principles (e.g., organizing, directing controlling, planning) Supporting evidence Testimonials of invoked experienced senior executive Active Approach (1970s) Improve human relations skills Simulations and role plays Human relations (e.g., interpersonal communication, decision making, leaderss effect on worker morale) Personal experiences of participants Theoretical Orientation Reflective Approach Active Approach (1960s-1970s) (1960s-1970s) Develop scientific Discover management orientation for principles by solving management conducting research problems Lecturing, primarily Research, problem research results analysis, model used as evidence building and illustrations Industrial/organi- Research, problem zational psychology analysis (e.g., motivation learning, change, leadership job design, compensation) Research results and Research results assertions typically and observations derived from general of participants theorv

means of compelling data that their accepted attitudes and behaviors are inconsistent with either established theory and research or the experience of seasoned managers. On the other hand, instructors who actively involve their students in the teaching process believe that "learning by doing" is a more powerful pedagogy. They assume that the best way to change attitudes and behaviors is to involve students in situations in which they can see that their previously learned responses are inadequate. The tension thus created by unfulfilled expectations is viewed as a necessary stimulus for personal change.

This typology is used in Table I to identify critical shifts in the prevailing approach to teaching management and organizational behavior over the past thirty years. Following the rapid expansion of business in this country after World War II, many practicing managers were attracted to teaching positions in colleges and universities. As a result, during the 1950s most business school faculty members had some experience in business management, and very few had formal training in research methods. The prevailing approach to teaching management courses during this period can best be described as "applied reflective." Based on their previous business experience, instructors taught "principles of management", relying heavily on the case method, and illustrated their highly prescriptive lectures with anecdotal evidence. The objective of this approach was to pass on the wisdom of seasoned managers. Managers' responsibilities for planning, organizing, controlling, and directing organizational activities were examined in detail and techniques were presented for improving managerial performance in each area. Remnants of this emphasis on principles of management are still evident in the management curriculum. For example, we recently surveyed twenty books with Management or Managing in their titles and found that the majority of them are still organized around these classical management functions proposed by Henry Fayol in 1916. The criticism of these classical managment functions, however, is that they do not describe what managers really do. Furthermore, there is no evidence that knowing more about them improves management competence. At the conclusion of a study of managers' diaries of daily activities. for example, Carlson (1951, p. 24) notes:

If we ask a managing director when he is coordinating, or how much coordination he has been doing during a day he would not know, and even the most highly skilled observer would not know either. The same holds true of the concepts of planning, command, organization and control, and also for most of the concepts used [to describe] executive functions.

Mintzberg's (1973), p. 11) study of managerial work activities produced a similar conclusion. Thus, we can find little of use in the writings of the classical school (e.g., Fayol). They have served to label our areas of ignorance, and may have fulfilled the need of telling managers what they should be doing (even if it did not tell them what they did). But the classical school has for too long served to block our search for a deeper understanding of the work of the manager. During the early 1960s, management departments began discerning a need for increased scientific credibility. This shift in emphasis was spurred by the Ford Foundation study of business and management schools conducted in 1959 (Gordon and Howell, 1959). This evaluation urged the development of a theoretically sound knowledge base for teaching management. Recognizing that many of their faculty had neither the training nor the inclination to transform the field of management into a scientific discipline, business and management schools began recruiting large numbers of young psychology and sociology Ph.D.s. These academic immigrants brought with them a model of research-based teaching typical of behavioral science departments. As a critical mass of young professors accumulated in management departments, the anecdotal teaching style of the "old guard" faculty became discredited. Skeptical of highly prescriptive, one-best-way models derived from personal experience, the behavioral scientists set out to develop new management models grounded in sound behavioral science theories and verified by empirical research in a variety of organizational settings. As this enterprise progressed and research in this field mushroomed, classroom instruction was significantly affected. The researcher-as-teacher began replacing the manager-as-teacher, and the management classroom took on the ambience of a psychology department. Using the criteria of scientific rigor as a measure of instructional value, this new generation of professors spent more time teaching material from their parent academic disciplines. Gradually, the label "organizational behavior" was attached to this emerging curriculum to distinguish it from principles of management courses, which were viewed as nonscientific and normative. This movement gained momentum as the number of behavioral scientists teaching in management schools increased . During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a new breed of organizational behavior texts began to appear on the market. These books placed research labels on old management course topics (e.g., "motivating" instead of "directing") and replaced the testimonials of experienced managers with tables and charts summarizing research findings. This theoretical orientation used both the reflective and active teaching styles, although the reflective approach was predominant. The assumption was that if students could be taught to think more rigorously, they would become better managers. In the belief that the scientific method was the ideal model for problem solving, students were pushed to become more analytical. In the active teaching mode, students were encouraged to improve their analytical skills by analyzing and critiquing research reports and theoretical essays, and in some instances, by actually conducting research projects. A common student involvement was building analytical models demonstrating the empirical or theoretical relationships between organizational dimensions or activities. This approach is still very common. Indeed, it is the principal target of the sharp criticisms of the management curriculum described at the beginning of the chapter. A second, very different but parallel reaction to the traditional principles of management approach began to emerge within the field in the late 1960s as many faculty members became involved in the National Training Laboratories (NTL) sensitivity training program. Several of the founders of this "movement" either had personal negative experiences with facist governments in Europe or close involvement in early American experiments in participative management, such as the Hawthorne studies. As a result, participants in NTL sponsored labs were encouraged to adopt a participative, humanistic style of management by taking part in a series of exercises and simulations designed to demonstrate the harmful effects of a highly task oriented, authoritarian management style. This theme, and the resulting unconventional teaching style, were very compatible with the values prevalent on university campuses during this period. As a result, what has become known as the "experiental approach" to management education became quite popular (Walter and Marks, 1981).

