Search results

The purpose of this editorial is to introduce the set of papers which comprise this issue of the journal, and to provide an interpretation of the current strategic debates about the future evolution of business school paradigms and, hence, identify possible strategic options.

The papers can be categorized into three broad themes: first, the impacts and environmental influences on management education including issues of globalization, global sustainability and advances in digital and social media. Second, challenges and criticisms of management education covering issues of legitimacy, business model sustainability and the need for change in business models. Third, the re‐invention of business schools and the creation of alternative models of management education and approaches for effective implementation and delivery of those models.

Globalization is an important environmental influence. Arnoud de Meyer, the President of SMU, offers his reflections. The paper by Peter Lacy and his colleagues at Accenture builds on the theme of globalization by examining the new era of global sustainability in the management arena. In discussing the second theme of challenges and criticisms, David Wilson and Howard Thomas examine the continued legitimacy of the business school with respect to both academic legitimacy in the university and business relevance and thought leadership legitimacy in the management community. Kai Peters and Howard Thomas address the issue of the sustainability of the current business school financial model and question whether it is too luxurious. Santiago Iñiguez and Salvador Carmona reinforce this urgent need to review the sustainability and viability of the existing business school models. Building on the importance of technology impacts, James Fleck illustrates how the Open University Business School (OUBS), the leader and pioneer in blended and distance learning in management education, has focused on further developing models of blended learning which will challenge the current weak adoption of such models in well‐known business schools. Rich Lyons, on the other hand, presents a thoughtful analysis of the careful implementation of a completely new MBA curriculum at the well‐regarded Haas Business School at Berkeley. Peter Lorange's “network‐based” model, on the other hand, is the most radical change model. Granit Almog‐Bareket's leadership paper offers one perspective on the importance of business school leadership in creating the conditions for innovative and insightful management of business school futures.

Clearly, debates and criticisms of business schools will continue to be addressed. It is a sign of a healthy academic and management community that such debates – particularly through the auspices of EMFD – can be presented in an open and constructive manner, as in this special issue of the Journal of Management Development.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the financial models used by business schools, with a specific focus on the cost side of the model.

The paper systematically looks at sources of revenue and areas of expenditure under different business school models.

The paper finds that the faculty model used by many business schools, with the need to devote significant effort to generate academic publications, is very cost intensive and not efficient. The paper suggests that alternative models can be developed which would make business schools more financially sustainable.

While there has been a lot of societal attention paid to sources of income, most notably tuition, very little attention has been paid to the actual use of resources within the business school environment or to alternative models which could be used to deliver high quality education at lower cost.

Given the entitlement and job mobility associated with Generation Y, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating effects of psychological entitlement and tenure on the felt accountability-job satisfaction relationship.

Survey data from a sample of resident assistants were examined using hierarchical moderated regression analysis.

Entitled employees responded to accountability favorably, demonstrating lower job satisfaction than non-entitled employees when accountability was low, but nearly equal levels when accountability was high. All participants reported higher job satisfaction when job tenure was lower, but entitlement-driven satisfaction differences were observed only when accountability was low.

Cross-sectional data warrants longitudinal replication to establish causation and to give insight into how much time must pass before accountability begins to reduce the negative effects of entitlement.

Findings suggest that managerial tactics that increase employees’ felt accountability could reduce the negative impact of psychological entitlement on job attitudes and related outcomes.

Using a unique sample of Generation Y employees, the results provide an indication of how supervisors from earlier generations can improve the workplace attitudes of younger workers.

This paper sets out to examine the affect of rankings on business schools from the perspective of a business school director.

The paper critiques the methodologies of ranking systems, their statistical validity, the factors used, and the weightings given to them.

Rankings are significant drivers of a school's reputation. Good performance can double inquiries and applications and allow schools to charge prestige premiums. Financial Times top decile MBA programmes charge, on average, just below $80,000 for an MBA. Bottom decile schools charge only $37,000.

This paper finds that it is impossible to challenge the criteria set out by a variety of rankings organisations and it is ill‐advised to boycott rankings. Schools are advised to consider which criteria reflect areas needing improvement and to continue “playing the game”.

Large numbers of older workers are remaining in the global workforce, raising questions concerning age-related differences in perception and behavior. The purpose of this paper is to examine the interplay between employee age, gender and ethnicity on benevolence perceptions of new co-workers.

Data were obtained through scenario methods from a sample of 215 full-time, team-based employees across nine North American business organizations. Participants evaluated three provocative scenarios depicting initial meetings with new colleagues.

Workers of greater age perceived significantly less benevolence in all three scenarios. In evaluating a new boss, women perceived lower benevolence than men, and gender moderated the relationship between age and perceived benevolence, where aging was associated with significantly lower levels of perceived benevolence only among men.

