The Triumphant Triumvirate: Synergistically Realizing the Purposes of a University Through a Core Management Course

Abstract

Core management courses bear a particularly challenging curricular as well as pedagogical burden insofar as they are typically the sole or primary vehicle for integrating management principles with larger university and school objectives. Compounding the challenge is that these very objectives are neither universally clear nor necessarily consistent. The article explores two complementary issues: First, what are the purposes of a university and of a business school? Second, and subsequently, how might a core management class contribute to collaboratively realizing them? To the former I delineate three thematic rubrics: cognitive (the intellectual purpose), affective (the holistic purpose), and conative (the practical purpose). To the latter I describe three corresponding principles for clarifying and facilitating their educational ends: (a) theoretical gist-based instruction, centered around the cognitive, which also crystalizes and enables; (b) amalgamated wisdom-based reflection, centered around the affective, which also facilitates and inspires; and (c) active coaching-based development, centered around the conative, which also circles back to reinforce and reinvigorate the above.