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Full-Text Articles in Business

Teaching Customer Orientation To Millennials By Utilizing Electronic Communication Between Students And Firms, Thomas M. Hickman, Michael M. Pearson May 2015

Teaching Customer Orientation To Millennials By Utilizing Electronic Communication Between Students And Firms, Thomas M. Hickman, Michael M. Pearson

Atlantic Marketing Journal

This article describes an experiential method for teaching customer orientation by directing students to use their own experience with a business to write either an e-mail letter of praise or complaint to that business. Students complete a survey that asks them to rate businesses on customer orientation measures at the time they send the e-mail and, again, at the end of the semester after having had time to receive a response. Results of the surveys are analyzed and recommendations are given for conducting an interactive discussion that allows students to see the variability of the firms’ commitment to customer orientation.


Increasing Knowledge By Leaps And Bounds: Using Experiential Learning To Address Threshold Concepts, Thomas P. Bradley, Gerald F. Burch, Jana J. Burch Apr 2015

Increasing Knowledge By Leaps And Bounds: Using Experiential Learning To Address Threshold Concepts, Thomas P. Bradley, Gerald F. Burch, Jana J. Burch

Organization Management Journal

The discussion of threshold concepts is growing in the management education literature. These concepts create challenges for students and instructors since they act as barriers to learning. The reward for overcoming these obstacles is the opening of new ways of thinking that were not available before the student mastered the threshold concepts. We propose in this article that many students believe business education is “common sense” and do not understand that management is practice informed by theory. When students master the threshold concept concerning the “underlying game” of management, they begin to develop deeper and more meaningful understandings. From this …


Mission-Centric Learning: Developing Students’ Workplace Readiness Skills, Lisa A. Burke-Smalley, Kathleen Wheatley Feb 2015

Mission-Centric Learning: Developing Students’ Workplace Readiness Skills, Lisa A. Burke-Smalley, Kathleen Wheatley

Organization Management Journal

We discuss and evaluate the implementation of a mission-centric course project that is strategically tied to learning outcomes important to colleges of business. Specifically, to support our college’s mission, undergraduate students enrolled in a training and development class were tasked with applying course concepts to assess the need for, to design, and to deliver (to other business students) workplace readiness training. To aid other management educators interested in adopting similar strategically aligned and feedback-rich learning experiences, we outline and discuss relevant project planning, design, and facilitation issues, as well as present a summary of initial results derived from this project.