Building on cultural spaces and places for enhancing the intuitive capabilities of students of business and management

Abstract

Much of the conventional approach to business and management education places a strong emphasis on a primarily rational approach. Yet, particularly at the senior levels of management, and in problematic areas, rationality needs to be complemented by a parallel intuitive approach to knowledge sharing and creation. Social and management sciences have traditionally drawn relatively little on arts, humanities and cultural domains. With a need for a more intuitive emphasis in extending management knowledge, this offers opportunities for drawing on well-established dimensions in these domains. This article draws on a particular experiment in the repeated use of a well-known art gallery for business and management meetings and educational purposes. This was part of a much broader decade-long series of initiatives in the use of cultural spaces to help address the intuitive 'gap' in management education. A number of conclusions are drawn from the analysis of experiences, in particular that the physical ambience of an arts-based physical environment can augment management learning, but also there is great importance in the event design and in the facilitation style applied.