This fifth volume in our book series on Research in Management Education and Development (Information Age Publishing) is devoted toward an empirical and conceptual examination of some long-standing criticisms of graduate management education. This volume also showcases a wide variety of innovative experiments in new visions of Master’s level graduate management education. We draw upon a rich array of USA and non-USA scholars and empirical sources in this volume and we are most grateful to our volume’s distinguished academic contributors for sustaining our book series aspiration to both reflect upon and shape innovative thinking and practice on important issues of management education and development. The over-arching theme in each chapter is the need for each innovation to be integrated within the larger body of curriculum, program structures and pedagogic practices of the innovative Business School and its overall management education curriculum. Piecemeal and stand-alone versions of each innovation are seen more as pilots for early stage demonstration of the value of the innovation. Each chapter argues for a more holistic approach to embedding each innovation within the fabric of the entire business school and graduate management education enterprise. This call for holistic, integrative approaches to graduate management education is amply demonstrated in many chapters of this volume and we sincerely hope that you will find some inspiration in the forthcoming pages for furthering your own educational vision.

An evidence-based approach to improving the practice of graduate management education Compiled by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) and with contributions by administrators and professors from the top global MBA programs, this book provides business school decision-makers with an evidence-based approach to improving the practice of graduate management education. The book is designed to help navigate the pressures and create revolutionary platforms that leverage a school's unique competitive advantage in a design distinctly tailored for today's business realities. Offers a unique handbook for improving graduate management education Contains contributions from an international group of deans and professors that lead MBA programs Sponsored by GMAC, owner of the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) exam used by over 5,000 programs worldwide This important resource gives academics a proven approach for improving graduate-level management programs.

Our current students are digital natives, born into a world of widespread online sharing. Aligning the technologies we use in our courses with their skills and approaches to collaborative learning is an opportunity we should take. The new media share text, images, audio and video material rapidly and interactively. This volume will provide an overview of these new social media including Skype, YouTube, Flickr, blogging, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Examples and cases of how instructors around the world are meaningfully incorporating them into their management, marketing, and other business courses are provided. One of the more robust trends is the use of three-dimensional immersive virtual world interfaces for teaching and learning. The leading one is Second Life. Examples of the use of Second Life in business courses will be discussed. The use of wikis to foster collaborative development of course related material by learners will be presented with case examples. Faculty members are co-creators of course content with their learners. Among the topics covered is how faculty members can be supported in their deployment of social media projects and course structures. How social media can enable the structuring of course activities involving students, prospective students, alumni, employers, businesspersons, and others in rich sharing and support with each other will be discussed. Indeed seeing courses as networking venues beyond learning forums will be parsed.

Management, the pursuit of objectives through the organization and co-ordination of people, has been and is a core feature-and function-of modern society. Some 'classic' forms of corporate and bureaucratic management may be seen as the prevalent form of organization and organizing in the 20th century, but in the post-Fordist, global, knowledge-driven contemporary world we are seeing different patterns, principles, and styles of management as old models are questioned. The functions, ideologies, practices, and theories of management have changed over time, as recorded by many scholars, and may vary according to different models of organization, and between different cultures and societies. Whilst the administrative, corporate, or factory manager may be a figure on the wane, management as an ethos, organizing principle, culture, and field of academic teaching and research has increased dramatically in the last half century, and spread throughout the world. The purpose of this Handbook is to analyse and explore the evolution of management; the core functions and how they may have changed; its position in the culture/zeitgeist of modern society; the institutions and ideologies that support it; and likely challenges and changes in the future. This book looks at what management is, and how this may change over time. It provides an overview of management - its history, development, context, changing function in organization and society, key elements and functions, and contemporary and future challenges.

The Web is evolving from a place where a prodigious amount of text and images are stored to a place where educational and other needs are serviced. The Web is becoming increasingly automated with functions that previously required human action undertaken automatically moving learners and other users more quickly to useful support. More and more such services interoperate with each other through computer programs and agents. This is the territory of semantic Web services and Web 3.0. Just as shop bots and auction bots abound in handling a particular task on the Web currently, in higher education of the future such related bots and agents will interact with the heterogeneous information that is the stuff of higher education. The scale of such agent-based mediation and linked data will grow over time. Increasingly, intelligent agents and bots will undertake tasks on behalf of their faculty, administrator, and student owners. Collaborations among faculty and students around the world will be increasingly supported by semantic social networks capable of providing crucial functions. Students can be engaged in participating in the design and development of semantic Web applications in such areas as structuring and representing knowledge. The increasing availability of interactive educational tools and collaborative community-resources, such as wikis, can be the foundation for deploying semantically marked-up and social-connected educational spaces where students construct their own learning pathways in explorations of knowledge and creating new content integration. This volume will share visions and partial realizations of the impact of the semantic Web and associated Web 3.0 features on higher education. This volume will provide accounts of cutting-edge pedagogic applications of the semantic Web with its extremely extensive use of interconnecting information technologies.

This volume has a bold agenda, in which academics create immersive worlds where the avatar is the center of the universe. As the virtual world grows, avatars move away from quasi-human interactions within virtual domiciles, gardens, and businesses to being blood cells in the blood stream, or to be firing neurons in the human brain, or creatures competing on the ocean floor or the surface of Mars or just about anything that can be imagined using the magic of photographic and artistic images, programming, narrative and avatars. What are the frameworks and strategies for building these environments? What are the things the avatar adapts and learns from in its environment? This book will examine such frameworks, strategies, examples and feedback systems to explore what it takes to create a global education environment for learning. This starts with engaging your avatar and is completed in a transformation in how you interact with the internet. Whether using the visual internet to learn or to interact with a customer about a product or service, this immersive interface can be a world that knows you and forms around your unique needs and interests.

The journey towards a sustainable world is our greatest challenge. This book includes reports, analysis, and discussion of cutting-edge approaches to incorporating sustainability importantly in the mix of organizational strategic elements. It includes examples of “zero-footprint” production facilities, leveraging environmental and social opportunities by projects, examining theories of excellence in sustainability through appreciative inquiry, social entrepreneurship, closed-loop supply chain management including reverse flows of products returned by end users, using triple bottom-line measures of success implemented in various societal and political contexts, implementing environmentally positive green technologies, new visions for making sustainability sustainable, and innovations in diffusing learning throughout an organization’s web of stakeholders and admirers. Examples and cases are drawn from business, government, and not-for-profit sectors and intra and inter-sectoral partnerships in the US, Canada, Australia, the Philippines, and Spain. Notable focal cases include the airline industry, with its emerging space-rich aerotropolises as potentially sustainable communities and higher education. These are at times supported by interviews that bring into focus positive learning experiences and high-point stories.