A process model for entrepreneurship education and development

Abstract

There has been a significant reawakening of interest in the applicability of action learning as a paradigm for management development, particularly as a pedagogical device in both classroom and executive development contexts. This development has occurred against a background of a wider re‐examination of the theory and practice of management education and development. Fundamentally, this re‐examination has been stimulated by criticism of the static, content‐oriented approach as inappropriate to the changing environment of the 1990s. In particular, there is a shift required for effective management: business schools will have to focus on the day‐to‐day realities of the business world, develop communication and leadership skills and emphasise continuous attention to the links between theory and practice. The implications are twofold: first, the range of teaching techniques must be extended to include process‐oriented approaches; second, and more fundamentally, there is a need for an expanded definition of the learning arena itself, and of the role of management schools within that. Renewed interest in and attention to the concept of the learning company, and to processes of both individual and organisational learning, redefines the context within which these changes are taking place. Reviews a number of key developments in this understanding of contemporary management education and development, and presents a summary of a new programme built as an action‐ and implementation‐oriented approach to entrepreneurial senior executive development. This programme aims to support the development of leadership in both large and smaller, growth‐oriented, companies, in a partnership which breaches the conventional separation both between the encapsulated learning arenas of the university and the organisation and between management and entrepreneurship education and development. This partnership emphasises the impact of intra‐group and interorganisational learning on both the participants and on the context of their organisations.