Business and Management INK

We Don’t Need No Education—Or Do We?

October 31, 2012 988

How does management education impact practice in the real world? Paula Jarzabkowski of Aston University, Monica Giulietti of the University of Warwick, Bruno Oliveira of of Aston University, and Nii Amoo of Leeds Metropolitan University set out to find the answers in “‘We Don’t Need No Education’—Or Do We? Management Education and Alumni Adoption of Strategy Tools,” published on October 29, 2012 in the Journal of Management Inquiry. The authors kindly provided the following responses about their article.

What inspired you to be interested in this topic?

There has been an intense debate about the relevance of management education to management practice. Some authors emphasise the multiple benefits of management education while others fiercely criticize the inability of management education to have a real impact in management practice.

However, most of this debate has been supported by theoretical arguments and personal opinions and little robust empirical research has been conducted to assess the impact of management education in practitioners’ activities.

This lack of empirical data to support the ongoing debate inspired us to take action and conduct a piece of research that could help us understand what is the real impact of management education in management practice. Hence, we designed our research to better understand the effects of management education in the use of strategic management tools, which are widely taught in business schools.

Were there findings that were surprising to you?

Given the intense criticism towards the impact of management education in practice, we were quite surprised by the magnitude of the impact that management education and management training had on the use of strategic management tools. In particular, it was quite unexpected to find out that managers with a postgraduate degree and regular management training can use up to four times the number of tools that managers with only an undergraduate degree would do. This is a highly significant difference, which clearly tells us that management education does have an impact on management practice.

It was also a bit surprising that the specificity of the education (e.g. having specific strategic management education) is not as important as the amount and level of education achieved. In other words, most of the benefits of education were gained by increasing the level of general management education and not by having more focused education in strategy for example.

How do you see this study influencing future research and/or practice?

From a research standpoint, this study can have profound impact because it tells use that we need to spend more time discussing what management education does achieve instead of continuously questioning if it has any impact at all. Hence, future research will need to explore the different ways that management education impacts practice.

From a practice standpoint, this research sends a clear message that managers will be better prepared to do their job when they reach higher levels of education and when they invest in regular management training.

Business and Management INK puts the spotlight on research published in our more than 100 management and business journals. We feature an inside view of the research that’s being published in top-tier SAGE journals by the authors themselves.

View all posts by Business & Management INK

Related Articles

Utilizing Academic-Practitioner Partnering for Societal Impact
Business and Management INK
September 17, 2024

Utilizing Academic-Practitioner Partnering for Societal Impact

Read Now
Trippin’ Forward: Management Research and the Development of Psychedelics
Business and Management INK
September 9, 2024

Trippin’ Forward: Management Research and the Development of Psychedelics

Read Now
Using Ethnography to Explore Entrepreneurial Extracurricular Activities
Business and Management INK
September 6, 2024

Using Ethnography to Explore Entrepreneurial Extracurricular Activities

Read Now
The Future of Business is Interdisciplinary 
Interdisciplinarity
September 5, 2024

The Future of Business is Interdisciplinary 

Read Now
The Co-Creation Edge in Marketing Education

The Co-Creation Edge in Marketing Education

In this article, co-authors Maria Petrescu, John T. Gironda, Anjala S. Krishen, Adina Dudau, J. Ricky Fergurson, Steven A. Stewart, Philip Kitchen, and Monica Fine reflect on the inspiration behind […]

Read Now
Book Review: Exploring, Understanding, and Managing Organizational Paradoxes

Book Review: Exploring, Understanding, and Managing Organizational Paradoxes

In this article, V Kalyani provides brief insights into her recently published book review, entitled “Book Review: Organizational Paradox,” published in Management Communication […]

Read Now
Enhancing Cultural Intelligence in Organizations: A Strategic Approach

Enhancing Cultural Intelligence in Organizations: A Strategic Approach

In this blog post, co-authors Alexey Semenov and Arilova Randrianasolo reflect on their interest in the intersection between organization and cultural intelligence. This […]

Read Now
0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

0 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments