CWRU Faculty & Staff Authors

Despite conflicting belief systems and other divisive problems, people can still learn from each other to create new knowledge. The medium is conversation. This challenging new book asserts that business conversations can be seen as social experiences through which we discover new ways of seeing the world, destroying the barriers between us. When this occurs, new knowledge can emerge or be developed. How can people learn from their differences, rather than be divided by them? One way is by creating conversational spaces--areas where conversation occurs. The authors show how such spaces are created, maintained, and enhanced, and how they are used to transform different interpretations and perspectives into new common understandings. With illustrations and case studies, the authors demonstrate the practical value of conversational learning in diverse organizational settings. Emphasis is shifted from techniques that are essentially insensitive to different contexts, attitudes, and beliefs, focusing instead on a theory of learning that is more social and interactive. This remarkable new source of explanatory theory validates an intensely pragmatic way to help organizations get people talking to one another, thereby advancing the well being of the organizations and those within them.

Drawing from the intellectual origins of experiential learning in the works of John Dewey, Kurt Lewin, and Jean Piaget, this comprehensive and systematic book describes the process of experiential learning. The author proposes a model of the underlying structures of the learning process based on research in psychology, philosophy, and physiology, and bases its typology of individual learning styles and corresponding structures of knowledge in different academic disciplines and careers on this structural model. He also applies experiential learning to higher education and lifelong learning, particularly with regard to adult education.

Based on the experience of the restructuring of the MBA program at Case Western Reserve University, the book describes the transformation of a program from one where student learning was incidental to teaching and research into one where learning is preeminent. Draws from ten years of curriculum change efforts to trace the entire process of program redesign, from initial discussion to implementation and evaluation. Examines strategic planning within the professional school and describes in detail the Managerial Assessment Course--a key element of the new program and a driving force for self-directed learning. The book provides specific designs, methods, and procedures for conducting outcome assessment studies, including five types particularly relevant to professional schools: alumni studies, employer studies, faculty studies, student-change studies, and professional competency studies. Throughout the book, the authors and contributors describe a wealth of useful, thought-provoking ideas and learnings on management education and institutional change.

For courses in organizational behaviour, individual behavior in organizations, and industrial psychology. This reader provides the best collection of classic, ground-breaking articles, as well as cutting-edge works in the field in a practical, reader-friendly format to support your experiential OB classroom.