Deeper understandings are needed concerning the behavioral and cognitive mechanisms related to age and workplace perceptions.

Older employees, guided by experience, are skeptical of the intentions of a wide variety of newly acquainted colleagues, signaling organizational leaders to customize behaviors and develop programs to encourage awareness and positive relationships across age- and gender-diverse employee groups.

This research uniquely explores age influences, and interactions with gender and ethnicity, on benevolence perceptions of diverse new coworkers. The results are robust, considering that age was related to lower benevolence perception across three disparate scenario interpretations.

The purpose of this qualitative paper is to seek more understanding of the elements important to the psychological contracts of working Millennials. The study also presents the implications of those findings for human resource management practices.

Empirical data were collected from Facebook using the method of empathy-based stories (MEBS). A sample of working Millennials describes the factors they saw as motivating and desirable in working life.

The findings are in line with previous quantitative studies in western countries, which reveal constant learning and developing at work; interesting, challenging, and varied tasks; social relations and the supervisor’s behaviour; reciprocal flexibility concerning timetables and working hours; and a good work-life balance to be important factors. However, the findings indicate that the desire to develop competences, and factors related to time may be even more significant for Millennials than previous literature on psychological contracts has suggested. Neither monetary issues nor a desire for long-term contracts emerged clearly as important factors from the material, showing that the manifestations of some elements that are important in the formulation of the psychological contract vary in different contexts.

The findings of this study indicate that employing Millennials challenges HR professionals to develop HR practices that offer flexible time structures, systematic and individual development procedures, and a coaching form of leadership.

The paper exhibits a methodological innovation in using Facebook as a vehicle for data gathering. Additionally it applies the MEBS: a method still rare in research in the field of business.

Popular literature argues that successive generations are experiencing more job changes and changes of employer. The “new careers” literature also proposes that career mobility patterns are becoming more diverse as people engage in more downward and lateral job changes and changes of occupation. The purpose of this paper is to test these assertions by comparing the career mobility patterns across four generations of workers.

The authors analyzed the career mobility patterns of four generations of Canadian professionals (n=2,555): Matures (born prior to 1946); Baby Boomers (1946-1964); Generation Xers (1965-1979) and Millennials (1980 or later). Job mobility, organizational mobility and the direction of job moves were compared across groups through analysis of variance.

Significant differences were observed in job mobility and organizational mobility of the various generations, with younger generations being more mobile. However, despite significant environmental shifts, the diversity of career patterns has not undergone a significant shift from generation to generation.

This is the first quantitative study to examine shifting career mobility patterns across all four generations in today’s workplace. The authors extend previous research on generational differences in job mobility by using novel measures of career mobility that are more precise than extant measures.

The aim of this survey study among N=180 Dutch teachers was to examine the moderating role of calendar age and proactive personality in the relationships between developmental opportunities, on the one hand, and work engagement and self-perceived employability, on the other. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Hierarchical regression analyses have been used, illustrated by means of quotes – gathered through open questions in the survey – to support the quantitative findings.

A significant interaction effect between calendar age and developmental opportunities in relation to self-perceived employability, but not to work engagement, has been found, revealing stronger positive effects for developmental opportunities among older workers than among younger ones.

The present study provides a starting-point for further research on professional development in other occupational settings.

The use of age-conscious developmental opportunities is a powerful tool in encouraging life-long learning.

Improvement in teachers’ engagement and employability will enhance their performance, will consequently lead to better pupil performance, and will contribute to the wider status of the profession, meaning that more young talented people will seriously consider working in the field and thereby helping to address the urgent need for more teaching staff.

This study increases the knowledge of professional development among teachers and examines to what extent age and proactivity play a role in this regard. The results of the empirical work challenge dominant views on age-related declines and losses, and invite the authors to continue scholarly work in this field focussing upon long-term intra-individual development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how age and job identification affect entrepreneurial intention.

The researchers draw on a representative sample of the Austrian adult workforce and apply binary logistic regression on entrepreneurial intention.

The findings reveal that as employees age they are less inclined to act entrepreneurially, and that their entrepreneurial intention is lower the more they identify with their job. Whereas gender, education, and previous entrepreneurial experience matter, leadership and having entrepreneurial parents seem to have no impact on the entrepreneurial intention of employees.

Implications relate to a contingency perspective on entrepreneurial intention where the impact of age is exacerbated by stronger identification with the job.

Practical implications include the need to account for different motivational backgrounds when addressing entrepreneurial employees of different ages. Societal implications include the need to adopt an age perspective to foster entrepreneurial intentions within established organizations.

While the study corroborates and extends findings from entrepreneurial intention research, it contributes new empirical insights to the age and job-dependent contingency perspective on entrepreneurial intention.