This approach, which combined an applied orientation and an active approach, emphasized the development of human relations skills through simulations and management games. The underlying pedagogical assumption was that breaking out of the traditional model of an expert teacher transferring knowledge to an uninformed, passive student, and involving students in the learning experience by using a more democratic classroom structure, would increase students' commitment to learning. Lectures were kept to a minimum, empirical research was deemphasized, and theory was introduced only to validate the personal experiences of the participants. Since the objective was to make people more aware of the impact of their behavior on others, the classroom took on a very open, sharing atmosphere. A critical assumption underlying this teaching style was that if students could be shown the dyfunctional consequences of their behavior, they would have both the motivation and the ability to change it. Feedback was a vital component of this pedagogy because it overcame what was assumed to be the principal impediment to personal change — ignorance of the consequences of one's behavior.

This orientation was grounded in the dominant value system of the proponents of experiential learning. They believed strongly in the inherent goodness of people and their innate understanding of how to behave properly. As a result, the leading experiential management textbooks included only exercises as instruments for self-awareness. Seldom were students given guidelines for how to change, insights into why they might have developed inappropriate behavioral patterns, or theoretical justifications for advocated behaviors. It was assumed that in the process of discussing the experience of participating in a management game, the instructor and students would fill in these gaps in the text material. Sometimes this expectation was realized. In the rare situation in which an instructor had the right combination of skills and background to facilitate a discussion among a small group of extremely perceptive and highly motivated students, this approach produced both significant personal insights and actual behavioral modification.

However, this outcome has proven to be the exception, according to the results of a review of the experiential learning movement. The authors of that review (Green and Taber, 1978) argue that, despite its promise, this approach has serious limitations. For example, since so much of the course content appears gamelike, the casual atmosphere discourages the critical reflections required for effective learning. Further, the authors argue that most students do not have sufficiently developed observation skills to benefit from the exercises. They need a more integrated and programmatic approach to each topic in which exercises are integrated with text material. This review concludes that exercises are useful learning techniques only when students are not expected to figure out for themselves what they are doing wrong and how they should improve.

Our review of the three management teaching approaches that have evolved over the past three decades provides a partial explanation for the current crisis in management education. As the weaknesses of the traditional management principles approach became evident, the tendency was to formulate radically different alternatives. Instead of working to modify and improve the prevailing teach process and content, counter movements emerged that totally discounted the value of conventional practice. For example, the practical wisdom of experienced managers and the organizing function of principles of management was lost when the shift was made to a behavioral science based organizational behavior curriculum. Course material became infinitely more valid, but considerably less useful. Interest in specialties (e.g., quantitative analysis, policy analysis) replaced the "will to manage" (Miner, 1973). In a similar manner, the shift to a more experiential form of learning ignored the critical lessons garnered from psychology about how to effectively change human behavior. The rush to a more democratic form of education discarded a belief in the utility of learning fundamental behavioral principles derived from theory or accumulated over years of scientific research and management experience.

A Synthetic Approach to Management Education

Given this history, what should we do now? What is the most promising approach to management education for the future? Our recommendation is based on the proposition that each of the three approaches to management education has merit, but is incomplete by itself. From a dialetical perspective, the behavioral science and experiential learning approaches arose as antitheses to the original management principles thesis, but experience has shown that these approaches also have substantial limitations. The skill development approach to management education we are suggesting therefore represents a synthcsis of the best of the three prevailing modes of teaching (see our other article in the issue for more details).

It takes from the principles of management tradition the emphasis on practicality and an organized set of managerial behaviors. We feel it is important that students in business schools learn how to effectively discharge their responsibilities as practicing professionals. Therefore, they much learn the various responsibilities of their role as business managers and the skills required to discharge them effectively.

There is also much to be gained from behavioral science research. Two decades of research has produced a considerable body of highly valid, theoretically sound knowledge. We are no longer forced to rely on anecdotal evidence based on the unsystematic observations of a handful of managers. Organizational Behavior has emerged as a reputable scientific discipline of considerable merit, and students of management are now in a position to benefit from this significant progress.

It is also important to recognize the value of the experiential movement. Students are more likely to incorporate managerial guidelines into their behavioral repertoire if they can practice them in the relatively nonthreatening environment of the classroom. Also, students become more committed to what they are being taught if they feel part of the teaching process. "Principles taught" become "lessons learned" when students experience for themselves the impact of different problem solving techniques, leadership styles, group decision-making models, and so on.

In summary, as shown in Figure 1, we are advocating an integrated approach to management education that brings together the best of the three approaches: (1) an emphasis on actual managerial requirements and skills, (2) validated information that serves as the basis for guidelines for action, and (3) the opportunity for students to become involved in the educational process, particularly by transferring knowledge into action. This integrated framework overcomes the inadequacies of each of the pure types. The anecdotal evidence undergirding the traditional management courses is replaced by more sophisticated and valid data collected over the past twenty years of active research in the field. The tendency for behavioral science oriented courses to degenerate into esoteric discussions of intellectually scintillating but not very useful topics is avoided by placing a strong emphasis on implications for action. Finally, the inefficient and often atheoretical learning techniques used in the typical experiential course, in which students are expected to figure out for themselves the appropriate behavior for a particular role play or exercise, are avoided when these activities are used as a vehicle for practicing principles already learned.

Conclusions

Up to now, students have been taught more about management than how to manage. There has been an omission of courses on management skill training, or on what it is that managers actually do. As Mintzberg (1975. D. 60) stated:

Management schools will begin the serious training of managers when skill training takes a serious place next to cognitive learning. Cognitive learning is detached and informational, like reading a book or listening to a lecture. No doubt much important cognitive material must be assimilated by the manager-to-be. But cognitive learning no more makes a manager than it does a swimmer. The latter will drown the first time he jumps into the water if his coach never takes him out of the lecture hall, gets him wet, and gives him feedback on his performance. Our management schools need to identify the skills managers use, select students who show potential in these skills, put the students into situations where these skills can be practiced, and then give them systematic feedback on their performance.

We do not suggest that cognitively oriented courses should be deleted from the management curriculum. Instead we favor a balanced curriculum emphasizing cognitive learning and skill training. Our concern is that most business schools currently provide inadequate opportunities for management skill development. It is clear that concept assimilation without skill training has not proven to be effective in producing successful managers. On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that skill training coupled with cognitive information can significantly improve managerial competence. Therefore, it is essential that our management curriculum provide more opportunities for students to learn about, practice, and become competent in the behavioral skills that are essential for effective management.

REFERENCES

Carlson, S. Executive Behavior: A Study of the Workload and the Working Methods of Managing Directors. Stockholm: Strombergs, 1951.

Filley, A. C., Foster, L. W., and Herbert, T. T. "Teaching Organizational Behavior: Current Patterns and Implications." EXCHANGE: The Organizational Behavior Teaching Journal, 4(2), 1979, 13-18.

Gordon, R. A., and Howell, J. E. Higher Education for Business. New York: Columbia University Press, 1959.

Green, S. G., and Taber, T. D. "Structuring Experiential Learning through Experimentation." Academy of Management Review, 3, 1978, 889-895.

Miner, J. B. "The Real Crunch in Managerial Manpower." Harvard Business Review, 51, 1973, 146-158.

Mintzberg, H. "The Manager's Job: Folklore and Fact." Harvard Business Review, 53, 1975, 49-61.

Mintzberg, R. The Nature of Managerial Work. New York: Harper and Row, 1973.

Pfeffer, J. Power in Organizations. Marshfield, Mass.: Pitman Publishing, 1981.

Pfeffer, J. "Effects of an MBA and Socioeconomic Origins on Business School Graduates' Salaries." Journal of Applied Psychology, 62, 1977, 698-705.

Posner, B. Z., and Randolph, W. A. "A Decision Tree Approach to Decide When to Use Different Pedagogical Techniques." EXCHANGE: The Organizational Behavlor Teaching Journal, 3(2), 1978, 16-19.

Time, "The Money Chase," May 4, 1981, pp. 58-69.

Walter, G. A., and Marks, S. E. Experiential Learning and Change. New York: Wiley Interscience, 1981.

Weinstein, A. G., and Srinivasan, V. "Predicting Managerial Success of Master of Business Administration (MBA) Graduates." Journal of Applied Psychology, 59, 1974, 207-212.

Williams, F. J., and Harrell, T. W. "Predicting Success in Business." Journal of Applied Psychology, 48, 1964, 164-167.

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